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I'm hoping to start a forumotion forum in the near future with a TT wargame ruleset. The basic idea is every stat and rule for every model (As well as the overall main rules) will be able to be voted on by the forum members, and after 2-3 months of voting, the final tally determines whether the stat or rule is improved, stays the same, or is nerfed/removed. Changes will be gradual ("+ 1 WS, -1 WS, or keep it the same for the Assault Marine" kind of changes, to give a similar example from 40K, not a "WS10 or WS1?" change).

Rough forum organization will be:

Rules Sub-Thread
--Sticky of newest version of rules and faction lists, possibly with archive of old editions
--Assorted Faction sub-threads, and a FAQ/New user sticky
----Separate stickyed thread for each unit or chunk of rules (Melee, movement, shooting). If I can't fit multiple polls into a single thread, each unit/rule chunk will again be a sub-thread and have separate stickyed threads with the polls for each stat/rule.

Discussion Sub-Thread
--General game discussion sticky
--Sticky poll of what faction or factions you play. Reasons why in spoiler to avoid page cluttering:
--Assorted Faction sub-threads, and a FAQ/New user sticky
---Faction or unit-specific threads and discussions. This would be where people could post new rules they'd like or old ones they want changed (If there's enough interest, these will become poll options during the next rule voting iteration)

General Discussion sub-thread
--General/random/off-topic discussion threads, and FAQ/New user sticky

Guidelines for the forum would be for user to try and vote objectively, not "He beat me and now I'm mad at Faction X!" votes. Mathematics to prove a point is encouraged, to avoid subjective "This feels too good/bad for this model" arguments. I hope to get a decent playerbase eventually, and the overall goal of this is to help quickly and efficiently balance new rules and units through direct player testing, rather than game developer's interpretations of perceived issues.

I don't have a solid game system pinned down (I have a few ideas, but none I want to use for-sure yet), but I'm open for suggestions as to theme, setting, etc, in addition to feedback on the idea for a forum-based ruleset.

So what do you think?

Sorry, but giving mob rule to the rules strikes me as a very dangerous path to be treading. You have to consider your audience and the medium in which you are going to be doing these rules changes:

1. This may seem obvious, but the only people contributing to your rules feedback will be those posting on their forums. This makes a lot of assumptions about your players; that they are invested enough to want to post on forums about it (which, let's be honest is a FRACTION of a playerbase), that they are vested enough in the game to consider game-wide balancing issues and so on. The casual gamers are going to be not as invested and they are not going to participate, meaning that those who are posting and voting are those with a more hardcore bent, and your rules are going to skew that way. If that is what you want, wonderful, but you are going to be alienating customers.

2. You are going to be catering to a small group of players, basically. It may seem awesome and democratic, but it is merely going it the loudest people and going with their opinion. Forums take on personality and character, just look at Dakka Dakka. It is very easy to swim in these waters, so to speak, and think that this is the way of things, but in reality, our forum is just a very small perspective of a larger whole in gaming.

3. No matter how much you try to push for it, you are not going to get objective votes. Just ain't gonna happen. Yeah, there is stuff that is more obvious ala "he beat me with X, nerf X" kind of things, but let's do a little thought experiment. You make Faction ABC, and your game is nation/region wide. What if, in the meta of one part of the nation, ABC is in the hands of amazingly skilled players and they win constantly, but in another region, ABC is very weak int he local meta. Which one of those is right when you get down to a matter of buffing or nerfing? Also keep in mind how defensive gamers can get. You have to understand yourself.

4. I get what you are trying to do, and I get the idea. It sounds like a utopia where the community does the testing and balancing. But in the end, I simply wouldn't trust a forum community to do my balancing in place of quality playtesting.

@curran: Thanks for the feedback!

1) I know the small playerbase that will be voting is an issue, but at the same time casual gamers might not be as dedicated to making sure the rules are "fair." While the editing might be fairly cutthroat with dedicated players, I actually think this would result in a competitively balanced ruleset far faster than developer "Word of God" editing. However, the risk of "OMG, nerf this into the ground!" is present, which is why the voting will only make small, incremental changes to a unit. I'd reserve the right as admin to step in and nullify a vote or lessen it's impact if it seems like one model or faction is repeatedly getting decimated without justification, but I'd hope not to have to do that too often.

