Taking the Temperature on the 3.0 Rules, including recent errata/clarifications

[Chad_YMG]

Hi All,

We've had some pretty strong disagreements on some of the recent changes to the rules.  That's normal and healthy -- even really good changes to complex rules systems will have their opponents.

That said, some people whose opinions I respect have expressed more than disagreement.  They've expressed real concern about the direction the game is taking and the process by which rules changes are happening.

All this is happening at a point where (by design) I'm no longer full-time or even majority part-time on Battleground.  My vision/dream is that the community would gradually take over growing this game we all love, but I want to make sure that this is happening in a broad-based and healthy way.

I'd like to ask the regulars here to express their view of how things are developing -- as openly as possible.  I'd also ask those who have taken a leadership role (e.g. Niko, Kevin and myself) to take a step back and listen to the feedback with a fresh perspective.

Thanks and regards,
Chad

[BubblePig]

I think this is a great idea. 

[RushAss]

Over all, I think the current development climate is pretty healthy.  There are a couple of little things here and there I'd change, but we seem to have a good thing going on here.  The rule changes are discussed amongst experienced players and no rule change is made official without the approval of the head cheese.

[Hannibal]

(Apologize about the length; but I wanted to give a full perspective on where I'm coming from)

I’ll be honest, I’m having a hard time responding to this because I don’t know where to begin and what is germane to this subject.  Also I’m trying to think of ways to frame this so that it’s not taken as personal attacks or ad hominems against people I respect (even when I disagree and/or with whom I lose my temper).  In the end, I don’t think that’s possible as what I see as the root core of these debates is a differing vision of the game.  I just hope that I will properly convey that while I may single people out by name, it is just a disagreement and not an attack on them.

The long and short is that I dislike the rules as they are now and the direction they are going.  In terms of clarification, I feel the 3.0 rules were a vast step forward.  However, in most sections where there was a substantive change from 2.X to 3.0, I have found myself disliking those changes.  I dislike the philosophy behind the changes and many of the changes to approved errata.

But first allow me to explain what I think the vision of the game should be.  Back in 2006 when I got into this game till about 2009 or so, people around me played vastly different armies.  There’d be cavalry heavy “alpha strike” armies, stand and shoot armies, Dwarven Rolling Thunder crossbow armies, 7-unit wide bruiser infantry armies, combined arms armies with archers behind the ranks, refused flank armies, 9-wide armies with fast Wolf Riders on the flank, 6 unit High Elf armies that could maneuver to protect the flank while the Celestial Guard cut the enemy apart. What was fun was the variety of the game, and the fact that you got an entire army in a deck box which could put together those different armies without having to drop $200 and countless painting hours on a slew of new minis.

Now, I’m under no pretense whatsoever that we were good players.  We really weren’t.  We put together those armies because, frankly, we didn’t really understand the secret to the game.  The way we played was to try for the matchup we wanted and smash into each other.  Once the dice stopped rolling, we’d see where the gaps opened because of routing/destroyed units, and then the pinching would start.

But the real key to the game isn’t to get a pinch AFTER your lines converge, but AS your line converge.  The goal was to outmaneuver your opponent before the fight started.  One of the easiest ways to do that is to simply have more units than your opponent. 

And so a whole bevy of army types disappeared.  Any army with less than 7 units (on an open board) was just dead.  Really, you wanted 8 or even 9 units if you could pull it off.  9 units at 2000 pts meant an average unit cost of ~220 pts.  This meant that the “boutique” units that cost 400-500 pts just have to stay in the box.  You could average 250 pts per unit if you only have 8 units, but even 300 pt units have to stay in the box.

Soon it was discovered that the way to get those 350-400 pt units in the game:  take 200 pt units.  Or better, take 150 pt units (or unit-groupings in the case of peasant mobs).  And so the refused flank rose to the top as the dominant form of game play.
So today, the smart build is to take lots of swordsmen/spearmen along with 2-3 beatstick units, 2-3 cheap tanks, and 1-2 fast pinch units.  I know this is the dominant build because I spent a year cleaning everyone’s clocks with it, repeated regardless of faction.  People eventually caught up, so now its two refused flank armies fighting each other.  And to me, playing game after game of my Orc spearmen vs his Hawk spearmen while my Axemen try to plow through his peasants before his Greatswordsmen plow through my Goblins+Crazed Goblins.  We refer to the refused flank armies here as “Unit Spam” (as in spam as many tank units and bruiser units as you can).

