Discussion on Potential NES and IOT Forum Merger

hoplitejoe said:

No- the name change is super important.

IOT and NES make it unclear what the subforum is for- all they do is make it less likely new players will join.

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IOT-NES (or NES-IOT)

Subtitle: A subforum for forum based geopolitical games.

It's descriptive and allows us to maintain our respective names.

In all honesty I don't really care that much about a merger. It will probably do very little. I would like the legacies of the names of IOT and NES to be maintained, but even if the forum title is changed I'm not going to stop calling them IOTs.

The one thing I don't want is for the two communities to start flaming each other again. There is a simple way to deal with that. If someone is being nasty, report their comment and ignore them. If you are starting to get angry with another over this issue, take a break and don't post about it for a bit.

Repost from the other thread. Yes, I am back, mostly thanks to EQandcivfanatic earnestly entreating me to return.

EQandcivfanatic said:

and beyond the name (I like Geopolitical Forum Games) constructive discussion on this is probably a productive development.

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I don't think I support Geopolitical Forum Games as a name. That would exclude longrunning games like NESLife from the forum, going by the title. It's a good idea, but limiting our roleplaying games only to geopolitics would exclude some creative and historically successful games, even if geopolitics are involved with 75-90% of what we do.

I suppose I'm sad about the potential destruction of the word "story" from our forum, which is the most important element, to me, in what separates a NES from something that isn't one. I am a competitive strategy gamer, for sure, but I love the narrative element more than anything else. Also, as a query; is there any way to have games in separate forums but also have them permalinked to a joint forum? That would allow people to simultaneously view IOT's and NESes while still allowing both to keep their own identities if need be. Though that might be beyond CFC's technology.

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I don't mind the NES-IOT formulation myself. But I'd use "A subforum for narrative-based roleplaying and strategy games." Makes it broader than "geopolitical". Geopolitics might be all that IOT is, but it's certainly not all that NES is.

Thlayli said:

I don't mind the NES-IOT formulation myself. But I'd use "A subforum for narrative-based roleplaying and strategy games." Makes it broader than "geopolitical". Geopolitics might be all that IOT is, but it's certainly not all that NES is.

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Yeah, that works as a better description of both IOT and NES than "geopolitical forum games". Was in a rush so I didn't put any effort into the subtitle.

I myself support the "World Building Games" or WBG label as a way to capture both NES and IOT.

I agree with Hop: name change will be super needed to advertise the purpose of what we are.

If all else fails: WBGNESIOT (World Building Games of Never Ending Story and Imperium OffTopicum)

Thlayli said:

I suppose I'm sad about the potential destruction of the word "story" from our forum, which is the most important element, to me, in what separates a NES from something that isn't one. I am a competitive strategy gamer, for sure, but I love the narrative element more than anything else.

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This is precisely why IOT and NES shouldn't merge; although yes, some IOTs have engaging stories and some NESes can have stats that would put a tear in Sonereal's* eye, they are focused on different things. IOT is not nearly as story-driven as NES, nor as world-building. From what I know, NESes involve a lot more co-operation in world-building that IOTs, where different players constantly compete directly against each other. On the other hand, most IOTs today will be largely focused on stats, and although some GMs like to give bonuses for role-playing, this is becoming less common - If you play an IOT hosted by Sonereal, you will be looking at several spreadsheets to get an understanding of what's going on.

*now known as Scarlet King

west india man said:

This is precisely why IOT and NES shouldn't merge; although yes, some IOTs have engaging stories and some NESes can have stats that would put a tear in Sonereal's* eye, they are focused on different things. IOT is not nearly as story-driven as NES, nor as world-building. From what I know, NESes involve a lot more co-operation in world-building that IOTs, where different players constantly compete directly against each other. On the other hand, most IOTs today will be largely focused on stats, and although some GMs like to give bonuses for role-playing, this is becoming less common - If you play an IOT hosted by Sonereal, you will be looking at several spreadsheets to get an understanding of what's going on.

*now known as Scarlet King

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Err - forgive me if this sounds pretentious - but have you looked at IOTs recently? The objective best numbered IOT in months was completely story-based. FalloutIOT isn't stat-inclusive at all compared to classic stat games son and Tani have put together in the past - hell, I&B series had more complex mechanics than most of the current IOT base. The I&B games also had precedence for stories. Nedim's last games(Valkyrie, Dunkelheit), may they rest in peace, all had a story precedence. These aren't outliers in IOT, these are games that have a home in the IOT tradition and are what most people recall when they think of what IOTS they've liked - and it wasn't the stats driving everyone, it was the immersion.

