Playing at Boardgamegeek?

[Autumn]

So this has come up a couple times lately and Chief suggested having a discussion of it. Here it goes.

For those who don't know, boardgamegeek.com is a web site which obviously is a big gaming community. They have a very active Werewolf subforum. I've stolen rule sets from some of their games before, lots of interesting things going on there. They also have a great automated system, Cassandra, which for instance does voting tallies automatically, provides chat rooms for the wolves, and can do a lot more advanced things for games that have locations, items, etc.

Those are basically the bonuses--there we could all continue to play together, reap some of those benefits, and hopefully draw in additional players from the already existing player pool there.

Cons are that it's not here, obviously, and there's something to be said for sticking to our home base where people check in and follow along. Another con is that the BGG has a different WW culture, both mechanically and in style of play. Some of us just played over there in a game CrimsonFox was running, for instance, and it was a bit difficult having to both deal with all new players you don't know, but also a different style of play that seems based less on analysis, for instance, and more on post-reading. Those concerns would be alleviated by having us all move in mass, I think, since we would be defining the culture of the particular games one of us is running, but there might still be a bit of culture shock there.

So go ahead, discuss!

[DaddyTorgo]

What do you mean less on analysis and more on post-reading?

[murrayyyyy]

If it makes for better games then why not do it? What's one more site to remember...

[saldana]

as i mentioned in the GoT game thread, after listening to me talk about our games for a while, a RL friend of mine signed up over there last week, so i am probably going to join so i can play some games with him, so if the group is moving over, i will most likely already be there.

[Narcizo]

I've got to say that I think that the threads are really difficult to read but that might just be the skin. I hate, hate, hate nested quotes (as anyone who has been on a wolf team with me will attest - once there's ten quotes nested in a post I not only lose the will to read the post, I pretty much lose the will to live). The tone is a bit off-putting as well - seems like everyone fancies themselves as Sherlocks "Aha. You said this so I can infer x, y and z. And IT MUST BE TRUE!"

But no problems filling complicated games right enough. Maybe shift big games to BGG and keep smaller games here?

[Lathum]

seems overwhelming to me to start somewhere new

[JAG]

I'm good with it as the benefits (larger player pool, better system for playing WW, less worry of our players being suspended 90 days for asinine reasons) seem to outweigh the negatives (less cohesiveness, unusual playstyle compared to ours, some players may not choose to play there at all). If we want, we can still keep the GM list going and post a link here to the game thread on the BGG forum.

[path12]

They have the same issue as we do -- too many people who have played together for a long time and things get meta.

So from that standpoint the diversity would probably be good for both sides. Not sure I want to play there again though. Site is always slow for me.

[EagleFan]

I just played there for the first time.

Some observations:

The participation is INSANE! I couldn't sign on until after work and every night I had 10+ pages to catch up on.

They will suspect many of us early if we start talking vote analysis. Posted a vote analysis day one and it was like I just kicked someone's dog.

Cassandra is GREAT, though it takes some getting used to as you now have two sites to follow instead of just one. I would not want to run a game over there is you had to manually count the votes.

Seem to be some good players though it will take a few games to really get a good feel for them. Though they have so many players that it will take a long time to really get a feel for them.

Did I say participation is insane? I am signed up for a game that starts next week I believe, it has 50 players. There are regularly multiple games running at once.

I love how Cassie allows the chat rooms to be setup for the wolves to talk in (and even ones for dead players, and other groups). At the end of the game all the chat rooms become publicly viewable. Makes for some very entertaining reading to see what everyone was thinking.


Some people here may have their head explode at some of the play that I saw in my first game. I'll leave it at that, however.

[EagleFan]

Originally Posted by Narcizo

I've got to say that I think that the threads are really difficult to read but that might just be the skin. I hate, hate, hate nested quotes (as anyone who has been on a wolf team with me will attest - once there's ten quotes nested in a post I not only lose the will to read the post, I pretty much lose the will to live). The tone is a bit off-putting as well - seems like everyone fancies themselves as Sherlocks "Aha. You said this so I can infer x, y and z. And IT MUST BE TRUE!"

But no problems filling complicated games right enough. Maybe shift big games to BGG and keep smaller games here?

Oh, I forgot to mention that. I also hated the nested quotes at first but it actually made it easier to catch up in the evening instead of having to read back to find each response to see what the conversation was.

[Danny]

I'm for it, I check bgg far more than I do fofc anyway

[Lathum]

Originally Posted by EagleFan

I just played there for the first time.

Some observations:

The participation is INSANE! I couldn't sign on until after work and every night I had 10+ pages to catch up on.


Did I say participation is insane? I am signed up for a game that starts next week I believe, it has 50 players. There are regularly multiple games running at once.

These 2 things make me out instantly. I just don't have the time to keep track of all that.

[path12]

It's grown quite a bit since I played there then, though that was around 6-7 years ago. They were just starting Cassandra then and the core group was maybe 30 or so.

[Thomkal]

I have played several werewolf games there, and just the presence of Cassandra alone makes it worth trying it out in my opinion. Cassandra lets you do so much more as both a player and a GM than here-being able to chat/ask questions of the GM "live" rather than having to wait for the GM to see your PM and respond to it, not having to check 20 PM's from the GM to find some information you need from him, the ability to chat/strategize with allies (not just the wolves) in a private chat gives the GM so many options, as do the various experiments people have done with Cassandra's "physics". Makes the game much more immersive for me than here. To compare it in a meaningful manner to here-check out the Game of Thrones games played there-I played in a couple and both were just fantastic.

