Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

Some conversation has come up here : http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/180/679316.page suggesting a few alternatives to the current historicals set up - that we basically have 15mm WW2 (Flames Of War) and everything else becomes "Historicals".

That just doesn't make sense, and I think it'd be best to split it up into:

Biblicals (pre 2000BC)*
Ancients(1999BC-1100AD)*
Medieval (1101-1700)
Gunpowder (1701-1900)
Modern (1900 onwards)

* Possibly even Biblicals and Ancients can be merged, as Biblicals is fairly niche and mechanically similar to ancients.

And what's the uptake on the historical section? How many threads are their to justify splitting up a board which likely has less posts in it than the other existing ones?

I wasn't even aware Dakka catered for modern stuff. I just go to other forums with a much larger community for that genre and post what I have in my existing blog threads.

That's partially my point; the current system is such a mess people don't use it.

I'm a primarily historical player and I rarely look at the historical boards here, both for the reasons that other forums have better coverage and for the fact its all bundled into a single forum, so if I want something about WotR, for example, I have to scroll through loads of WW2 info to spot something.

Historicals is a lot smaller than the fantasy and SF sections, but it has been growing slowly for a few years. At the moment it also contains some technically F/SF titles like A Fistful of Kung Fu and Dragon Rampant.

The challenge of expanding any one forum into separate fora is that you tend to dilute the traffic to all of them.

From that viewpoint, I would argue for fewer sub-fora along these tlines: Ancient and Mediaeval (3,000 BC to 1520 AD), Gunpowder (1520 to about 1880), Colonial and Moderrn (1880 to the present day.

I think that seperating WW2 from other historical periods would a good idea (maybe make the 15mm WW2 into general WW2?).
Right now, pretty much half of the stuff in the historicals forum seems to be about WW2, which makes it annoying if you are looking for something on medieval or early modern stuff.
I don't know if there is enough seperate traffic for ancient/medieval and early modern periods to warrant subforums for both of those. Maybe it is better to keep those in the same place.

Note that the Battlefront forum covers more than World War 2. It covers Battlefront's games for World War I, Vietnam, Arab-Israeli Wars and World War 3 as well.

It's a tough question isn't it. On the one hand, you have to cater to the majority which is still 40k by a long shot by the looks of things (go to the gallery and see how many pages you have to look through to find something that isn't a space marine!) and the legacy of Dakka's origins.

On the other hand there is such a thing as 'self-fulfilling prophecy' and it can be hard for a game community to gain traction without a proper meeting place.

There is also the argument that while there are more mainstream cinemas than art-house ones, more fast food than Caribbean or Greek restaurants, people still require the latter upon occasion. Dakka has done well I feel by catering to most tastes, and I think possibly benefitted from the trend (and this is where Warseer has fallen short) of an expanding industry where people tend to dip in and out of different games, and definitely a lot of sci-fi and fantasy gamers are trying different things when it would have been solely GW 10 (or even 5) years ago.

Do think AoS has too much though - yes the sections seem to have traffic, but I'm not sure how much of that is genuine posts and interest in the game vs. WHFB players crying into their hands. In that sense, a smaller topic range (or even a 'fantasy battles' section) might make more sense perhaps?

 Kilkrazy wrote:
Historicals is a lot smaller than the fantasy and SF sections, but it has been growing slowly for a few years. At the moment it also contains some technically F/SF titles like A Fistful of Kung Fu and Dragon Rampant.

The challenge of expanding any one forum into separate fora is that you tend to dilute the traffic to all of them.

From that viewpoint, I would argue for fewer sub-fora along these tlines: Ancient and Mediaeval (3,000 BC to 1520 AD), Gunpowder (1520 to about 1880), Colonial and Moderrn (1880 to the present day.

Dragon Rampant is an odd fit. While it is fantasy it has lot of crossover with Lion Rampant (you could use the exact same army in both games). Arguably Dragon Rampant also belongs in a conversation about the future of fantasy games on Dakka. Does 'Warhammer Fantasy' still justify six forums to itself (Or LoTR one to itself for that matter)? Should the present crop of 'new fantasy' games (KoW and DR) have a section?

I'd support any sensible change to the historical sections. I'm not sure what change yet.

Dragon Rampant and AFofKuFu are sort of a bit mixed with Historicals and Mic Games because they are part of the Osprey Wargames series that is mostly historicals and partly historically based fantasy/SF.

Yeah people started talking about DR in the LR threads and the conversation sort of stayed in historicals.

I do not think there is enough traffic to justify splitting the Historicals board and the "if you build it, they will come" argument is not well proven by past experience.

Even so, were this to happen, I think KK is on the right track.




Automatically Appended Next Post:

 George Spiggott wrote:
Does 'Warhammer Fantasy' still justify six forums to itself (Or LoTR one to itself for that matter)?

Discussion about what to do with Age of Sigmar is underway. It's hard to say about LotR right now because GW is obviously getting ready to do something with it again but what exactly is a mystery.

As others have said, I rarely go into the Historical section, despite owning many Historical models. It's just a bit too broad.