With the Unit Spam armies, we saw that things that hadn’t been a big deal before suddenly really started affecting the game.  It was noticed with Umenzi first, but really came into focus with Rome & Carthage:  if the dominant army was the refused flank, the way to win was to get your units the matchup they wanted so as to deny/achieve the pinch.  And if you had a big unit advantage, you could force him to deploy his bruisers first, thus getting the matchup you wanted.

At the same time, Kevin educated us all on the amazing value of Command Cards over army abilities.  All things being equal (where the side-by-side weakness of army abilities was balanced by the randomness of cards), you should always draw cards.  Because, “the more cards you draw, the more valuable they become.”  So simple, and something I’d done while playtesting other systems that I was shocked I didn’t see it here:  spam the card-draw.  It’s the principle rule of testing the balance of a game:  if something’s good, see if doing nothing but that (i.e. spamming it) makes it exponentially better.

The last one obviously bugged me, and if you’ve ever gotten an email from me, you’ll see in my sig that it still does.  Whereas once there were Runes of Uruz mixing with Strike, Hardened, Parry, Roll with the Blow, and Rune of the Wary, now the game is:

“I play Strike.”
“I play Hardened.”

“Accuracy.”
“Mettle.”

“Force.”
“Rune of the Wary.”
“Oh, a different card!”

“Strike.”
“Parry.”

“Hardened.”
“Follow Through.”

“Sudden Strike.”
“Hey, a different card at least!”

The end result is sometime around this point last year, we saw the same armies playing the same style.  Everybody did the refused flank.  Everybody played Unit Spam armies.  Everybody drew cards first, and sometimes only.

Now I’m under no illusion that pre-2009 that BGFW was all steak and mohitos.  Ranged combat was massively overpowered.  What was a neat quirk (shooting into combat at no penalty) became easily abused when Longbowmen were getting 3 turns of shooting at Short range.  Cavalry in the early edition were terrible (no penalty for shooting at them and they didn’t get an impact hit).  But these were fixed over time.

But while not perfect, the early game had variety.  People didn’t know the ins and outs of the system yet and so took armies that weren’t optimized.  My philosophy is that the game is better if it recreates that variety by creating parity between different army builds.  And that has been the driving force behind my participation in the rules changes.  The goal should be that every unit should be worth taking under, say, 75% of circumstances (i.e. a lot more than most circumstances but it’s a Sisyphean to think that we can make all units viable all the time).

[Hannibal]

(Part 2)

What I see going on is the exact opposite.  I see the current rules as favoring Unit Spam armies and the current direction is for them to be as dominant if not more dominant.  I see that armies with more units than the other guy getting a big advantage at deployment and, with the clarified Final Rush rules, in the game as well.  I see no interest in attempting to make checkbox abilities a more appealing expenditure of CAs.  I see a disturbing trend to make units less locked in to their standing order, giving players more control over units without spending CAs like they have been.

When I tried to make deployment less slanted towards armies with a lot of cheap units, I was roundly shouted down.  What I came away from with that debate was that no one could dispute that a longer line gave a big advantage in deployment and game play, but rather that it was okay that the game operated that way.  So by allowing larger armies to get the matchups that favor them through deployment, the smaller more elite builds and the alpha-strike builds are just dead.  Boutique units (400+ units) by and large stay in the box.

I grant I was unable to produce the required playtest reports with pictures that some people wanted, but I simply have a life beyond this game.  I won’t bore you with the laundry list of business in my life, as I’m sure you all can relate.  But posting up battle reports takes a fair bit of what is a limited resource for me:  time.  And if in order to be taken seriously, a person has to devote hours and hours to this forum, well, that’s why I’m considering ducking out.

And when I did post up a report, admittedly without pictures, there was a great thundering silence.  There was not an interest in “hey, maybe there is a problem, I’ll see if I can replicate it at home.”  Which says to me that at a certain level, beyond not thinking the status quo is a problem but that its preferred.

