[Outlaw Mantis]

Not necessarily true. In my case, there's a specific sub-forum for forum games. That would be excluded from the posts needed for a promotion. "Super Users" would gain extra benefits. So long as posts are on topic, it's fine. When you run a struggling hobbyist forum, sometimes you have to take what you can get and employ any methods you can find (within reason) to gain momentum.

I don't mind doing this manually. Shame there isn't a solution available, but no big deal.