Has anyone tried this before? Is it worth trying?

[Trekkin]

Right now, I'm co-DMing a game of Deadlands with my friend. It's a really big group, we all have radically different schedules, and I like getting feedback but it's getting hard to keep track of so many perspectives.

The solution a non-gaming friend suggested to me was to make a blog for feedback and allow anonymous submissions. It's a big enough group that I'm confident anonymity could be maintained.

Thus, the titular questions. Has anyone ever tried creating a place for all the players to put their feedback about the session? Would it just be really weird to tell people "hey, it'd be really handy if you'd post any thoughts on last session on <site>" ?

If it is a good idea, recommendations on free tools to enable this would be appreciated. I'd really just like to have a store of commentary I can look back on when planning new plot and so forth.

[SiuiS]

Sounds like it could be fun. And useful.

You risk there being one guy whose written literacy is noticeably different than the rest, spoiling the anonymity though. One post from Anonymous saying "man i h8 when u r beign mean n use mobs 2 hi in lvl" and the jig is up.

Sweet Sisters of Heaven that was hard to type o_o

But yes, I think with a big enough pool of people it would end up working rather well. Hay, I may even try it myself!

[Knaight]

You risk there being one guy whose written literacy is noticeably different than the rest, spoiling the anonymity though. One post from Anonymous saying "man i h8 when u r beign mean n use mobs 2 hi in lvl" and the jig is up.

You mean, you risk one person having to write properly for once instead of being lazy? This is, quite seriously, a feature and not a bug.

[Trekkin]

One of the advantages of this group is that we're all about equally eloquent; while it would certainly be possible to extrapolate from syntax a probable author for something longer, we're quite hopeless at figuring out who typed the odd sentence or two. I agree it's a risk, but I think it's minimal in this particular case.

[Tyndmyr]

You mean, you risk that one person having to write properly for once instead of being lazy? This is, quite seriously, a feature and not a bug.

Exactly what I was thinking.

[flumphy]

You mean, you risk that one person having to write properly for once instead of being lazy? This is, quite seriously, a feature and not a bug.

Well, there's also the issue of people whose writing style, while not "lazy", is still very distinctive. And the issue of people who genuinely try, but for whatever reason just can't help certain mechanical mistakes.

I probably wouldn't set up something like that simply because there's a good chance I would be able to identify people from writing style alone, unless everyone in the group was a relative stranger I'd never received a written backstory from.

[dsmiles]

Huh. We never do that anonymously. (Being military, we're all rather outspoken, and everyone has a thick skin.) If someone doesn't like the way things are going, they just speak up.

I can't imagine that anonymity is that important. I mean, if I'm trying to tailor the campaign to the players' interests, I'd like to know who likes what parts, and who dislikes what parts.

[Kol Korran]

this may not be exactly what you asked for, but i for each campaign my group play, we use set up a free wiki. it contains the campaign notes, character descriptions, DM rules, sessions summaries (and logs when someone weites them), sometimes pics, sometimes disccussions, comments and so on.

not all the players use them though. some are more active, some less, some haven't logged since the wiki opened... people will be people. but with an involved group i hear it can be awesome.

each page is basically edited like a word page (though it has a few minor bugs) but after a few tries, it's fairly easy to use.

i keep a seperate wiki (hey, they're free) for my DM notes.

http://pbworks.com/

good luck!

[Yora]

My experience with players writing anything down for a campaign is simply put terrible. In about 10 years of running games, I've tried to get players to write down some notes several times, with completely different groups, and I think just once did a player give me any reply to it. But I'm not sure if my memory is correct, it's possible that even that never happened.

Trying it wouldn't harm anyone, but I wouldn't expect more than two people contributing. And certainly most players never looking it up. But as a tool for some people to keep on track what each had been doing, sure doesn't sound bad.

[mint]

Not all your players will use it. Those who do will appreciate it. That's about it.
I don't think anonymity will make a difference.