When it was shown that Javelins/Pila were better at defeating the refused flank, my thought was that not every army build is going to be equally successful against every build.  I suggested that what would be really nice was that if combined arms armies were more viable, that a player could build a different army to combat a different enemy.  Instead the decision was to make Javelin/Pila weaker so that refused flank Unit Spam could win against it.

When I pushed (hard) for combined arms being made better, I did get somewhere, but the process sapped more out of me than I realized at the time.  I came away thinking that if I have to push this hard to get more variety in the game, maybe its because people don’t want that variety.

And when I came back and said that the stamped rule change wasn’t enough, I was told that it was a bad idea because stand-and-shoot armies would be made too good.  I personally came away feeling that the crux issue was ignored.

On the subject of stand-and-shoot armies, I have real reservations when there’s an outright attempt to make them weak enough to not play.  While I see the point that they are tactically fairly dull, I also came away wondering underneath that was a feeling that stand-and-shoots are really effective against Unit Spam armies, and that was what killed them.  I mean, a stand and shoot against a shorter line of more elite (tougher to hit/wound) units isn’t that great.

But rather than attempt to make the stand-and-shoot less boring and not overpowered, there was a desire to simply nullify them as a viable choice.  One that I feel not only wasn’t successful, but that hampered other play styles in the process.

Even attempts at returning unit types that have disappeared from the game, was brushed off.  In trying to bring back artillery and Low Arc type units because they simply were of no value unless your opponent happened to bring Large guys (or you were playing Monsters & Mercs), the response was “some units are going to be specialized enough that most times they don’t belong on the battlefield.”  The idea of accepting that certain units just permanently stay in the box is one I can’t agree with.

When I pushed for come hand limit for Command Cards, oh boy did I get shouted down.  Not on the specific proposal (which may certainly have been a bad idea) but on the very notion.  That particular debate was so full of straw man as it still makes my blood boil a bit.  My argument was distorted that I wanted all CAs to be spent on faction abilities.  And with what felt like a condescending “yeah maybe having more variety would be nice but what can you do?” the issue was forgotten. 

This current clarification of the final rush rules is just too much for me.  A rule too far.  I disagree that its something that doesn’t come up, and in fact the gist of the folks who’ve played it that way for a year and a half is that it does come up but that’s an aspect of the game that is okay.

I just can’t agree with that.  Partially on a game play perspective, partially from a fairness perspective, partially from a design perspective, and partially from a demo perspective.

From a game play perspective, Bubblepig summed it up well in a private conversation:  If I have the jist of it you were saying,"maneuver is trivialized because offensive is easier," and I was saying, "maneuver is more complex because defense is harder."  That about sums it up:  this rules slants the game too far in favor of offense.

From a fairness perspective, I simply don’t see how it is right that a unit in front of an enemy can get a flank-pinch like that.  We have a definition of facing side, and if you get in his flank you get to attack his flank.  If you don’t you don’t.  The Two’s Company rule was created to make sure that nobody got hosed out of a charge outside of weird line-up cases.

From a design perspective, this rule makes it easier to get pinches, which is not a good thing.  A pinch is a big deal.  If you take two Hawkshold Swordsmen (197 pts each, 394 pts total) and let them pinch a Dwarf Longbeards (394 pts), then those Swordsmen transform into 270 pt units once you factor in the pinch bonuses.  Now you have 400 pts fighting 540 pts.  That’s of course taking out the pre-combat courage check, which can produce even bigger swings.

If pinching is going to be that big of an advantage, then it has to be something relatively hard to pull off.  One of the knocks from miniatures games I’ve known is that pinching is already really easy to pull off relative to other games.  Pinching has a big payoff and is easy to do.  Making it even easier to do is only going to further favor Unit Spam armies over anything else.

From a demo perspective, the fairness thing will rear its ugly head.  Niko has informed me that he hasn’t seen people get up in arms about it at demos, and I don’t know how often it comes up in his demos, so I can’t comment on it. 

What I can say is that in almost every demo I have done, people literally do a double take when a unit blows its Pre-Combat Courage check and is promptly destroyed.  In almost every demo I have ever done one person remarks both on the power and ease of pinching.  So if I were to demo playing this way, I can tell you exactly how the conversation would go:

Me:  This guy final rushes the front and this guy final rushes the flank.

