Tol-in-Gaurhoth (Isle of Werewolves)

[Legate of Amon Lanc]

Originally Posted by Galadriel55

I am not sure if it's really necessary to limit post volume in that way. No one ever spams the thread singlehandedly to such degree (though I admit I have tried ). However, how about a simple rule that you can have no more than 3 (2? 4?) posts in a row? And an understanding that the post size limit is not there to break up the Wall of Text into 10 small chunks but so that what you say has to be more concise and to the point.

This actually does not make much sense. For many people (like myself), limit to "at most two posts in a row" would mean no change whatsoever. The only time I post two in a row is either if I vote, or if I write a long analysis of something and while I'm writing, other posts appear, and I want to react to them as "postscript" to my previous post. Limit to "at most three posts in a row" would basically make me post freely like normally.

So such a rule would only disadvantage people who do what Shasta was doing in the last game and post five short posts in a row instead of one huge chunk as analysis.

Originally Posted by Loslote

Maybe the posts have to be separated by x number of other posts OR x length of time OR make a substantially different point than the preceding one?

That would be fair, but starts to already be horribly complicated. The time thing may be a problem if, say, I'm in a rush and writing on my work break, and I have time NOW but won't have in five minutes. (Granted, the same problem can technically happen with the "number of posts in between"-rule: you'd like to post something and you know you won't be able to within the next 5 hours afterwards, but not enough people have posted yet in-between your posts.)

The "substantially different point than the preceding one" - well, that's awfully vague. Who's to judge? I mean, we are grown-up people, I assume we would trust everyone to police themselves, but I can still theoretically envision a situation where some would feel that post X seems too similar to previous one, despite the author claiming otherwise. Again, we are grown-up people and should be able to deal with it, but I can imagine.

One systematic problem we are running into is this, in my opinion: the rules that are too strict may be really limiting and cause some problems. But rules that work as mere guidelines (like the "substantially different point" one) and are open to more interpretation sort of take away the point of the whole thing that it is a rule and restriction that is meant to make you play differently.

In other words - the notion that posts you make should ideally have "substantially different content" or that you "should not spam too often" is something people should strive for ideally in every game, sort of by the rules of common decorum. So if you enforce them not very strictly, that essentially changes nothing, only adds an extra aspect to bicker about or some people to feel offended because while they took great pains to post different content, they feel like my two posts were too similar and that was unfair.

If the idea is to make a different game, where the point is to make short posts, then yea, let's enforce a rule - generous enough that it does not disadvantage anyone too much, but that if it inconveniences people here and there, as it inevitably will, then simply tough luck, that's part of the format.

But if it's meant to be rules, they should be fairly simple and clear and at the same time strongly enforced.

So I'd say something like "there must be two posts after your last post" and "length of the text box at most, on the phone double the size" would do. (And the second rule is already bordering on not-clear-and-strict-enough, but would work. Making a "every post must have at most thirty words" rule would be better and probably funnier, for a really experimental "twitter" game.)