The Weekender XLBS: Extra 40k and Wolsung Chat!
June 1, 2014 by dignity
For some website features, you will need a FREE account and for some others, you will need to join the Cult of Games.
Or if you have already joined the Cult of Games Log in now
What difference will having a FREE account make?
Setting up a Free account with OnTableTop unlocks a load of additional features and content (see below). You can then get involved with our Tabletop Gaming community, we are very helpful and keen to hear what you have to say. So Join Us Now!
Free Account Includes
- Creating your own project blogs.
- Rating and reviewing games using our innovative system.
- Commenting and ability to upvote.
- Posting in the forums.
- Unlocking of Achivments and collectin hobby xp
- Ability to add places like clubs and stores to our gaming database.
- Follow games, recommend games, use wishlist and mark what games you own.
- You will be able to add friends to your account.
What's the Cult of Games?
Once you have made a free account you can support the community by joing the Cult of Games. Joining the Cult allows you to use even more parts of the site and access to extra content. Check out some of the extra features below.
Cult of Games Membership Includes
- Reduced ads, for a better browsing experience (feature can be turned on or off in your profile).
- Access to The Cult of Games XLBS Sunday Show.
- Extra hobby videos about painting, terrain building etc.
- Exclusive interviews with the best game designers etc.
- Behind the scenes studio VLogs.
- Access to our live stream archives.
- Early access to our event tickets.
- Access to the CoG Greenroom.
- Access to the CoG Chamber of Commerce.
- Access the CoG Bazarr Trading Forum.
- Create and Edit Records for Games, Companies and Professionals.
Supported by (Turn Off)
Supported by (Turn Off)
Supported by (Turn Off)
I think the best way would be to have a main heading for your forums, ie Sci Fi, Fantasy, Historical etc, and then seperate forums within those for each game. That way youdon’t have one page of a hundred forums. I also like the idea of general forum for games not yet covered, or just general gaming posts.
That wolsung board is the best board you have done. The game sounds interesting to. Hope to have a read of the rules.
The quality of terrain building what you are doing is amazing. And it is very easy to follow how you have done all of it when watching Hobby Lab. I only wonder where you will store all of the gorgeous tables.
Happy Sundays guys. Good show, liked hearing about the gaming from our cousins in Europe 🙂 As for forums, might need tightening up in places, but I actually like the current forum format, once you get used to it, its fairly easy to navigate and considering I do pretty much everything on my phone it can’t be that bad! Grass isn’t always greener, so keep in mind, if it isn’t broken…
Is if possible to set a filter on a forum? EG you have the sci-fi/fantasy/historical forums, but users tag their threads with 40k/infinity/etc tags, then the alerts go out on tags rather than forums, that way you subscribe to the tags you want to know everything about, but you can browse the forums in general to find stuff that’s like what you know like if you want to find something new.
Yeah I talked about this in the green room back in December.. because tagging is the right way to go IMHO. Have top level forums for each of the genre hubs (Fantasy, Sci-Fi etc) and sub forums for each game within that genre. The sub forums only show posts tagged with the appropriate keyword (e.g. a 40k tag will cause the post to be displayed in the 40k sub forum) and the top level forums show each post tagged with ANY of the keywords appropriate to it’s sub forums. Thus if you created a forum post about a new DVD… Read more »
..and in case this kind of diagram makes sense to anybody:
http://www.beastsofwar.com/wp-content/uploads/forumfiles/example.jpg
“the Painting forum (a sub-forum of Painting)”
..should say:
“the Painting forum (a sub-form of Hobby)”
The problem with Tagging is it’s manual. (I would love this other wise)
We are a very small number of folk, and we need stuff that more automated. We cant really rely on posters to do it, (some posts don’t even have descriptive titles – or even a capital letter)
So we need something that allows us to group and pull topics with out a ‘manual overhead’
Does that make sense?
It does, but a certain level of tagging can be implied simply by the forum you post in. Thus if you are in the 40k forum and you click “Post New Topic” then the 40k tag can be assumed and indeed, added to the post automatically. So even if everyone is super lazy, each post should still have at least one tag assigned to it, creating the traditional 1:1 relationship between forums and posts that we already see.
The trick, I imagine, is the administration of new tags and their corresponding sub-forums.
Yup that’s why we think 1 Game = 1 Forum / Beasts of War Central / Green Room will likely be the final structure.
Some tagging an be automatically done based on: >Where in the Information Architecture the poster is. Are they in a particular forum or responding to a blog or other post? > Content analysis based on keywords. “I reckon my SMs could take out those Nids any day” contains several clues that this belongs in a 40k forum. You’d want to limit the number of tags to block spammers. On the other hand you could put in a step that forces posters to apply at least on tag – or confirm those automatically identified. AS moderators, a bit of time managing… Read more »
Why do I get so excited when I see new rulebooks?
Wolsung looks like a very interesting blend of game mechanics I like. It reminds me most of all of Malifaux but by the sounds of it has a load of unique features.
Happy Sunday (in Polish)!!!! Please do put out your Salute coverage! I love your con coverage and as someone who doesn’t have these kind of con’s around its very cool to see. I’d love to post my pics up also but I do agree its best to wait until its a little farther on. Thus preventing many redundant comments about quality! I think Justin cracked the forum dilemma… Who would have guessed it! LOL I’m excited to see where BoW goes in the future. Its great that my favourite site is only getting better! Thanks guys! I hope you realize… Read more »
I would love the Weekender of Campaigns!
Really looking forward to the Wolsung vids.