Him:  Wait.  Both units were in front of my unit.

Me:  Yeah, see, I could do a Two’s Company but by moving this guy first I can. . .  (Niko’s words coming out of my mouth).

Him:  But…but they were both in front.  That makes no sense.

Me:  (more Niko-speak)

Him:  They. Were.  In.  My.  Front….Fine.  Whatever.  Lets get this game over with.

Me:  (I sigh, because I know I’ve just lost this guy).


It’s this last point that is the killer.  This rule simply doesn’t pass the smell test, and people will call shenanigans.  Heck, I agree with them.  Niko says people don’t care.  I cannot confirm or refute his claim, only offering that different regions have different cultures, and the people who seem fine with it are confined to one region while at least two of us on the board vehemently hate the idea and we are more geographically spread out, perhaps representing a wider selection of opinions.


So to sum up, I have pushed hard to try and failed at encouraging the following aspects of the game:

-Small elite builds
-Combined arms builds
-Stand and shoot builds
-Unused units like Low Arc Weapons, Trolls, other 400+ pt units
-More balanced CA vs CC distribution
-Requiring a unit to have a flank as a facing side to flank an enemy

These ideas have been soundly rejected in favor of 8-9 unit armies composed of junk-tank units, beat stick units, and 1-2 fast units.


Now, you can take from my list o gripes one of three things:

--I have a spectacularly poor grasp of rules design and the current situation.

--There is a communal desire in favoring one type of army build and play style over any others.

--A little from A and a little from B.


Because I’m not usually in the habit of calling myself a fool, I’m going to go with B.  Of course, anyone reading this free to disagree with my analysis or my opinion.

But here’s the catch:  whether it’s A or B, its still me smacking my head into a brick wall.  If I’m 100% right and basically there is a current design focus towards one style of play, and everyone in this community likes that style of play, well then I should just shut up.  There is not rule that says people have to do as I want (Lord if there was, there’d be the Hannibal Interstate of 7 lanes reserved only for me and punishable by death to others).

I see the game as being better if it did what I stated above.  I get the feeling that people disagree with me on that score. 

Which is fine.  However sour grapes my list o’gripes sound (and apologies to anyone offended, please know it was unintentional and I tried soft-spinning as much as I could), what it really represents is a vision of what the game should be.  If the game is not going to be that, hey, it’s a game.  Nobody says I can’t just house rule stuff and play with my buddies.  That by definition means a more limited role in a design and demo capacity, because you can’t honestly be involved in those aspects of a game when you have fundamental disagreements with it.

[Hannibal]

(part 3, and I'm done here, I promise)



So what next?  Well first, you all send me an invoice for the 20 minutes of your life you just lost reading this. 

More seriously, my whole problem is one of philosophy of the game notwithstanding, I would say that if Chad is going to make the game more community controlled, he keep a couple of things in mind.

1)  A written set of design principles.  What is the game.  What is the stated goal of the rules in terms of what types of armies and play styles are encouraged and discouraged.

2)  An accepted leader.  An arbiter of final dispute.  A community elder who has final say over just about everything.  Without this, the community develops into an Athenian democracy:  a group of blowhards yelling at each other, trying to drown out the other side.  Chad, I’m sorry to say that we can’t let you off the hook on this one.  I feel you have a good temperament for it, and being in control of the finances makes you the natural choice.

3)  A delegated, but definitively named rules guy.  So far Niko has done a great job and I feel he should be nominated to continue it if he is able.

4) A nominated design team for the rules, with a project lead.  Someone to guide the transition from edition to edition with the rules, and a team to help him out.  Much like how factions are currently designed, this person would be guided by the design principles when it comes to adjusting the rules set.

5)  An accepted process of appeals, with a tribune type figure.  Look, people just aren’t going to agree all the time.  And being project lead doesn’t make you absolutely right in everything (Lord knows I have learned this one lately).  But at the same time, people can’t run to Chad every time there’s a disagreement.  There would need to be a designated intermediary who can hear people out if they feel a project lead is just being obstinate and pass that on to Chad for review so that the poor guy can live a life.

