While We Wait: How to Succeed in NESing Without Really Trying

Sub post. I'll say that I was opposed to the merger in the past but now am in complete favor of it.

Seems like I chose a great time to randomly go back to NESing.

For what it's worth I wasn't opposed to the IOT/NES merger in the past, and hold that stance. The key differences between the two communities game-wise have been degraded over time imo. Story-driven IOTs exist, as do very boardgamey NESes. Especially could be useful if the NES community loses enough of its members, which in all honesty might already have happened. I suspect most of the members that have already moved have no intention of coming back. Could be wrong of course.

If a merger were to happen I believe a new name would be required. "Never Ending Story" is not really indicative of many games run under the banner, and would be even less so if IOT merged.

some people are on both forums, but those who have left completely won't be back for quite awhile, if at all.

Against, for archive reasons mostly. Our archive has so much history in it, and a merge would mesh them histories and that wouldn't give justice to either section. Our forums are already in same area of the forum, so there's easy enough intermingling as we speak.

erez87 said:

I have to say, yes and no. Yes because... DUH it's friggin jason the king! Some of my favorite ever NESes were made by his hands and mind!!! But No because his last few outbreaks into NESing were short lives and either had a NES of a type I wasn't interested at the time with, or a still-born fresh start... So... Yeah... Jason - come to stay!

Click to expand...

erez, I'm in the room...

JK. Thanks for the welcome guys, and I plan to make this a long-term stay -- got the support of the GF, who says I need to find myself a hobby -- albeit at a less active role than previously due to work and such.

In the meantime, keeping my eyes open to join a new NES (ahem).

No opinion on the IOT merger...need to find some time to get over there to check what all the talk is about.

I'm fine with an IOT/NES merger, though I don't really care either way.

I'm going to update my NES for sure tomorrow, and then I'll have updates regularly every other day. If you'd like to be a part, I'd love to have you Jason.

So...considering that a lot of the mods have left (for the time being at least), are there any NESes (and maybe specific nations/entities/etc) that I should specifically look at that are already underway? I don't even remember the last time I was here.

Botwawki isn't going anywhere, and there may be one or two developed nations available by the end of the week.

Botwawki is definitely not going anywhere for at least 2-3 months, and another 10-15 updates. Probably longer, but I don't like planning more than 3 months ahead. Lots of room left in the gameplay area, though I could probably expand the boundaries into Alabama, Mississippi, Cuba, and the Bahamas if need be.

Also DaftNES is still taking applications.

I just thought I'd pop by and say that in IOT we do currently have a lot of positive feeling towards a merger. Most of us think that it would be better for all parties especially since there has recently been such a drain on your playerbase and on our GMbase.

These days the differences between us seem purely surface level.
As I understand often NEss have more stats and turns account for a longer amount of time, your maps don't usually have premarked territories for easy filling. In IOT our turns are often shorter and recently our games have been moving towards a very few stats in favour of storytelling. A concept that I've heard you chaps are also into.

I feel at this stage the differences between our communities are so small that we should move together not just to preserve our numbers but to allow for a new era of crosspollination where our games can take inspiration from each other and thusly evolve into something new and better - think of it as widening the gene pool and a shake up so that neither of our communities stagnate and fade into inactivity.

As one-half of the "team" who started this IOT thing in the first place (not that it really matters now), I'm all for a merger. The kind of games being run in both forums aren't the same but similar enough that both will benefit from a merging of the subforums and therefore of the player base, existing or potential.

As for the argument that some people check both forums anyway, well, I point you to the now-infamous Partition of Off-Topics into two forums with basically the same topics of threads in both but of different cultures/styles. People quickly found that checking two subforums instead of one was in fact quite a bit of a hassle. I dare say the same applies to the two subforums of empire-building games.

As for the name, either keeping "Never Ending Stories" for the merged forums, or "Never Ending and Other Stories", or "Never Ending Imperia", or "Armchair Emperors". For the record I don't like "NES-IOT"

I myself would suggest "World Building" or "World Building Games." Perhaps "World Building Tales" would also be suggestion, though I would love "Armchair Emperors" or Armchair Gods" if they are picked. Note that if WBG is chosen the players could still be nicknamed "armchair emperors" or "armchair gods" etch.

The merger would combine both player bases, thus ensuring new recruits have a single choice to make and to allow in a single forum section the chance of those who do not want to go to two separate areas due to web considerations will now be able to play both IOT and NES. It would also make it simpler for administration.