So I have an idea for a game and I'm not sure if 1) it would work and 2) if the forum would allow some of the specialized ideas I have.

My idea is to have everyone playing townspeople in a frontier town in my custom setting. The town would be approached by two opposing groups and through various plot points, the true motives of each group would come to light, but each character may see things a bit differently due to hints and misinformation from the opposing groups. Too ambitious?

The idea that I'm not sure if the forum supports is having private thread for players that have chosen a side and witness things that people undecided or on the other side do not see. Is this possible?

Thanks!

Yes. You can set threads to private. It's in the settings at any time you create a new thread. Right at the bottom.

Personally I think being able to create privatized folders in your own game forums would be a great feature to ensure privacy and all that, too. But... they don't have that...

No, but at least the threads within those folders can remain private.

Multi-party games are a blast, and private threads are absolutely vital to maintaining the secrecy you're aiming for.

Let's see... you'd start with the threads unviewable to all, and then when someone wants to 'join' a particular faction, they'd have to PM you so you can edit them into the thread. I think that's how it would work. The only problem I see is that once they join a thread, they can probably see all the previous interactions in that thread... so if Group A has been manipulating things to get Player B to come to their side, once you allow Player B access, they can see all those machinations.

Unless you create a new thread each time someone new joins?

To avoid problems like Abelard describes you can just make a new thread each time someone enters or exits a room. It may sound like it'll get messy fast, but really it’s not that hard to manage.

If you really want a lot of intrigue and restricted knowledge, it's going to be a bit of work to manage. Still a lot easier in PbP than a tabletop game though. If folks are likely to be swapping sides a good bit, new threads are going to be a must, but having had a game or two where that happened, keeping the threads straight isn't as tough as it sounds. The only real problem is remembering which thread to look at when you want to review a clue 6 months later.

Sounds doable. I think the easiest thing to do would be to have a new thread for each scene and closing finished scenes to keep it rolling.

That's what I've been doing for both of my games. None of my players know what anyone's doing unless they're involved in it.

Well, with the exception of a couple players who do abuse their scrying abilities. But fair's fair, I guess.