6)  An accepted forum code.  Beyond just politeness, I think there’s something to be said for a noise-to-bandwidth courtesy.  Look, I know who I am.  I know I can get . . . “feisty” with my opinions.  Its part of my personality and I work on it (some days more than others).  And sometimes I let my opinion get the better of me, because “oh, so-and-so can’t get away with mischaracterizing my view like that!” 

I feel a forum pledge of, say, 4 posts on any specific topic per day is fair (obviously the exact number is up for debate).  After that, you’re really just repeating yourself, and getting louder and louder.  Meanwhile, people who maybe have good opinions are driven away by the snarking and flame wars.  Or maybe we have good points that get lost in the 3 pages of text that people refuse to read. 

7) Appointed forum moderators.  Strong, fair moderators are like air: until you need it, you don’t think it’s a big deal.

Obviously, there could be some overlap in positions, but care would have to be taken for certain key ones.  The ‘tribune’ figure for example, would have access to but not be a part of any rules or faction design.  And of course, there would need to be a gradual ebb and flow of positions, with people stepping up and stepping down as their life permitted.  And for the record, I want none of these jobs.

Okay, I’m done.  Thanks for hanging in there with me.

[Niko White]

I don't want to disrespect Chad's wishes and say too much here, but I do want to touch on three things:

-I think you make a great point about leadership and someone experience making final calls.  Well done.

-I think you're also right about larger-scale discussions of game direction being important as we integrate more community memebers.

-I disagree that cheap guys currently dominate the game and want to go on record as saying I have no particular interest in setting up a situation where they do, which, hopefully wasn't your intent to suggest, but your post did sort of come off that way.  In any case, I think glancing at, say, the armies I played at the Championship should establish that I'm certainly not always making lines of 7 dudes with two flankers; I don't think I brought 7 front line fighters in a single match!  And I had plenty of shooters and heavy hitters and so forth, though I'll admit I never took the Celestial Guard (my only unit that breaks 400 - neither Rome nor Carthage has any!  I think considering costly units as being 325+ or so is probably more reasonable.)  We also had Will who did reasonably well with an average of 1 1/6th GWE's per game, and so forth.

So I guess I just quickly wanted to say that I agree with you that structural changes are needed, and that one of the first things to do would be to talk about the current state of larger balance issues and how they compare to how we'd like them to be.  I'd love to move this discussion there at that time.

Anyway, done.  Please, if you're one of the not-as-loud people Chad called out, don't let our walls of text stop you from being heard

[BubblePig]

I don't think I qualify as one of those not so loud people, but I would like to take this opportunity to clear the air about a couple things.

Corey,

I agree that things get boring when one dominant tactic squelches the rest. I am not OK with the game devolving into glorified tic-tac-toe, but I do not think we are anywhere close to there. I wish you could have seen some of the games at the recent tournament in Boston Cambridge which Niko referred to. If you look at Kevin and Jaime's recent Dark Elf vs Ravenwood mini-campaign you will see that Kevin won with a Ravenwood stand-and-shoot build 3 times (perhaps it was 2 or 4, I am too lazy to actually look it up myself  ). So what I am wondering about is how things have devolved to "the same armies playing the same style" in your neck of the woods. I think it is shame that things have got to that state where you are, but I can tell you for certain that when I resist a rule change it is not to facilitate that process of devolution, and I am fairly sure I can speak for others as well when I say that. I am not resistant to change because I think the status quo is preferred. For me personally, part of the issue is timing. When I initially began to play, there was a long period of time that the rule set was essentially static and you had to pull teeth and cough up blood for months and months to get anyone to consider changing a rule. Then there was a glut of rule changes, some of them the very ones I was pushing for (or close enough,) some I could have cared less about one way or the other, and a very few I think we should have waited a bit more or playtested first (one of which was almost unanimously reversed.) All-in-all I am very happy with the results, but aside from aerial combat (which is kinda separate in my mind) I definitely would like some more time with the rules just the way they are before we change anything else, unless the need is dire.

I apologize to all for reviving that old thread about flanking and opening that can of worms Pandora's Box; I should have handled it much more tactfully. My motivation was mostly to clarify what the rules currently are so that everyone, myself included, could have a more solid conception of where we are before we start to think about where we want to go. For what my opinion is worth, I think that a more planned and less piecemeal (and swingy) approach to changes would alleviate many of my concerns in this area, and in that regard I think Corey made some very good points we should all consider.

