Organizing Your Thread
Your lineage project thread's layout is important. The front page of the thread is the first thing that newcomers will see, and it's an important source of information for participants in your lineage project. There are a few components that every lineage project thread should have, which I will cover in more detail below.
Where Should I Post My Thread?
Where you post your thread in the forums is mostly a matter of preference. Lineage project threads are generally located in either Dragon Share, Dragon Sales, or Dragon Trading. If you have dragons available for free adoption, Dragon Trading might be a better fit than Dragon Sales for your specific project, but in general if you choose one of those three forums, you'll be in a good location to be spotted by other players and to comply with forum guidelines.
Introduction Post and Rules
The Introduction post is the most important post in your thread, and should be the first post. The Introduction post is the best place to put the lore for your family tree so that visitors to the thread can read it and decide whether they are interested in participating.
The rules for your lineage project should also be located in the first post, so that they can be viewed easily. Having a solid set of rules is important - it keeps lineage project members on the same page, outlines general do's and don'ts for behavior in the thread, and gives you an easy reference if you need to moderate a conflict. Here are a few additional notes to consider about the rules of your thread.
- The most important thing about rules is to think ahead when you're writing them. There will always be strange situations that might not be covered by the rules, but in general you want your rules to cover as many potential questions and conflicts as possible.
- List the requirements of your lineage in your rules section, close to the top. It's one of the most important things for newcomers and returning members to see, and putting them in an obvious location will make them easy to reference.
- Explain how the generation numbers of your lineage project work. Generation numbers are a shorthand for how closely a specific dragon is related to the founder (or founders). Most lineage projects list the founders as Generation 0 dragons, the founders' children as Generation 1, the founders' grandchildren as Generation 2, and so on. This isn't the case for all lineage projects, though.
- Specify how hatchlings from your lineage project should be distributed. If dragons are supposed to be adopted out for free, say so in your rules! If dragons can be sold for treasure, say so. In my threads, I like to note that it's up to the breeder of a hatchling to decide who they will sell or give their dragon to, which can help reduce conflict over desirable hatchlings.
- Guidelines for pinglist usage are a good idea to include, since a frequent issue that arises in lineage project threads is the misuse or overuse of pinglists.
- Remember that none of your thread's rules can violate Flight Rising's Code of Conduct. For example, you can't mandate that dragons from your lineage project never be exalted. You can request that players not exalt dragons, but it's important to include a caveat that players can do whatever they want with dragons they adopt.
- Rules can be modified after the fact. It's a good idea to notify the members of your lineage project if you update your rules, but don't worry if you don't cover everything right away. You can always go back and add or tweak rules to meet the specific needs of your thread.
- To get an idea of the sorts of rules that lineage projects use, it's a good idea to check out existing lineage project threads.
Pinglists
Pinglists are an important resource for listing new hatchlings and communicating with members of your lineage project. They can also require fairly intensive maintenance depending on how you choose to host your pinglists. If you're willing to put in a bit of extra time maintaining them, it's a good idea to have more than one pinglist to meet the needs of as many players as possible. For example, on the Night Warrior Project thread, I run three pinglists: one for announcements (like rule updates and contests), one for general hatchling notifications, and one for specific hatchling notifications (females only, specific breeds, etc.).
There are two main ways of hosting pinglists, each of which comes with benefits and drawbacks.
Your first option is to host your pinglists on Flight Rising, in the body of the thread itself. In order to be added to a pinglist, new members must request to be added and have their names edited into the pinglist. Onsite pinglists are easier to view and use than pinglists hosted offsite, and as an added benefit, you will be able to keep track of new arrivals to your lineage project since they have to communicate with you in order to be added. It's also much easier to prevent the abuse-adding of usernames to pinglists that are hosted onsite. The main drawback of onsite pinglists is that the burden of adding and removing users will fall entirely on you, since you're the only user capable of editing the thread's main posts.