 Kilkrazy wrote:
Historicals is a lot smaller than the fantasy and SF sections, but it has been growing slowly for a few years. At the moment it also contains some technically F/SF titles like A Fistful of Kung Fu and Dragon Rampant.
The challenge of expanding any one forum into separate fora is that you tend to dilute the traffic to all of them.
From that viewpoint, I would argue for fewer sub-fora along these tlines: Ancient and Mediaeval (3,000 BC to 1520 AD), Gunpowder (1520 to about 1880), Colonial and Moderrn (1880 to the present day.

I would agree with this, with the Caveat that WW2 should have its own section.

Agreed with that - I'm probably in the minority, but I'm interested in pretty much every historical conflict before WW2, but I find WW2 and anything after it a bit too modern for my tastes.

Since WW2 seems to be the most popular period by far, I gave up checking the Historicals section as all the new posts seemed to be about WW2 variants and so on. Even separating WW2 out on it's own would make a huge difference.

 Da Boss wrote:
Since WW2 seems to be the most popular period by far, I gave up checking the Historicals section as all the new posts seemed to be about WW2 variants and so on.

You get out what you put in. If you want to see more threads on a given topic, starting more threads on that topic is an option.


If people don't step up and show that the audience is there for it, there's no reason for the site's administrators to think that there is such an audience.

Sure, and when I'm ready to have a go with my various projects I will post in there a bit more.

I still think my point stands, though. Anyhow. I'm not too bothered, I was just sharing my perception. I think Dakka is well run and organised.

I am not sure whether Dakka can/should compete with sites like TMP when it comes to discussion of historicals because we aren't going to break it down far enough where everyone will be happy (not that TMP posters are uniformly happy about their breakdown, either). Historicals here tends to be WW2, especially FoW and BA -- I suspect this is because of how those games have been sold in addition to their subject matter. No other conflict or even period generates nearly as much discussion here. Splitting out WW2 would likely result in one slow forum and another dead one.

Heh. Maybe you're right.

I'm probably one of the only weirdos that doesn't much like WW2. My fiancée finds it a bit distasteful too, given her dad lived through it and so on.

I must admit, I was not much of a fan of Historical games.
Flames of War I looked at but it did not interest.

I REALLY like "Bolt Action" and keep trying to figure out if I can make a "translation" document to use their rules for 40k (I know the rules guys were former GW employees).
I would be a very happy guy.
BUT the game is good enough, my historical gaming friends are getting sucked into it and I am willing to play as well: win-win for us all.
http://us-store.warlordgames.com/collections/bolt-action

So, staying on topic: I think the easiest means of organization is by the ruleset.
As I outlined earlier, a good ruleset can be applied to a variety of period warfare.

The problem is the sheer number of rule sets out there. Well, I say problem, but it's actually great. It just makes organising fora by anything other than period very different.

I guess you could have "Historical Mass Battle" and "Historical Skirmish"?

 Da Boss wrote:
The problem is the sheer number of rule sets out there. Well, I say problem, but it's actually great. It just makes organising fora by anything other than period very different. I guess you could have "Historical Mass Battle" and "Historical Skirmish"?

Thinking a bit harder, my issue would be for grouping by period, it would just devolve into historical discussions: it would be the only common ground.
In the more popular games like 40k or X-wing most of the discussions would be of rule interpretations or guidance on how to conduct a game.
I am new to "Bolt Action" so for help I would be looking for that, not "WW2 era combat gaming" unless that was the root directory to drill down.

The best compromise I could think of would be to divide the boards into three broad categories: Sword, Musket and Tank. Those should be fairly self-explanatory. 'Tank' would of course be the busiest with both Bolt Action and Flames of War.

The idea of dividing the existing board into a "Pre-WW2" subforum and a "WW2 & After" subforum has some support from the staff. Flames of War -- presumably not including their Great War line -- would be included in the latter subforum (as opposed to having a separate board, as it does now). What do you guys think? FYI - I doubt there any further subdivision will be entertained.

Is there much WW1 talk? If not, I would consider keeping all of the Battlefront games in one forum.

 Manchu wrote:
The idea of dividing the existing board into a "Pre-WW2" subforum and a "WW2 & After" subforum has some support from the staff. Flames of War -- presumably not including their Great War line -- would be included in the latter subforum (as opposed to having a separate board, as it does now). What do you guys think? FYI - I doubt there any further subdivision will be entertained.

WWI is relatively similar to WWII, so maybe it could be a WWI, WWII & after board instead? That would also keep the Battlefront games in one forum.
I would support this division. Would make it easier to find topics about historicals games other than WWII when you are looking for one.

Besides it being a turning point in the modernization of warfare, aesthetically a WWII soldier has more in common with a WWI era one than a ACW does.

Another forum I visit splits it as Iron_Captain says. Though in saying that they then split off time periods into their own sub-boards as well. I doubt that Dakka has the traffic to warrant that amount of segregation however and as I've already said, other forums with less of a 40K focus do it better.

Well it happened. I get what you're driving at with the change but the titles for the boards are horribly clunky.

Everybody's a critic.

I'll be sure to pipe up if I think of something better.