[leemie]

When I pushed for come hand limit for Command Cards, oh boy did I get shouted down.  Not on the specific proposal (which may certainly have been a bad idea) but on the very notion.  That particular debate was so full of straw man as it still makes my blood boil a bit.  My argument was distorted that I wanted all CAs to be spent on faction abilities.  And with what felt like a condescending “yeah maybe having more variety would be nice but what can you do?” the issue was forgotten. 

 I like the idea of a hand limit for command cards. Might make it a house rule to encourage using the check boxes.

[Hannibal]

-I disagree that cheap guys currently dominate the game and want to go on record as saying I have no particular interest in setting up a situation where they do, which, hopefully wasn't your intent to suggest, but your post did sort of come off that way.

My apologies for that.  Wasn't the intent at all.  The intent to say that the power build is Unit Spam (3-4 cheap tanks, 3-4 beat stick units, 1-2 fast flankers).

And I'm not saying that this is all that shows up in the game.  A year ago, we ran a campaign where we were down to 1 Hydra left (and only because I had the special "one card" Hydra given to me).  It was insanely wacky fun, and probably the most fun BGFW thing I've done.  (and if you haven't tried Kingdoms, do.  You can't go through life without trying an army composed of 5 Centaurs and 4 cards)

But I'm under no illusion what the power build is.  My stated goal was simply to help the game encourage more parity than currently exists (certainly the 5 Centaur build will never be competitive, but perhaps we could bring the Ogre Kingdoms build closer to it).

That being said, it seems either I'm alone in this or my Hoover Dam of text has made people's eyes glaze over.


(Edit:  I promise I'll leave this thread alone now.   I just wanted to clarify that point)

[Karasu]

Just a very quick thing to say that I generally support Hannibal's aims, although not necesarilly all the assertions.  It is, however, after 1 here now, so I will post a more detailed thoughts tomorrow night, when I'm home for the evening.

[GoIndy]

The only real "problem" I have is that every time a new race/faction is created, it seems like it is some kind of global imperative to ensure it is stronger than those that came before it.

Well, not a big fan of off map final rushes, since, they are by definition off the freaking map.  I guess in my mind we are allowing offmap rushes, then we should shrink the playing field. 

[Chad_YMG]

I'm going to jump in quickly here...

1)  A written set of design principles.  What is the game.  What is the stated goal of the rules in terms of what types of armies and play styles are encouraged and discouraged.

Agreed.  This is a necessary step.

2)  An accepted leader.  An arbiter of final dispute.  A community elder who has final say over just about everything.  Without this, the community develops into an Athenian democracy:  a group of blowhards yelling at each other, trying to drown out the other side.  Chad, I’m sorry to say that we can’t let you off the hook on this one.  I feel you have a good temperament for it, and being in control of the finances makes you the natural choice.

Agreed, and I don't particularly want to be off the hook.  If I did, I'd have said so in those threads where Kevin put together a bunch of rules changes that had strong majorities behind them.  I didn't rubber-stamp them, either...I pushed back on some and tweaked others.

3)  A delegated, but definitively named rules guy.  So far Niko has done a great job and I feel he should be nominated to continue it if he is able.

Niko has some new stuff on his plate, but if he's interested I agree he's the right guy for the job.

4) A nominated design team for the rules, with a project lead.  Someone to guide the transition from edition to edition with the rules, and a team to help him out.  Much like how factions are currently designed, this person would be guided by the design principles when it comes to adjusting the rules set.

I like this idea a lot.

5)  An accepted process of appeals, with a tribune type figure.  Look, people just aren’t going to agree all the time.  And being project lead doesn’t make you absolutely right in everything (Lord knows I have learned this one lately).  But at the same time, people can’t run to Chad every time there’s a disagreement.  There would need to be a designated intermediary who can hear people out if they feel a project lead is just being obstinate and pass that on to Chad for review so that the poor guy can live a life.

I'm not sure how you see this working.  If the rules guru and/or the rules design team come to me for final approval, where does the appeals Tribune fit in?  Is your idea that there should be someone a person can go to if they have a problem with the current rules and they aren't getting traction with the the guru/team?

