A couple weekends ago I was talking with an old friend/colleague and occasional RBV player, and he told me that he finds RBV really hard to use.
He specifically mentioned how there's no clear architecture on the site: no way to know what pages there are or how to find them other than the site search.
He also said that the front page is a sort of mish-mash to the uninitiated in retro-gaming (who don't recognize the graphics) and also doesn't quickly tell newbies what they need to know to get in on a game.
It got me looking at the site more critically, and I agree with him. So I'm going to make some changes to the front page and the organization of the pages in order to make it easier to use.
The first step in any kind of IA/Usability exercise is identifying who the main users of the site are, and what they need to do. In my opinion, the main users of the site are:
- new players looking for a game
- old players organizing games
- old players recording game info
- old players looking up setting info
- old players carousing
- potential players reading session summaries
Of these, I'd say that #1 is the most important user. We need people who come to the home page to be able to figure out that a) we're playing Red Box/Algol/etc and b) when/where the next game is.
#2 is probably the next in importance, for obvious reasons. These players need the forum, mainly. They already know where the games are, and need to get questions answered, find out when the next session is, etc.
#3 & 4 are distant priorities, as much as it pains me to say that. It's handy to have your character on the wiki, but not really critical, especially before he hits 2nd level. It's also just not that important to know anything about the setting in-between sessions. That's one of the reasons we made the Black Peaks generic fantasy: so you already know what you need to know about the setting. Which is: dwarves, elves, wizards, dungeons, dragons, etc.
#5 is not terribly important. If you're an old player, someone will likely fill you in on how to carouse, so figuring it out is probably not a big problem.
#6 my suspicion is that this is actually about as important as #1, but guys like grrraham and Leg1on can probably clarify that. I get the feeling that reading session summaries gets people interested to play, and has a side effect of inculcating them with our gaming style and sensibilities at the same time.
I'd like to get any thoughts you have about this subject. What works? What's hard to find/use/confusing?
I'm interested in hearing from relatively new players as well as veterans.
I've also made a test home page for trying things out and experimenting with ideas.
Chris
Vancouver Red Box: a site for old school D&D