Our games here tend to be smaller because many people just can't post that much during a day-there's a lot more people in the games there and the amount of posts can be overwhelming. And many of the players can be pretty demanding if you take a long time to respond.

Many of them have also played A LOT. That makes them very good players in most cases. That has its negatives and positives. They know each other well, and just like here there are clash of personalities and many meta moves. There is a least one annual BGG convention where many in the group play Werewolf face to face. It's a tight knit group. They had an anniversary game fairly recently where they had I believe 200 players, covering several different villages, where villages were overrun and moved to others already occupied by other players. (And I was nearly lynched day one as a Werewolf and managed to survive for several days afterwards ) Can you imagine doing something like that here?

My suggestion if there is going to be a movement of our games to there is to have someone introduce the idea of us joining there-tell them where we come from and how different/similar our WW is to theirs-like with voting analysis and the like. Ask if its okay if we run "our" games there with our people playing mostly at first.

[DaddyTorgo]

If they're not doing vote analysis then how are they finding wolves?

That sounds like a hell of a lot of participation...if I had to catch up on 10+ pages everyday that I couldn't post much, or if someone started suspecting me because I had RL things and couldn't get back to them right away...I'm not sure I'd be able to remain un-assholeish.

[Autumn]

I think some of the negatives, like insane participation, are offsetby the idea of us moving there en masse. If we run our games like we hvae been, we typically get 11-15 signups. Add in three of the BGG folks so we can run the game, and they're not going to overwhelm the game with their style. So to me it allows us to kind of keep our own culture there if we stick together a bit.

[Thomkal]

If you are looking for a good game to get into over at BGG, Bewitched 7 starts in mid June. It's the best series of WW games over there in my opinion, and I haven't even played in any Lots of rules and moving parts though, so can be intimidating-I suggest you read the previous bewitched to get a good idea of what to expect.

http://boardgamegeek.com/thread/9694...ne-2013/page/1

[EagleFan]

Originally Posted by Lathum

These 2 things make me out instantly. I just don't have the time to keep track of all that.

really that's just one thing. the participation. the game sizes can be set before the game starts. the 50 player game is one i was talked into by cf. the multiple games running at oncepart would only come into play if you decided to try to play multiple at once.

[EagleFan]

Originally Posted by DaddyTorgo

If they're not doing vote analysis then how are they finding wolves?

That sounds like a hell of a lot of participation...if I had to catch up on 10+ pages everyday that I couldn't post much, or if someone started suspecting me because I had RL things and couldn't get back to them right away...I'm not sure I'd be able to remain un-assholeish.

by play style.

though i am not sold on them being good players yet...

unless a vanilla villager claiming a role on day one to try to avoid a lynch and the duke subsequently duking away from said player and onto the bodyguard is considered a good play. though i loved it as i was a wolf.

[path12]

Originally Posted by EagleFan

by play style.

though i am not sold on them being good players yet...

unless a vanilla villager claiming a role on day one to try to avoid a lynch and the duke subsequently duking away from said player and onto the bodyguard is considered a good play. though i loved it as i was a wolf.

I found some extremely sharp players there. You will also get people who like to make some audacious moves which can be fun/frustrating as well.

DT was talking a few games ago about changing his play styles around. I think that happens more over there.....probably because they do make analyses around play style.

[Abe Sargent]

Meh


I can't imagine taking The Dungeon to another board. Or that it would have been as successful.

[Narcizo]

Originally Posted by Thomkal

My suggestion if there is going to be a movement of our games to there is to have someone introduce the idea of us joining there-tell them where we come from and how different/similar our WW is to theirs-like with voting analysis and the like. Ask if its okay if we run "our" games there with our people playing mostly at first.

This makes sense. I don't think it would be fantastically good form to just turn up and start games and stuff. Point out that there are benefits for both sides etc etc. (well mostly for their side, we know the benefits for us).

[path12]

I nominate Crimson Fox. Oh wait.

[Thomkal]

Originally Posted by Abe Sargent

Meh


I can't imagine taking The Dungeon to another board. Or that it would have been as successful.

Well one improvement I can think of moving the Dungeon to BGG is the existence of Cassandra. I have not played there in a while, and never modded a game, but I believe it's possible to create a map there now that players can interact with. I've always been a bit confused about where exactly I was in previous Dungeon games, so having a map would be a nice addition I think.

But I give you that it might not have been as successful over there in terms of the player population-a lot of Dungeons and Dragons/roleplaying games geeks here-not sure there would be as many over there.

[Autumn]

Originally Posted by Thomkal

Well one improvement I can think of moving the Dungeon to BGG is the existence of Cassandra. I have not played there in a while, and never modded a game, but I believe it's possible to create a map there now that players can interact with. I've always been a bit confused about where exactly I was in previous Dungeon games, so having a map would be a nice addition I think.

But I give you that it might not have been as successful over there in terms of the player population-a lot of Dungeons and Dragons/roleplaying games geeks here-not sure there would be as many over there.

I think there's a huge number of D&D and RPG geeks over there. And yeah, there are a lot f games that are Dungeon-like, or even more complex, with RPG elements and maps and items.

But it's not like we would have to pick one or the other. It just may be that we'll get those few new players over there that we're not getting here. Just hosting it somewhere else gives us some new people to draw on.

[DaddyTorgo]

I'm game for giving it a go I suppose.

[Danny]

Wait, I am not a mod over there, so I changed my mind. I want to play where I have the power to edit other peoples posts