2) I know it's a small perspective, but imo it's actually fairly reflective of overall demographics we're interested in (At least dakkadakka is). Looking at the last "What army do you play poll," the distribution seemed far better between the armies than what I suspect you'd see over at tautactica, hivemind, or other sites that cater heavily to specific armies or factions. However, the compensation for low-playerbase voting power is in there specifically to try and prevent and uneven distributions from drowning out the minority player votes.

3) I know, but again this goes back to the distribution. If in your example the skilled meta area has the same number of players as the unskilled meta, then the faction shouldn't change drastically. Even if one meta has significantly more people, the voting parity will help tone down the degree to which they can overwhelm the other voting base. In your example, if the faction the metas are using is objectively underpowered, while some metas may be able to use them without much difficulty, if an army is underpowered then it will likely not have as many metas who are opposed to it because they don't have issues in beating it (As opposed to the players in the region of the skilled meta). You have the issue of more powerful armies tending to be more popular, but again the parity is meant to alleviate that, and judging by dakkadakka's army distribution, the difference won't likely be severe enough prevent the less-popular factions from affecting the results.

4) I understand your concern, but I've seen some of the best (and worst) advice and strategy on forums. Plus, with a cultivation of arguments dependent on mathematical power (ie "This unit is too powerful because a 25% chance to cause a wound for 50 points is far better than unit X, which has a 10% chance for the same 50 pts") as opposed to raw emotional kneejerking ("I get beaten by this army all the time. They must be overpowered"), I think the forum will do a decent, if not perfect, job of testing it. Plus the personal investment in helping to create a ruleset (Along with, possibly, your username in the author/playtester credits at the front to impress your friends with) I think will encourage more thought-out discussions as to why something should be improved or nerfed, rather than straight shouting matches.

Edit: A key to all of this is a strong set of mods, preferably one in favor of each of the factions in the appropriate ratio (So 3 factions = 36/9/12 mods). This way the discussions, especially in the Rules sections for ability increases/decreases, can be kept better on-track and away from non-quantified arguments for/against the change. I'm hoping to get some decent mods from here, after I've got the rough rules banged and the forum all arranged. Initial changes will probably be a bit more severe and fast, especially since we'll have a smaller testing base and a more-unbalanced ruleset. Faster refining will allow us to get a better initial game (Especially the core rules), after which point (Probably after 3-6 months or so, 2-3 rule iterations) the refining will slow down to smaller tweaks.

I think you are better off doing a complete set of rules yourself. Playtesting them thoroughly and then releasing them. Getting feedback from other people playing and then updating on a forum. I wouldn't ever suggest opening up your game design to the masses.

Frankly it is a daft idea.

You would be better off just making the rules fun to play, intuitive, and as clear as possible.

I can see why you think the proposed system has merit but all you would achieve is getting lots of feedback from obsessives who think they know more than you do and a dull game.

@Brettz: That's the plan for the initial game, before opening up the forum for editing. The feedback will also determine what unit stats will get voted on (Changed my mind and decided this is better than every stat being open to voting every time). Plus, if something still seems to be going downhill design wise (Repeated nerfs for no reason by a vocal majority), I'll still reserve the right to veto a vote.

@marielle: The problem is that trying to say that a single person can best know the playstyles and nuances of every army is daft as well. I pride myself as being very well knowledgeable about the Tau and Nids in 40K, for example, but in no way do I know the best methods for using every army out there, and I doubt there are many, if any, who can.

Asking a single person to control all the design and balancing aspects for numerous different factions is inviting disaster imo, as at best you'll get bland flavorless units as everything is set to a simple baseline and not altered too far beyond this so balancing can be accurate and feasible, or you get "Eh that seems about right" balancing that results in wildly unbalanced or useable units or even armies (I'm sure the designer for 8th WHFB didn't look too closely at the impact Skirmishers new rules would have on the majority of the WE army book).

Frankly, I'd rather deal with some hardheads who actually know what the army plays like and how best it should operate rather than me blundering in and changing things willy-nilly in an attempt to fix it. there will be some regular voters who do that as well, but as curran said, most of the people who want to register and vote on the forum will likely be fairly dedicated to the idea and in theory far less likely to kneejerk change things that they are not as familiar with.

Outside of a small closely knit gaming group I couldn't see this ever working.

Democratically deciding game balance will not lead to a more balanced game.

@walledin: I'm curious, why do you believe it won't?

