As per the GOAYF rules, you should credit
elli in your opening post for the premade theme you're using!
Normally, I do a three-fold review on first impressions, design, and content, but seeing as you're using a premade theme with very little customisation I'll just keep that review brief and focus on content.
Design: It's lovely, but then again, all of elli's work is great. My criticism that you could adjust would be the image you're using as your banner. Tone down the saturation and fade it out a bit (a graphics program is best, though if you have the CSS knowledge to do it that way that works as well). The white text in the banner area is very hard to read with how saturated the colours in the banner are.
Content: First things first, your discord embed isn't working. That's probably a titanembeds issue, so I would check in with them and see if there's an issue with their service.
I'm not really a huge fan of how you've organised the content. You have all the OOC / Fun stuff before the RP stuff, so it looks like you're paying more attention to the OOC stuff than you are the RP stuff.
You also have a lot of boards and because of the design it takes forever to scroll through. As a rule for myself, I try to keep the boards on the home page limited to what a potential user needs to see in order to participate. If there are "extras" -- like a character directory, or content that's important but won't be used right away, I tuck them away as a subboard.
Here's how I would personally organise things:
- Rules & Roleplay Information (Change the category title to be more concise. RPers are looking for familiar content. Also, item creation, mission, encyclopedia should imo be combined under one board, since they're not 100% crucial)
- Site News
- RP categories ("IC" label is unnecessary, the implication is already there that it's in character since these places don't exist IRL)
- Mess Hall
- Archive
Now, as far as content, I am...
overwhelmed. You have
thirteen rules / informational threads, some of which have
multiple replies. I'm gonna be straight with ya: by and large, no one is going to read that, much less remember it AND be active. I know what it's like to create a big open world RP and have so many cool and really specific ideas, but you also need to temper that creativity with what is
accessible to potential members. Plus, being too specific will limit the type of players that are on your forum. You'll only get players who a) have the time and b) have the inclination to min-max their characters for hours if not days before they ever post a profile, whereas a majority of RPers want to be able to join and create and be approved within a 24-48 hours. It's OK if you want the min-maxers, but as someone who has joined multiple original RPs in the past, I'd give this one a hard pass. I work 40 hours / week and have my own projects to consider, I'm not going through seven posts in a single thread to learn about one aspect out of thirteen on one forum before I even decide whether or not I get a character idea / am a good fit.
Overall: scale it back. You're not Tolkien or JK Rowling. You don't have an established fan base. If you want activity and people participating, you need to make it accessible to multiple demographics of people, not just people who have the time and interest to spend a lot of time on a forum before they post their character.
Rating: 6/10. Good idea in theory, falls hard on execution.
I hope this helps!
