Thinking thoroughly.

As I look at various forms of reorganization on the boards, and dig through gaming memories, I had a realization , or maybe a question, about the games we know and play. This board game thread is dead. Many of the gaming thread themselves should be archived... BUT... maybe we just need a top forum for physical games, perhaps calling it 'Traditional Gaming.' Under that, stick all of the various current messages, unless a certain thread has maybe 5 or more separate original posts WITH some replies, in which case it can be upgraded later. I think in a situation like this, I would include certain computer mechanisms that enable a virtual version of traditional gaming, such as LackeyCCG, Vassal, and RPTools.

Now, my realization. I think we have over-classified the game types we play, because I think there's more to the games than we give them credit for. An example is Heroscape. I have always mentally stuck that in a genre of simplified tabletop wargame. Really, if a group removed the tiles and used the speed stat on the cards as inches, by using a ruler the game could be played on any 'battle terrain.' Right on the wiki, they explain Heroscape is a tabletop wargame, played on a BOARD made of interlocking tiles.... and THERE it is. That was my realization. Heroscape is a board game, AND a tabletop wargame!

The thought occurred to me while going through my Mechwarrior clicker start set. They give you one square fold-out map, and for starter terrain they give you two BLUE RECTANGLES that say water, and two small gray squares that say city or some crap like that (maybe outpost...whatever). Confined to the area of the map? Sounds like a board game to me! Back to the first Battletech boxed set (or the 2007 remake)... played on hex maps with minis (board game pieces!). Comes in a box, fold out the playing surface, place pieces inside the play area... sounds like a board game! Look on Boardgamegeek, and there's a bunch of pictures of people using the battletech boxed set on Heroscape tiles (so yes, Sooth, the heroscape board can easily replace any hex maps!). Looks like a board game.

Was also looking at Talisman, and feeling the urge. Snap the BOARD together (or fold it out). BOARD GAME, which is where we have it. Ok? Next step? Pick a character with specific stats and skills. Um... board game? Cardboard playing pieces on the board... or maybe minis if you have them. Um... minis? Tabletop Wargame? Choose your character's path, fight your way around the land, trying to boost your stats so you can be the strongest character, making it easier to achieve tougher goals as you progress through the board campaign. Wait... WTF?! That sounds a LOT like an RPG!!! Talisman, WHAT ARE YOU?!

By looking at these games thoroughly, I'm starting to get the notion that the games we play do NOT fall into one genre! "But wait, Mr. TheCrunch. Warmachine is only a tabletop wargame! That's ALL it can be!" Really? I say, they take the exact same ruleset for movement and combat, and stick the steam-mechs inside an enclosed arena, confined to one small area (!!! BOARD, I say!!!), and let them play football with a giant spiked sphere... it has become a BOARD game! By this logic, any game (not yet including CCGs here!) with "pieces," rules for movement, and a particular goal, can be treated, AND categorized as a board game.

Now you may present individual game cases, cast an opinion on my theory, and/or agree or disagree that our multiple categories are just damn silly.

Crap. As an afterthought, using this new expansive view of "traditional" games, I put to you that with a little imagination, it would be easy to play America's most loved board game, Monopoly, on a wargame style terrain! Picture how it would be done, and be amazed at what you see!

Warhammer 40K also has pre-made city / urban tiles which can be used in almost the same manner as Heroscape, except that these tiles are actually about 1 foot squares.

In regards to reorganizing, why not a simple tree type... GAMES opens up two categories, Electrical (or whatever) and Traditional.

Electrical could be broken down to Consul, Computer, Heldhelds whereas Traditional could be broken down into Board, Card, and Other.

Consul broken down further into PS, XBox, Wii, Computer could be Online and Disk.

This way, the main menu doesn't look so daunting. Do the same with the other categories.

AND, I think there definitely has to be an intro page of sorts for each category, along with posting guidelines... granted, we few don't need anything, but there's still hope for the future.

...

Maybe we could call games that combine tabletop wargaming with boards gaming as "Open Range" or "Free Range". Open ended? Free Roaming? Ahh, I know... MMOWTTG (massive movement open world table top game).

Sooth wrote:

In regards to reorganizing, why not a simple tree type... GAMES opens up two categories, Electrical (or whatever) and Traditional.