With proper parity to ensure that minority faction player votes don't become insignificant (But also don't become overpowering), I'm personally confident that the game will gradually evolve into a more balanced state through democratic voting. It won't be perfectly balanced (No game more complicated than checkers is), but at least the imbalance is extremely mild and fluctuates close to the line of balance through this system.

Essentially, your entire idea and every response you've made so far can be summed up with, 'immensely easier said that done.'

I know it'll be difficult as hell to do, especially to do properly. But I believe that it's worth doing if for no other reason than to show what I believe is possible: that you can ave a community-made game that not only is fun and free but also balanced to play.

This:

brettz123 wrote:I think you are better off doing a complete set of rules yourself. Playtesting them thoroughly and then releasing them. Getting feedback from other people playing and then updating on a forum. I wouldn't ever suggest opening up your game design to the masses.

A few places I think your idea breaks down.

-Games are made by game "designers" who bring forth a coherent set of rules and concepts for a game. The came can then be modfied based on playtester and player consent, but you need to do the groundwork yourself.

-I think your fooling yourself if you think that you are going to get a large enough group of players to vote on the stats for every single unit.

-Emphasizing the primacy of "math" is not going to make an engaging ruleset. "Feel" is extremely important in gamewriting and elevating "math" over it is not always a wise decision.

Sum up, every couple of weeks, someone comes out and says "I have a great idea for a game, help me write it and give me ideas". This is not how a game comes together. A game comes together when someone does the hard work of writing the entire game and then gathers some playtesters to get feedback.

Put another way. If you have to ask other people to do the work for you, then you're game idea probably isn't strong enough to compete with the other games that are out there.

There are good models for games that use customer input however. One is Ganesha games. Check out their Yahoo group.
A few years back, the author, Andrea, wrote an excellent game called "Song of Blades and Heroes". It was a cheap 5 buck PDF, and it caught on. Then he added a couple of expansions to it. All along the way (after publishing), Andrea was on his forum and yahoo group listening to feedback from players and incorporating it into updates to the game (which buyers could get for free) and expansions, but he was the one who did the hard work of writing and it wasn't a voting. After a couple of expansions, people came to him and asked him if they could write expansions or use his rulesets in other settings, and there are now quite a few that he publishes that use his rules with settings and genres from other people.

@Elif: Thanks for the feedback!

1) I am doing the groundwork. It won't be a "Let's make something from scratch, together!" but rather a given system that the community will basically be in charge of balancing/

2) I know, but it's a fools hope. I'm now thinking instead there'd be a discussion thread for people to voice issues with models and their stats, and only those issues would have their own polls.

3) Feel is important, but ignoring mathematics and/or playtesting in game balancing will result in, imo, a gakky product every time. I'm not saying that "If you don't have math in your post, it is irrelevant" but rather that quantified rather than qualified arguments are encouraged: "Unit X beats Unit Y in a fair fight 9 out of 10 times, despite them operating in similar fashions and costing the same points" as opposed to "Unit X beat Unit Y last game, so it's way more powerful."

The big thing is I want to try this in this fashion in order to avoid overbalancing certain units due to limited play experience. I have no local playing group that I could test these rules with, so imo trying to personally determine how to balance it despite limited playtesting is an atrocious idea to me.

Direct democracy is tantamount to anarchy. Everyone will want to have input, but very few will want to do work. Those that do work will never do it well enough for those who just have input to accept. You will wind up with a myriad of splinter groups attempting to put out a better version as a direct result.

If you hop over to Bolter and Chainsword and look through their Codex:Iron Hands thread in the homegrown section...you will see what happens when you let a forum try to help build/balance a full set of rules. Its been years and they are nowhere near done...and they often take multiple steps back for every step forward they make.

You are much more better off having a core group of designers who format the game etc. Then you use the forum to run play testing, using the data from that to balance the game. Run it like an experiment, using blinds and control groups.

The problem is you need a well defined development brief before you do anything.

Before you start writing rules, what is the end game play suposed to be?

What is the scale and scope of the game?

What is level of game complexity?

What is the acceptable level of complication in the rules ?

Then when you know exactly what you want to achive, you can start working on basic game mechanics.
After this you can finalise resolution methods.

If you have all this done.Its time to bring in the factions involved.
(Theme first then flesh out the units form and function.)

Have you got a definate outline of the intended gameplay?

Perhaps you could post this up, and then people intetrested could let you know if they want to contribute.

This:

Eilif wrote:
-I think your fooling yourself if you think that you are going to get a large enough group of players to vote on the stats for every single unit.