Offsite pinglists are your other option. Generally hosted in a publicly-viewable Google Doc or Spreadsheet, offsite pinglists allow players to add and remove themselves from pinglists as they see fit. They substantially reduce the amount of time that you'll spend on day-to-day maintenance of your project. However, since you aren't adding players to the pinglists yourself, it can be harder to keep track of your member count and greet new players as they arrive. Offsite pinglists can also be misused for harassment purposes, since it's possible to add usernames to the pinglist whether the user in question wants to participate in the lineage project or not.
Regardless of which option you choose, pinglists should be visible and easy to find in the layout of your thread. I like to surround my onsite pinglists using the BBCode Quote option, which places the text in a darker brown bubble than the forum background. This makes them easier to see. For offsite pinglists, make sure the text that links to your offsite pinglist is large and easy to spot; bolding and changing the font size are good ways to make sure your hyperlink stands out. You can also create a banner that hyperlinks to your offsite pinglist.
Directories and Family Trees
While they aren't inherently necessary in the creation of a lineage project, directories and family trees are a good way to keep track of your family's growth in an easy-to-understand visual form. Directories are generally broken up by generation numbers, and usually use miniaturized versions of the linked dragon images that the "Generate Code" button on a dragon's profile page will create for you. The coding of the tiny images can be a bit tricky, so I recommend practicing in a dragon's bio or a spare forum post before you create your directory. I use
this code-generating tool, created by FR user Ayeva, to make the process easier and more streamlined. It lets you paste a dragon's ID number into a box and click to auto-generate the code for the linked images. From there, you can copy and paste the code straight into your directory.
Family trees are an additional step removed from Directories and require extra effort to maintain, but they're a fun and effective way of seeing just how all the dragons in your lineage project relate to each other. I use
Family Echo as the hosting website for the Night Warrior family tree. It's free to use and allows you to share family trees via hyperlink, letting you link directly to the family tree from your lineage project thread.
Affiliates
Affiliating with other threads isn't necessary, but it's a good way to market your lineage project and can be a useful resource for your project members. Since an Affiliates post isn't necessary for day-to-day thread management, I recommend putting it at the bottom of your list of front-page posts.
Other lineage projects are good options for affiliation, especially if the requirements of your projects overlap and crossbreeding is allowed. Many players enjoy the opportunity to have dragons who are part of more than one lineage. It's a good idea to talk to the moderator of the lineage project before you decide whether or not to allow crossbreeding, since it's a two-way street! In an ideal world, both projects will benefit from the relationship. Even if you decide not to crossbreed with another lineage, affiliating is a good way to get your name out there.
There are plenty of other options for affiliating as well. Hatcheries and subspecies threads that match the color, breed, and gene requirements of your lineage can give players ideas on where to find mates for their dragons, and lore hubs can help grow your lore-writing community. For families with a leveling requirement, affiliating with a trusted and well-run leveling service can be a great resource for players who don't have time to level their own dragons.
Other Thread Components
There are as many thread layouts as there are lineage projects, and it's up to you to decide what will work best for yours. I've covered the most important posts that I like to include in my own projects, but here are some notes about other components that might be useful to you.
- Hatchlings For Adoption: A post that consolidates hatchlings for adoption is a great one-stop-shopping solution for players who are looking to get started with a lineage project, but are waiting for the perfect dragon to appear. These posts are most effective when placed high in the thread; I usually make them the second or third post, so that players don't have to scroll down too far to see the dragons available. Keeping this post updated takes time, but can pay major dividends, especially for newer projects.
- Graphics Post: If your thread has lots of graphics resources available for use (buttons, bio layouts, larger graphics, etc), it can be a good idea to consolidate them into a graphics post. Since this post will only be used by people who are members of your lineage project, it can go closer to the end of the front page.
- FAQ: If you're receiving a lot of questions about the requirements or lore of your lineage project, you might want to set up an FAQ post where you can post answers to these questions. Frequently-asked questions can also be addressed via updates to the rules, but if you want to go into more detail while keeping your Rules section brief, creating a separate post for these can be the way to go.
- Contests: If you decide that you want to host contests for your lineage project, it's a good idea to reserve a post on the front page for announcing these. Since this post is mainly for members of your lineage project, it can be located toward the bottom of the front page.