(07-19-2014, 10:58 PM)Ry Vor Wrote: Watching SKC vs. LAG on ESPN I saw this (1-0 ATM, BTW).
IMHO, GN should be QED as Gnome. Gnashing my teeth I got gnarly when a gnat kept interfering with forming a gnostic view as to what else GN could be other than gnome.
Unless someone sent MD a PBM article for S&D with mostly acronyms, IHNI what precipitated that blast.
I believe that it was precipitated by me browsing through the forum, to look for quotes by actual Alamaze players, to share with Suspense & Decision magazine readers, to try and promote the game, itself, with potential players.
It was a player new to Alamaze, in fact, that had complained previously about the use of lingo. Acronyms are part of the lingo problem facing new players to a variety of games.
In Issue # 8, the Kingdom of the Quote column premiered. For Issue # 9, I thought that it would be a good idea to do a Kingdom of the Quote column containing nothing but quotes from Alamaze players about Alamaze. That way, even if no one bothers to author an Alamaze article for the next issue, there will be an Alamaze presence in Issue # 9.
Plus, I think that it will help the next issue to be more interesting and more entertaining. It's possible, I suppose, that it may even prove helpful in growing the Alamaze player base by a player or three.
One thing that is particularly bad about Alamaze acronyms/abbreviations is that they tend to be only two letters. Hyborian War, by comparison, tends to utilize four letter abbreviations for kingdom names.
In Issue # 7, I had said,
"Going forward, we will begin to make Noobs (that's right, the uninitiated) a focus of our core efforts. Dedicated columns, dedicated sections of material, all aimed at the newbie to PBM gaming, rather than the veteran PBM player."
So, as part of the magazine's efforts to improve its focus on material with the newbie to the hobby in mind, I am trying to be more aware of the lingo problem, where the crafting of articles and columns are concerned.
My experience here, earlier today, was that there were many quotes that I skipped over, due to the abbreviations that were common throughout many threads.
During that browsing session, I even came across one quote, in particular, which mentioned abbreviations:
(05-29-2014, 11:39 PM)Ry Vor Wrote: Nice write-up, DuPont. With some of the abbreviations left out, it could be published elsewhere.
SOURCE:
http://kingdomsofarcania.net/forum/showt...0#pid20390
I don't play Alamaze, but I do want Alamaze to succeed, just as I want other games to succeed, regardless of whether I, personally, play in them or not.
As part of my ongoing effort to see the hobby grow and succeed, I look for ways to help make that a reality. Sometimes, I draft or revise ads for games. Other times, I write articles. Sometimes, I look for new columns to achieve that objective, or for variations on existing columns.
Alamaze is one of the busier turn-based games of what I consider to be a Pplay-By-Mail or ancestral descendant variety. The forum, here, is one of the busier ones, as I explained in Issue # 3, wherein I said,
"Although pure postal gaming is no longer utilized to deliver the Alamaze gaming experience to the gaming community, this ancestral descendant of its PBM predecessor enjoys a thriving, vibrant community of players."
It is easier highlight quotes from a thriving, vibrant community of players, than from a forum that is dead or barely used.
Even if players of any given game don't bother to write articles, other gamers out there are still interested in knowing what players of such games, of which Alamaze is but a single one out of many, think about games of this nature. I think that highlighting quotes is a good way of giving potential new players insight and glimpses into the game.
Buddy/Ignore List
