Game Session Forums

[drathe]

Here's an idea I've been thinking over and would like some feedback on. In the last two months Ye Olde Inn has seen over 2100 visits from 38 countries. Huge numbers from the United States, United Kingdom, Netherlands and Canada. Pretty good numbers from throughout Europe and Australia. Now, people come from all over these areas, and I know for a lot of people, getting games together can be difficult.

What I'm wondering is, would it be a good idea to set up a Forum for scheduling Game Sessions?

The purpose would be for people who want to get together and play some HeroQuest to come to the forums, look up an area where they live or close to where they live, and come in contact with others in that area who would like to get together and play some quests too. It's a good play to get to know someone first, have some conversation, and set up some sessions.

Setting up the forums would be simple. I would create forums for each Country with major hits to the Inn, sub-forums for States, Provinces, Regions and Counties even, should the need arise. People could find their area, introduce themselves, and get to know people who they may never have guessed live nearby.

The forums may not have that many active members at the moment, but perhaps if people were able to connect with others nearby with similar interests, our community might grow and we could all start playing more of our favourite game.

Thoughts? Suggestions?

[Phoenix]

It seems to be a major undertaking, but also a cool idea. My only suggestions would be to make it for registered users, to let everyone know that some creep isn't wanting to meet up. However, this is how Zep and I met, through a forum. Now we get together every couple months or so and play HeroQuest. Otherwise, sounds like a great idea! Can't wait to see if others enjoy the idea, also.

[drathe]

Yeah, it'll be for registered members only like the bulk of the forum. I don't think it'll be too difficult. It'll take some time setting up each sub forum, but for starters I'll only do the major countries, States of the USA and Provinces of Canada. From there, more can be added should needs arise. I'll have a catch all sub forum too. If certain topics within show need for a separate sub forum, one could be made and the topics moved.

I hope to get more feedback from others, too. I think it's a really good idea. After checking the stat maps of site visitors, I was surprised how many hits came from places near me, and clustered together in other areas, other countries etc. I may just give it a shot anyway. If it flops, the forums can be removed, or remain for the few who make use of them. More feedback on the idea would steer me further toward making it happen though. Definitely bump it further up my always long list of 'to dos'.

[Phoenix]

I would start with generic countries and plop them in an appropriate sub-forum as required. No need to make 50 subforums for the US only to have 6 or 7 be used. The same could be said for other countries. I'd stick with the primaries: USA, Canada, UK, Australia, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, etc. Once people start to respond and/or utilize them, then they can go in a more specific subcategory. Technically more work, but I think, not so much.

[Milk]

This could be an interesting idea indeed, though it appears to be very reliant on registered members, but in all hopes, like you said, perhaps this will bring more players to the forum.

[drathe]

You never know. Might draw more people into the forum for HeroQuest discussions. Ye Olde Inn's traffic has jumped huge in these first two weeks of this year. We've had 1TB of bandwidth so far. All of last year was a total of approx 350GB. There have been a few big miniature gaming websites link to us in the last two months so regular traffic has grown quite a bit. Hopefully some of these people will stop in, say hello and share some ideas.

I'm going to go ahead and start this. It won't be a huge task and as of today, I'm out of work for...? I don't know how long. So I've got some time. Maybe I'll even get some other projects finished too!

I'm going to create a sub forum for each country with a significant amount of visitors. From there, we'll break it down when the need arises. I should probably get some of these language packs I've been sitting on installed too. Might make it more comfortable for our European friends to converse with each other in languages they're more fluent in. I make no promises on time though.