I just brought some woodland scenics rock moulds which I’ve been casting up using plaster. Might have to try resin now. I break them up after they are cast and use them on bases.
Warren, check out http://www.ziterdes.de/ziterdes/en/ terrain pieces as well. They are made out of that light weight foam and come pre painted and flocked. They have some great trenches that would be prefect for bolt action.
Loving the Wolsung terrain, and can’t wait to see what the system is like.
There already is a general historical forum and it’s working very well. I do think that is the best route to go down as outside of a handful of systems, I can’t see any system dominating its genre forum. If necessary you could give a system like 40K its own sub-forum. Would having one large forum you can tag individual posts in be accessible for new members/members who only occasionally visit the forums? It sounds like you might have to know what you’re looking for to find the content you want. I’ll give you half a camel for Justin. You… Read more »
With regards to giving every system its own forum, I don’t think that’s a good idea. Content breeds content and the opposite is also true. Most systems won’t generate much activity so people won’t visit them, which just feeds back into itself.
I had planned on attending the casting Hirst Arts seminar at GenCon but couldn’t fit it into my timetable. I’m at least planning on picking up some of their moulds while I’m there.
Happy Sunday! Did anyone else notice screen flickering (left of screen near the door) on Justin’s close cam? Anyway, great show as always, I love it when we sit in on your ‘board meetings’. For the forums, I personally have a wide interest in the hobby, so I’m open to seeing many things. I like the idea of ‘THE beasts of war forum’ with individuals for all of the games, if each game was under a category heading rather than a sub forum in those categories. Ie. BoW forum>category headings>40k,WFB,Infinity,Warmahordes etc. On casting, I have an old Skool LINKA plaster… Read more »
Trick To remove bubbles in hirst arts mould – I have used piece of wood with 4 sink sponges glued in corners underneath if you put mould on this and tap it a few times it removes majority of bubbles in hirst arts moulds – there are more high tech versions but £1 worth of sponges bit of hot gun glue and a scrap off cut of wood and you are sorted …
I would say each large, active game gets a forum under its logical main catagory, the rest go to a general in that catagory. If a large enough group, or a large amount of traffic about a game, looks like it needs its own forum, ask a moderator to start one. Keeps down the number and the inactivity of small unused forums.
Warren does a cracking Jabba !
I really like the idea of individual forum for each game.
I can’t wait to see John’s coverage of his Normandy trip.
I’d love to see what you do with a Dropzone Commander campaign. Same with Bolt Action.
Thank you for another great sunday morning.
Been browsing Beasts of War for a long time. Finally got round to signing up for a free account the week before the 7 day trial launched. Did the 7 day and am now staying on as a Backstager… one thing though, I never noticed any of the 7 day emails (the only emails I saw were notifications of replies to forum posts) so can’t comment if the daily email helps retain subscribers.
It may not have launched then, or you have to confirm your subscription to it, so maybe have a look for that confirmation email 🙂
I’m no expert but I imagine goat fur is wiry and uncomfortable.
campaign rules guides for all the major games could be a backstage freebie, like the buildings. yet to get into the steam punk stuff, still have a load of empire of the dead stuff to put together from the kickstarter they did, so many good games.
And you’re terrain is getting inspirational, just like games workshop of old, but better. I would say, please don’t get to heavy on 40K, whilst enjoyable, it’s not what a lot of people are into now, merely how they got here.
Really? Ive been a backstager for a year now waiting for some 40k content…And if by over half of the gaming community not being alot of people into it…
Great show again guys. I am with Justin on the Forum setup! Micro Art Studio do some great product!
How about 5 or 6 large forums (fora?) for sci-fi, fantasy etc, with each post being able to be tagged -then users can browse by tags or see larger buckets. It means any game or area can have tags and it’s own ‘community’ but without mods etc having to create individual areas for games. Alternately, splitting it in a way similar to Justin’s, and having the ability to join individual forums would make having a users ‘dashboard’ view useful -aage that will pull in posts from the fora you have joined and so essentially have a customised forum that’s just… Read more »
I reckon you can find some inspiration for campaign mechanics from the Diplomacy board game. Sounds a bit like MicroArts’ ‘write it down then playout’ rule. I’ve seen variations of this over the years (London boroughs etc.).
For tight, skirmish games like Wolsung, Malifaux, Bushido (need some Bushido love guys) then the clans/factions can have small areas they’re controlling, with resources as mobs either protecting, occupying or raiding each (and potentially recruiting more mobs if a boss is present). When mobs collide… skirmish! . Maybe a board game that plays alone or ties in?
Oh – and check out http://uxmag.com/articles/seven-ux-best-practices-of-community-design
A BoW hobby forum sounds like a great place to visit.
Specially if you want to ask a general question and your
not sure exactly where to go to ask it.
Great show
Cheers
Justin’s idea of a generic BoW top level forum and game specific ones would get my vote.
I’d like to see a Dropzone Commander forum as well 🙂
Looking at the specs for the resin you brought it says you should measure it by weight and not by eye as one of the parts has a powder additive and therefore increases the volume.
Wolsung does look like a great game to try.
This is a 2 part liquid 1:1 mix 🙂
I don’t actually have the product but was interested to see exact what you were using, so I paused the video when you showed the containers of resin, Googled the product name and found this site selling it that said you should measure 1:1 ratio by weight and not by volume…
http://www.mbfg.co.uk/polyurethane-casting-resin/fc-6720.html
Thought I’d post just in case you were mixing the ratios slightly wrong. But for all I know their website is wrong or I found a different product to want you have.
Would you look at that!
My measuring by may well be slightly out!