Electrical could be broken down to Consul, Computer, Heldhelds whereas Traditional could be broken down into Board, Card, and Other.

Consul broken down further into PS, XBox, Wii, Computer could be Online and Disk.

This way, the main menu doesn't look so daunting. Do the same with the other categories.

You make valid points, and they will be thought about. However, there are still hopes that one day a Google Bot will show the world what a happening place this is. To that end, one of the reasons we chose this type of layout is too let newcomers see right away what kind of areas we have to offer. If someone wants to join the community just to discuss movies, it would be discouraging to them to have to dig through 4 layers of sub-categories just to find what they were looking for. Admittedly, we went more with presentation of ideas than actual organization, but again, this would give a newcomer the chance to see what we have without having to spend an hour browsing.

As for the electrical thing... video games go under Electronics because you can't play a video game on a tabletop. Well, you could, and the graphics would look like real life, but after you slide the disk across the table a few times, the replay value is lost. On the same token, you can stare at your video game screen and roll dice for your character all you want, but it will not make him/her move. If a newcomer pops on wanting to discuss the latest Bethesda patch for Skyrim, they shouldn't have to wade through gaming categories that involve rolling dice and painting minis. Oooh, why don't they have Elder Scrolls minis?!

Again, admittedly, the current video game layout sucks considering how many games are cross platform. I still fully intend to get Skyrim for the PC, and at that point, my posts in the PS3 section become silly. I have Oblivion for the PS3, but my PC video game posts about Oblivion mods would NOT work in the PS3 forum. As I dig, the video game categories might combine, or I might combine them and add a separate PC-ONLY subforum, which would include the games that will never see on a console, and the online ones. I can't see having a section just for online games when they are all slowly turning into the same damn game, and they are all starting to get silly. Also, then games like Mechwarrior Online or World of Tanks fall into both categories of downloads and online, and WoT even has a DVD version, so the online/disk separation creates two empty forums instead of one semi-empty one.

Or... just have one category. GAMES

Then, each game would have 1 sub for it. It shouldn't matter if it's for the PS3, Wii, phone or table....

Games
-Heroscape
-Talisman
-Magic the Gathering
-Skyrim
-and on and on....

This makes games easy to find, It takes all of the different categories and breaks it down to the simplest form..

And yes, discussion for the latest DLC for Skyrim , (as an example), wouldn't apply for the PS3, but that is a 'yet' statement and the discussion would however still apply to the game owners using the X360 and PC... It would also give the PS3 users something to look forward to..

I'm still trying to wrap my head around this idea of combining video games and tabletop games. I understand they are 'games', but the mechanics of the two, I think, would show a disregard to new people (yeah, sure) who might pop on specifically for one or the other. When I go to BlenderArtists to look for plugins or tutorials, and the most active topic in the tutorials section is about some damn MMO, my thoughts are "BlenderArtists is not the place for this... and... why didn't the mods move or REmove the topic?!"

That's my thing. Somebody comes in, likes what they see, and wants to play catch-up on old posts about Warmachine, when they start digging through threads on STALKER or Skyrim to get there, I imagine a WTF moment or several. We did it to ourselves, trying to build a place to store all of our interests. I can't think of another forum out there that is devoted to such a large assortment of things. Sure, each has the "off topic" section, but otherwise the entire forum is devoted to ONE thing, be it a game or many games; one TV show or many TV shows....

ANYWAY...in the meantime, I have altered the tabletop/traditional games section. Took the most popular subforums, and left them as subforums. Otherwise, all miscellaneous posts were moved directly under the main forum as an "anything gaming related goes here" master list. Two threads were deleted, both started by me and not relevant to anything important (imagine that). One thread, Sooth's decent attempt at an RPG that I never got around to answering, has been moved to the archives section... and I will move it back if there's any interest in playing it! I think from a main page point-of-view the one forum with several subforums listed has a slightly more organized look. Gimme some time and maybe I can get to some of the other ones. Still need to change that damn lip-wiggling smiley too.... screw you, time!

VaderXanth wrote:

And yes, discussion for the latest DLC for Skyrim , (as an example), wouldn't apply for the PS3, but that is a 'yet' statement and the discussion would however still apply to the game owners using the X360 and PC... It would also give the PS3 users something to look forward to..

Still waiting.