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Organizing Information Effectively

Originally posted on RolePlayGateway.com as “Organizing Information Effectively”, by Marionette:

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Have you ever clicked a roleplay thinking the title sounded neat, only to discover that the contents were haphazard and difficult to follow? This is something that can turn people away from a roleplay. It’s not the biggest problem there is; the content of the roleplay is most important. However, the content is much more accessible when roleplay information is well-organized.

If running your own roleplays, you can definitely benefit from devoting a little thought to how you state your information, especially if there’s a lot of it. I’m going to attempt to offer some tips here for any interested. This is written mostly for newbie GMs that may be wondering, "How do I get my RPs to look better?" Perhaps others will find something useful in it, too.

There are multiple methods for organization; I’m not intending to tell anyone their way of setting up a game is wrong. This is merely what I have found to be effective.

Tip 1: Separate your information into sections.

Dividing the information into several "chunks" can help to prevent "wall of text" and aid people in finding exactly what they’re looking for. Think of a restaurant menu. Usually, dishes are divided into categories: Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner, Sides, Drinks, etc. Sure, it could just list everything at once, but how easy would it be able to find something in this menu? "Pancakes, roast beef, Coke, waffles, tacos, beer, ice cream, fish sticks…" Not very easy! Likewise, categories will speed up referencing information in your RP. If you’re astute, you may notice I’m doing exactly this in this topic.

I suggest some variation on the following (keeping in mind that categories can be added or omitted as is necessary; every RP is different):

Intro (contains a short summary of your roleplay to catch people’s eye without overwhelming them (though the summary can be skipped if using the RP tab since it has a specific field for the summary), plus a numbered index with the order of the categories)
Plot & Setting (the full description of the roleplay; I often divide this into two separate categories rather than one if I have a lot of setting info)
Rules (the rules of your RP)
Character Skeleton (if you require a specific skeleton/sheet/form, whatever you want to call it, it would go here)
Accepted (entirely moot if you’re using the RP tab, but otherwise, this is a place to list the people who have been accepted; I find it’s best to ask people to post their profiles in the OOC so that you can link to them rather than copy/pasting the entire profile into the first post, especially if there are images in the profiles, as that way the first post doesn’t get weighted down)

Again, each RP has different requirements, and so you may find you need more or less sections.

Tip 2: Break down those sections into subsections if necessary.

Let’s go back to the menu metaphor. A menu can further separate its dishes by breaking sections up even more. For example, under Dinner you might have the subcategories Beef, Chicken, and Vegetarian. These could be divided even further, the Beef category containing Sandwiches, Burgers, and Steaks. Now you can really pinpoint what you’re looking for.

Likewise, if your a category contains a lot of information, it might be best to break that down even further. Let’s look at Setting. Say you were concentrating on the fictional country of Naros which is home to three different magical races, the Ilians, the Karians, and the Marans. You need to explain a little about Naros’s terrain and government, and you also need to explain a little about each race. You could divide it as such:

Setting

The Country of Naros

1. Terrain: Narros has very rough terrain with its fair share of hills and valleys, but there are wide plains to the south.
2. Government: The land is ruled by a tyrant king of Maran descent who despises the Karians, sending soldiers to slay many unfairly. He is not fond of the Ilians either, but he fears their power too much to target them.

The Races of Naros

1. Ilians: The Ilians are a blue-skinned race with the power to control water.
2. Karians: The Karians are a green-skinned race with the power to control wood.
3. Marans: The Marans are a crimson-skinned race with the power to control fire.

Obviously, in a real RP, you’d usually have much more information than that, but this is the basic idea. If there were a lot more information, doing it this way would really help to keep it manageable.

Tip 3: Use formatting to make things clearer.

You’ll notice in the above example I established "levels" of categories by formatting. Setting is the main category, so it’s in large, bold font. The Country of Naros and the Races of Naros are the two subcategories of Setting, so they’re bold, but they’re smaller. Each subcategory has a numbered set of its own subcategories. If there were no formatting, it could get confusing. It only takes a little extra time to do, but it makes a big difference in how orderly your RP looks.

The key here is to use it as necessary. Highlight titles by bolding, italicizing, underlining, listing, increasing the font size, changing the font, and using colors. Try to make it follow some logic: a subcategory heading isn’t going to be smaller than a main category heading! Personally, I prefer colors and larger font sizes for main categories only, then bolding, italicizing, underlining, and/or listing (lettered, numbered, and bulleted) for subcategories. It’s also good to try to arrange it in a way that’s easier on the eyes; I’d suggest avoiding clashing/overly bright/too many different colors and incredibly small font (do you really want to read a thread like this?).

Another helpful piece of formatting is the "hr" tag, which you can see in your list of BBCode at the top. It makes a line go across the page. I like to use these lines to separate my main categories from each other. For example:

Plot

Pretend there’s a really awesome plot here!

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Setting

Pretend there’s a really engaging setting here!

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Rules

Pretend there are some really boring rules here!

For BBCode formatting help, I’m happy to answer questions, but first you should check out RPGateway’s guide on the subject. This forum has a great selection of BBCode (most of which is simplified for you with the code bar) for us to use, so make use of it!

Examples

Lastly, here are some real examples of effective organization in action. The first is mine; the rest are RPs I found around the site which I felt were exemplary. The others may not follow my suggestions exactly, but, as noted, there’s not one right or wrong way to do this.

At a Price
Galra Outpost
Sword of the Abandoned- Revival
The Echoes of War

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