I thought we were more about "keep it simple, stupid" when it came to rules? Wesnoth's forums are way bigger than ours, and I'm pretty sure their dev team is too (have you ever sat through the full credits for that game?!) so they have more a need for structure. Oh well, let's see how quickly I can trim down / rewrite this to be crawl specific.
This post serves the purpose of a first draft, open to revision and criticism. Once we like it, we can copy and sticky it.
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Helpful posting Guidelines for Game Design:The purpose of this sub-forum is discussion of improvements and changes to the game outside of the main dev wiki. As such, you should either be proposing some change to the game, or discussing and/or criticizing an existing proposal or game mechanic. Here are some guidelines.
This is not the place to report bugs. Bug reports go
here.
When Proposing a New Idea:Rule -1. Before proposing anything, please familiarize yourself with the
philosophy section of the crawl manual. All suggested changes to the game should be in line with the stated game philosophy.
Rule 0. Make sure your idea is not on
the List of Things that won't be Done.
Rule 1. Do a quick search of the forum, the
dev wiki, and the
change log. You don't need to be hyper-thorough, but please try and make sure your idea hasn't been posted elsewhere, or has been already implemented.
Rule 2. Proposal of a new idea generally warrants a new thread. It's all right if a new idea arises organically while discussing something else, but if you like the idea, don't try and hijack the thread. Move the discussion to a new one.
Rule 3. Give your thread a clear, appropriate title. This makes everyone's lives easier, especially anyone trying to do a search.
Good example: "Addition of Holy Cows as a Playable Race"
Bad example: "My idea", "How about this!", or "Mooooooo! <3". etc.
Rule 4. Criticism of existing mechanics, and the ideas of others, should be kept civil and constructive. "____ sucks!" is
not constructive criticism.
Rule 5. Clearly explain the reasons why you think existing game elements should be changed or removed, or why your addition should be included. Declaring something "broken" is not enough- explain specifically how or how the mechanic detracts from the game. Explain how your change(s) would improve things.
Basically, lay out details and try and build a logical argument for your case. Illogical, or detail-less proposals will likely be ignored.
Rule 6. Write well. Proposals need to be clear in order to be understood- so the tone of your post should be more formal than normal, rambling forum chatter. Basically, your post should read like the work you used to do for your English professor, not like casual speech.
Rule 7. When someone else criticizes your idea (and someone will!), take it stride. Listen. Adapt your proposal if need be. Bow to the logic of others if there's a flaw in your own.
Do
not belligerently make the same case over and over. There's nothing wrong with restating yourself, or clarifying if you think you've been misunderstood, or trying to make your case in front of a skeptical audience, but that's a far cry from refusing to admit when you're wrong.
Rule 8. If your idea is received positively, move your proposal to the
brainstorming wiki for further debate, consideration, refinement and (hopefully) implementation. Discussion in this forum is just the first step, a proving ground if you will. Wikifying an idea makes it more official, and presents it to the devs who don't frequent the forum.
Rule Q. If all else fails, you can always throw your idea out in the
generic brainstorming thread. We don't take things so seriously over there, and there's always the faint hope an idea will be picked up. After all,
phase bats made it in!
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Okay, I'm done. Surprising how much of that is the same as what I tell students trying to write lab reports. :p I tried as much as possible to put the crawl specific things first, and then pared down the Wesnoth rules to what I thought were the bare essentials (they were far more specific, and provided more details, but again, they're bigger and have a higher volume of posters throwing proposals around). I was originally gonna include a second part for guidelines on criticizing / discussing the ideas of others, but in the end I felt that was kind of belaboring the point.
Thoughts, comments, revisions?