Creating a Game

Most tables are announced as a message. You write a few lines in a Discord channel or a group chat, and by tomorrow the message is buried, the details live in your head, and every player asks you the same three questions.

The Create Game form takes the same words and makes a listing that keeps working after you publish it.

What you get

People who never saw your channel see your game. It joins the games list as a game card: the small block with your cover, title, system and free seats that players compare games by. The same game sits on your public GM profile, on your guild's page if you attached it, and everyone who follows you hears about it at once. Search engines get a real page for it too, with its own title, text and picture.

More details, better players. "Game System", "Languages", "suitable for Novices", "Narrative Tags", your requirements for players and for characters: this is what players search by and read. Three lines of text bring you strangers asking what the game even is. A full listing brings you people who already want your table.

You watch the card build itself. It stands next to the form and changes with every word you type, so you see what a player will see long before any player does.

No booking form. Someone just talks to you. A player hits the chat button on your game, and the game comes along into the conversation. Nobody has to ask "which game is this?". You see the seats right there, you say yes, and OrbRPG puts that player in the Game Chat Room for your table. See Booking a Seat and Game Chat Rooms.

A few more things you will meet

• Seats that count themselves. "Available Seats" drops by one each time you add a player, and comes back when you remove one.
• Your time, their clock. You pick your timezone once, and every player sees the start time in their own.
• Two ways to schedule. A "Date & time" for a one-off, or "Week Slots" when you want players to tell you what fits them.
• A hook for the card. "Card Snippet" takes the place of the first lines of your description on the card, so the card sells the game instead of stopping mid-sentence.
• A description with shape. Headings, lists, links and images work in the description and in the requirements. See Text Formatting.
• A cover in three ways. Pick one from the "Gallery", "Upload" your own picture, or paste a "URL". An upload is compressed in your browser and stays with your account for the next game. See Image Sizes for the size that fits best.
• A place in something bigger. Under "Guild & Event" you can attach the game to your guild, and to one of its events, so a convention's many tables read as one program.
• A room for your table, or none. "Game chat" is on by default and gives your table its own Game Chat Room, with your note pinned at the top for house rules, links and reminders. You can turn it off until the room is created (see when that happens).
• Your own system, by name. Pick "Indie / author's systems" and type its name in "System name". The card shows that name instead, and search finds it.

The rest you will find while you fill it in.

Two ways to start

The button at the bottom offers a choice:

• "Start gathering for the game" publishes the game and opens it for bookings right away. It appears in the games list, players can write to you, and seats start filling.
• "Create Closed" saves everything and keeps the game out of the public list. Treat it as a draft: the text can wait, the date can wait, nobody sees it in the meantime, and you open it for bookings when you are ready.

Nothing is final either way. Game Lifecycle covers opening, closing, editing and archiving after this point.