6)  An accepted forum code.  Beyond just politeness, I think there’s something to be said for a noise-to-bandwidth courtesy.  Look, I know who I am.  I know I can get . . . “feisty” with my opinions.  Its part of my personality and I work on it (some days more than others).  And sometimes I let my opinion get the better of me, because “oh, so-and-so can’t get away with mischaracterizing my view like that!” 

I find this sort of thing to be extremely difficult to moderate.  It's one thing to say, "No insults" or "No discussions of topics X, Y and Z (more likely, R,S and P) which produce more than their share of flames" but it's a rare poster indeed who thinks that his or her own noise-to-bandwidth ratio isn't better than average. 

I feel a forum pledge of, say, 4 posts on any specific topic per day is fair (obviously the exact number is up for debate).  After that, you’re really just repeating yourself, and getting louder and louder.  Meanwhile, people who maybe have good opinions are driven away by the snarking and flame wars.  Or maybe we have good points that get lost in the 3 pages of text that people refuse to read. 

I think this really depends on the topic.  Some topics are more like discussions, so follow-up posts are anything but repetitive.  Moreover, some people like to go back and forth.  What you see as repetition they may see as clarification and fine-tuning.

7) Appointed forum moderators.  Strong, fair moderators are like air: until you need it, you don’t think it’s a big deal.

Probably smart.  We haven't had to have much in the way of moderation so far, but that may not always be so.

[RushAss]

(Part 2)

So to sum up, I have pushed hard to try and failed at encouraging the following aspects of the game:

-Small elite builds
-Combined arms builds
-Stand and shoot builds
-Unused units like Low Arc Weapons, Trolls, other 400+ pt units...

...These ideas have been soundly rejected in favor of 8-9 unit armies composed of junk-tank units, beat stick units, and 1-2 fast units.

This is probably subject matter for another thread, but I'd like to happily point out that our group does indeed use these aspects of the game on at least a semi-regular basis when playing 1 on 1 games.  While Stand and Shoot seems distasteful to the BG community in general, players still do it.  Heck, even official S&S hater Kevin did it in his Ravenwood vs Dark Elf campaign, so it is far from dead.

Edit:  See my battle report from this thread: http://yourmovegames.com/forum/index.php/topic,4392.0.html
By definition, my Umenzi build is both a combined arms build as well as a small (at least in the scope of the Umenzi) elite build.  I have been experimenting with this kind of thing.  Brook has been to, he just doesn't realize it

[Hannibal]

I didn't rubber-stamp them, either...I pushed back on some and tweaked others.

Yes you did, and I think the Pila rule specifically was better for it.  It happened that Kublacon happened during the debate, and we tried to whole "pila/javelins are -3.5" if on Close" and, while it achieved the goal, it was considered unfun.

That one sticks out in my mind because your rebuttal (essentially player outrage at the silliness of it) was exactly the thought I had with the final rush clarification.

5)  An accepted process of appeals, with a tribune type figure.  Look, people just aren’t going to agree all the time.  And being project lead doesn’t make you absolutely right in everything (Lord knows I have learned this one lately).  But at the same time, people can’t run to Chad every time there’s a disagreement.  There would need to be a designated intermediary who can hear people out if they feel a project lead is just being obstinate and pass that on to Chad for review so that the poor guy can live a life.

I'm not sure how you see this working.  If the rules guru and/or the rules design team come to me for final approval, where does the appeals Tribune fit in?  Is your idea that there should be someone a person can go to if they have a problem with the current rules and they aren't getting traction with the the guru/team?

My point is two-fold.  First, being a rules writer/project lead almost by definition requires a strong personality.  You need confidence and the ability to stand your ground, because on any give rule you're going to be told by 10 people that 20 things are wrong for 30 reasons.  You need to know when to stand by your merits and when to bend, both which require a high degree of self-esteem.

The downside of confidence, though, is ego.  That an idea is right because it is your idea.  That because you were right the last 9 times that means you're automatically right on number 10.  Rules writing is like investing:  past performance is not evidence of future performance (i.e. a smart guy can make a bad decision and justify it by saying "all my other decisions were good" instead of "this idea is good, and here's why.")

