Ideas for the Club

[Ruckdog]

So, now that I've been more or less assured to be heading back to Virginia in October, I've started to think about a few things we could do to enhance the club experience. I will say up front that many of these ideas require some commitment in time, money, or both, but I get the feeling that we might be at that point in the group's evolution where a bit more organization will serve us well. So, here goes:

Membership Items: I'm thinking along the lines of buttons, or maybe T-shirts. Something that would distinquish club members at events or even just at a local store on an open game night. I think the button idea might be cool, as we could do a lot with custom graphics and names. Phineas also mentioned the idea of stickers in the membership thread, which might also be cool.

Ribbons: I'm talking in terms of the military ribbons like the military has to represent awards on service uniforms. Another forum I post on has implemented this for a number of online clubs, and it seems like a neat way to encourage participation. To be clear, these wouldn't be actual physical ribbons; they would be made electronically, and then if a member wanted to they could print them out and put them in a plastic nametag holder or something. Some ideas I've had for various ribbons would be things like faction service awards for playing so many games with a certain faction, or service ribbons for playing in events, that sort of thing.

Organized play: I would really like to see us make a go of the X-cam at some point, but I understand the logistical difficulties inherent with that. Instead, I think we could have a club standings page, which would essentially act as a sort of informal league where we could track wins and losses. Certain restrictions (such as point levels, missions, and fleet build restrictions) would apply, so that not all games would count towards the standings.

So, what do you guys think? Any comments or other ideas? I recognize that there will need to be more coordination to pull some of this off; at the very least, someone is going to have to do some record keeping for the league, and some artwork is going to have to be done for the ribbon idea too.

[MadDrB]

All great ideas.  And good to hear you may be back in October.  I'm running DW demo games at another "games day" Shades is sponsoring, like you helped with back in February, but this time we'll be at Victory Comics.

We have at least one talented artist in our group, and I like the concept of campaign ribbons, faction insignia, etc.

As for t-shirts, I still like the idea of having the Critical Table list on the front of the shirt, so your opponent can easily check for results when rolling for crit hit effects when you successfully roll an attack against his dreadnought.  Maybe on the back we could have a club logo, list of tournament events and winners, etc.

I'm willing to do record keeping for a league.  If players can at least send results of games played for a campaign to me then I'll post them up in a format.

[Ruckdog]

Well, it sounds like there may be some support for these ideas moving forward then!

I think that the league is probably the easiest one to get off the ground, as all it would require is for people to start posting their game results. I have a few ideas about how to organize it:

-Season Length: I propose that we limit the time that statistics are kept for, say 3 months at a time. That way, if someone has a run of bad luck and loses a few games, they can start over during the next 3 month time period.
-Game Size: 600 points minimum, using the Tournament Composition from the rule book.
-Objectives: Rolled for using the table in the rule book.
-Faction: I think that players should be limited to one faction per season, in order to simplify book keeping (it probably isn't a problem for most of the members, but some of us do have multiple fleets!)

The overall goal is to provide as level a playing field as possible and prevent smaller games and/or unbalanced scenarios from skewing the results too much.

[MadDrB]

I propose we start October 1st, right after the next Tournament at the Game Vault, and we can run through January.  I know it's hard to get many games in the month of December, but then when January rolls around folks are eager to get away from family and play some games.  And I'll be prepared to organize the Winter Tournament for the end of January, 2013.

The basic league suggestion here sounds simple enough:  each player can score as many games as can be played.  No special campaign format to consider, etc.  I like it.

[Ruckdog]

Alright! Sounds good. I might even be able to get in on it myself  . I was thinking that it would probably be worthwhile to collect the above guidelines (or at least a version of them) into one document for distribution, but I'm thinking we will want to get the word out as widely as possible over the next couple of weeks so that we can incorporate any suggestions members might have.

As for publishing the results, what I had envisioned was a single thread where players could post their game results, and the first post would be continuously (well, once a week or so ) updated with the player standings.

[Ruckdog]

So, I thought I would refresh this idea, given that the tournament got pushed back. I would still like to get the league off the ground, starting November 1. I am thinking it would be a good idea to create flyers or pamphlets to hand out that would have the game requirements, start and stop dates, and the forum address so that they know where to post results. With luck, we might get a few new users to join up here!

[MadDrB]

Here are my thoughts on starting a league:

Everyone is interested in playing some games and sharing results, but most can't commit to a set number of games in a given time frame, and not everyone likes to share their game results to the degree of detail that others of us obsess over....

So, the X-Cam is a great starting place--there is no commitment to play any set number of games against any specific opponents, just find time to play and opponents at your convenience, play games, and then post results.  But when I started the X-Cam last year I got almost no participation because, from the feedback I got, most players really didn't have time to figure out the new campaign and post results of games, let alone play games.

But now I'm working on a simple 2-page campaign which is even more simplified than the X-Cam while still keeping a campaign flavor.  Players arrange and meet for games at their convenience and may challenge any opponent.  Games are scored using Campaign Points; it doesn't matter how much you win or lose by, you keep track of accumulated CP, so each game only needs to report total CP earned by each player.  There will be levels which players will advance when certain CP numbers are reached, something like 50 CP, 100 CP, 150 CP, etc.   Then I'm not sure where the top of the league will work--I'm thinking that when a player reaches 200 CP and the second best player has less than 150, for example, and that discrepancy in point totals remains for 2 weeks, then the player with the highest CP total wins the league.  Simple enough?

And I can always write plenty of fluff to describe how some factions are doing, post it on the blog, etc.

[Ruckdog]

I'd definitely be interested in looking at what you have come up with! I agree, the CP idea would be the easiest way to track rankings. I think that determining the top of the league will be easy...just set a deadline for submitting games, and the player with the highest CP total after that date is the "Winah!"

As I said, though, I think the upcoming event will be a great time to introduce this to players at large, so we will want to have these materials available then. I would recommend that we include the explanation of what CP are and how they work in the player's guide, as not everyone has access to Hurricane Season.