And the core stat GM that is the epitome of an IOT GM, sonereal, has a new game which is deeply ingrained within the world the players are building right now. Many game features, such as NPCs, player stats, etc. are all based on what the player writes about it.

And these examples are completely ignoring the true outliers such as CityIOT, which was completely unlike all other IOTs pretty much ever.

You're completely understating how much stories are involved in IOT, just because you don't write them as much. Niether do I, don't get me wrong, but saying creative writing in IOT is minor or practically nonexistent is an insult to everyone spending their time actually doing it.

Speaking as someone known for gaming every system, gaming Sone's systems is nigh-impossible. And if you aren't trying, you *really* don't need to look at more than one spreadsheet. Two if you're at war. Most of it is just record-keeping. Do you open the ledger when you're playing a Paradox game for more than a couple minutes once in a great while?

Zack said:

What is this based on, exactly? Seems like nonsense to me.

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Really, though. I don't think the name matters at all, it's just the easiest way to go NO THE MERGER IS DUMB GO AWAY without having to go into detail as to why one thinks so. I'd be fine with NES-IOT because it's not like this is a personal union, it's just a freaking subforum merge. Not nearly that big of a deal.

Having changed my opinion a bit, I'd say a merger is possible, although I still think that the start might be a bit rocky. I think some measures, such as Thlayli's recent 14-day project, are a good way of smoothing that out, but if we go through with it, we should be prepared to not have 100% excellent relations right off the bat.

I also have began drifting towards the merge, but I agree with what Civ'ed said.

WBG a nice name too but IOT-NES would only be conveniant at the beggining, later on it could confuse new players.

TheGryphonPrince said:

I also have began drifting towards the merge, but I agree with what Civ'ed said.

WBG a nice name too but IOT-NES would only be conveniant at the beggining, later on it could confuse new players.

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I really doubt that Imperium Offtopicum or Never Endingstories drove people off because of their names. I would say the opposite actually, cool names are great advertising. Something generic like WBG would just be lame in my opinion.

NinjaCow64 said:

I really doubt that Imperium Offtopicum or Never Endingstories drove people off because of their names. I would say the opposite actually, cool names are great advertising. Something generic like WBG would just be lame in my opinion.

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I was actually talking about using the "IOT-NES" as a title, not against using either IOT or NES. Newbs would find the merged titles confusing since they don't know that forum was two separate forums before. But IOT and NES sound like attractive names when they are separate forums, I can agree with that.

At this point you should call it Story and Games for all it matters. At least S&G looks like S&T and S&LP.

NinjaCow64 said:

I really doubt that Imperium Offtopicum or Never Endingstories drove people off because of their names. I would say the opposite actually, cool names are great advertising. Something generic like WBG would just be lame in my opinion.

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As a IOT 'newb' myself, I wholeheartedly agree with this statement.

baseballpie said:

As a IOT 'newb' myself, I wholeheartedly agree with this statement.

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The problem is we can't know how many people we could have lost due to the names.

I know from personal experience I disregarded NES as a weird sub for old Nintendo consoles, who knows what I would have thought of IOT if it was a separate forum at the time.

NinjaCow64 said:

cool names are great advertising.

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Armchair Emperors, I'm tellin' ya.

AE, once again, disqualifies NESlife from being game.

hoplitejoe said:

The problem is we can't know how many people we could have lost due to the names.

I know from personal experience I disregarded NES as a weird sub for old Nintendo consoles, who knows what I would have thought of IOT if it was a separate forum at the time.

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I think I can tell you with almost near-certainty, that it's not the names driving away new players. It's probably the fact that your tight-knit community implements a steep learning curve to join a new IOT that makes it hard for anyone foreign to the community to integrate themselves. It wasn't the name that stopped me from coming here until recently, it was that the nature of IOT in general discourages noobs from joining. If you want new people to join in, then it won't be a name change that stops them. It's the roots of the game that's stopping them.

Just my 2 cents.

If you want new people to join in, then it won't be a name change that stops them.

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You clearly never heard of EpicIOT.

Scarlet_King said:

You clearly never heard of EpicIOT.

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*sign of odin*

Scarlet_King said:

You clearly never heard of EpicIOT.

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We try to forget it even existed