I've seen it happen in other groups.  I've seen it happen here.  I've been on the receiving end of it. I've done it myself.

People who constantly get their ideas shut down because the project leader pulls rank eventually just leave.  Some flame out in a spectacular fight.  Most just leave.

The best safeguard that I have found is to grab someone who's opinion I can trust.  This person often isn't a great rules writer, but he has an even temperament and is by nature a diplomat.  That person's entire job is to approach me privately and say "You were out of line there and owe that guy an apology" or "Its your call but I think you're just being stubborn on this rule."


The second part of my point is that in most communities, there is the guy who fulfills that diplomat role by nature.  He may not have the best grasp of rules or how to play the game, but he is friendly and even tempered.  Look around this community, I'll bet you can spot him here too.  He usually ends up a moderator/admin of some kind, with eyes on just about every project but you'd never know because he doesn't participate much.  But you can usually spot him because he's the ones during the testy conversations coming in with a third point saying "Around here, we just do X.  Maybe its not entirely exact in the rules, but we value having fun more than getting everything perfect."

In communities where I moderate, when I see that guy I grab him and dragoon him into service.  I give him the job of being adviser, of being the adult in the room, of being someone even the boss will listen to.  Of being, basically, the Guinan.

(oh yeah, I threw in a TNG reference.  Cause that's how I roll, baby)

Chad, you're extremely even tempered, and if you were around more, I'd say that this role isn't needed. (Heck, in the original YMG team, maybe you were that person.)   But the simple truth is you're not around all the time.

Anyway, I'm not really pushing the idea, just explaining where I was coming from and my experience.  If the community doesn't see a need for it, well this is more my swan song anyway, so its not like it'll impact me much.

it's a rare poster indeed who thinks that his or her own noise-to-bandwidth ratio isn't better than average. 

*raises hand*

I get worked up sometimes, and tend to meet fire with fire.

I think this really depends on the topic.  Some topics are more like discussions, so follow-up posts are anything but repetitive.  Moreover, some people like to go back and forth.  What you see as repetition they may see as clarification and fine-tuning.

You know I'm not saying a hard and fast rule, but perhaps more a "gentleman's agreement."  My experience has been that I rarely offer some great insight in post 5-6 that wasn't there in 1-4.  (I happens, but not a lot)

My concern is that when Kevin and I get going (or Kevin and Bubblepig, or Bubblepig and I, or Kevin, Bubblepig, and I), that it drives away others.  It could be that what was a 2-post topic becomes 3 pages by day's end when people get home and they say "Oh F&%# that, I'm not wading through 27 posts!"  Or perhaps they see how strongly, say, Kevin and I present our points and they think its a flame war.  Now, Kevin and I may be very opinionated but we respect each other and try not to get heated.  But if a viewer thinks we're just insulting each other and steers clear of the flame war, well then for all practical purposes we have gotten out of hand and driven away what may be a very good point that neither one of us realized.

This is probably subject matter for another thread, but I'd like to happily point out that our group does indeed use these aspects of the game on at least a semi-regular basis when playing 1 on 1 games.  While Stand and Shoot seems distasteful to the BG community in general, players still do it.  Heck, even official S&S hater Kevin did it in his Ravenwood vs Dark Elf campaign, so it is far from dead.

I seem to have either misstated my point or overemphasized it to the point of distorting it.  My point wasn't that no one takes those builds.  My point was:

So today, the smart build is to take lots of swordsmen/spearmen along with 2-3 beatstick units, 2-3 cheap tanks, and 1-2 fast pinch units.

and I hope I clarified when I stated:

And I'm not saying that this is all that shows up in the game.  A year ago, we ran a campaign where we were down to 1 Hydra left (and only because I had the special "one card" Hydra given to me).  It was insanely wacky fun, and probably the most fun BGFW thing I've done.  (and if you haven't tried Kingdoms, do.  You can't go through life without trying an army composed of 5 Centaurs and 4 cards)

But I'm under no illusion what the power build is.  My stated goal was simply to help the game encourage more parity than currently exists (certainly the 5 Centaur build will never be competitive, but perhaps we could bring the Ogre Kingdoms build closer to it).

But I guess not.