Do you really think anyone would pick up a "concept" ruleset and play enough games to get reasonable feedback? If you wrote a complete ruleset and put it out there, you might get some feedback, but (perhaps I'm too cynical) I can't imagine you getting enough rigorous, systematic playtesting to help you in any meaningful way.

But good luck! If in a few years, I see your game on the shelf at my FLGS, I'll be happy to eat my hat, so to speak.

@Cavalier: That is a good point. In light of this and previous points, I'm revising the "Everything is editable" to "I'll get feedback for what needs to possibly be changed, poll the testers about how best to fix it, and then fix it." I'll have to have outside testers for this due to my aforementioned lack of willing gamer sin my area.

@Lanrak: Not yet. I'm planning on developing a game based loosely on this ruleset (Not the setting) I helped work on (https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Kr63LS3J3ybTMh66I3rBoKcnDpDT_DnAkUlNQgohKsk/edit), but nothing concrete yet. I mainly was wondering what dakkadakka thought of the overall idea of a peer-reviewed and partially peer-edited set of wargame rules.

@pancake: Exactly why I think my original idea (The godawful Infinite flamemachine thing) failed, because I (lazily) asked a bunch of other people to help me flesh out the factions. Never happened, people who were excited about the initial concept were soured at the lack of playable units and rough rules, and it never took off. Rather than try and reintroduce a concept that (imo) now seems to have a bad rep, I figured it'd be better to basically start from scratch.

This will end badly, the mob never produce good results.

Trondheim wrote:This will end badly, the mob never produce good results.

That may be, but relying on a designer to produce a tournament-balanced codex without listening to mob input is asking for disaster imo.

darkPrince010 wrote:

Trondheim wrote:This will end badly, the mob never produce good results.

That may be, but relying on a designer to produce a tournament-balanced codex without listening to mob input is asking for disaster imo.

Give said crowd a set standard to follow and everyone will have a uch better time is my personal experience. If they dont like it then they should keep away, if not well you manage to eliminate those that can cause havok.

Trondheim wrote:

darkPrince010 wrote:

Trondheim wrote:This will end badly, the mob never produce good results.

That may be, but relying on a designer to produce a tournament-balanced codex without listening to mob input is asking for disaster imo.

Give said crowd a set standard to follow and everyone will have a uch better time is my personal experience. If they dont like it then they should keep away, if not well you manage to eliminate those that can cause havok.

Exactly. I'm going to try and get a really distinct feel and direction for the game, instead of some kind of vague amorphous product, so as to help with making sure that there are less completely stupid ideas. There will always be completely stupid ideas, but I'm trying to minimize them.

darkPrince010 wrote:@marielle: The problem is that trying to say that a single person can best know the playstyles and nuances of every army is daft as well. I pride myself as being very well knowledgeable about the Tau and Nids in 40K, for example, but in no way do I know the best methods for using every army out there, and I doubt there are many, if any, who can.

Asking a single person to control all the design and balancing aspects for numerous different factions is inviting disaster imo, as at best you'll get bland flavorless units as everything is set to a simple baseline and not altered too far beyond this so balancing can be accurate and feasible, or you get "Eh that seems about right" balancing that results in wildly unbalanced or useable units or even armies (I'm sure the designer for 8th WHFB didn't look too closely at the impact Skirmishers new rules would have on the majority of the WE army book).

You are rather missing the point.

A good set of rules does not impose a playstyle, rather it offers opportunities and possibilities for the players to explore for themselves. A poor set of rules has 'balance' imposed.

As for the WE example you cite the skirmish rules are less of an issue that the wider game moved towards fire to combat regen which impacted badly with the flammable rule. This was true in 7th ed and remained unchanged in 8th.

@marielle: Your point about playsyles is exactly what I'm talking about. I, as a single individual with a single point of view, don't want to "impose" my views on balance on others. I want the players to explore the possibilities and opportunities of the game and help them tweak it to be a final product that they are satisfied with. Imposing balance by myself and in the absence of adequate playtesting is lunacy.

As for WE, while I have heard that the fire to regen is an issue especially with their prevalence of Flammable, I've heard time and time again that the near army-wide Skirmisher rules were what severely hampered their effectiveness, and led to the prevalence of the Flammable units that in turn became vulnerable to more Fire in armies.

This has already been done, just look at the numerous books from Spartan games which have all been re-writen many times due to people complaining on the forums.