Revamping Together Retro for 2018

[chuckster]

If we want to attempt participatory gaming, I think going with varied themes would indeed be the way to go. Look at how Dwelling of Duels does their composition challenges. Sometimes it's Konami Month, or Shooter Month, or Scary Month, or Sonic Month. Nice and easy. The hardest part is thinking of themes.

One way to enhance this might also to include some suggestions (along with a brief "why play") from notable forum members for games that would fit the theme of the month. That gets people thinking about the coming month, and might also help some folks choose what to play.

I love the idea of a "Editors' Picks" (for lack of a better term) bit for each theme, especially if they are more broad or obscure. Maybe 2-3 suggestions from long-time members or mods that highlight what the chosen theme means to them, why they picked a certain game, and encouraging other members to join in. Not exactly the same thing, but this sort of system seems to work really well in bookshops and libraries, at least for me.

[noiseredux]

I think it sounds like a lot of us are excited about the themed months thing. But how do we proceed? Like, who's going to pick themes? And when? We've got less than a month until 2018, so I guess we (Racket?) should figure out how structured this will be.

[racketboy]

I think it sounds like a lot of us are excited about the themed months thing. But how do we proceed? Like, who's going to pick themes? And when? We've got less than a month until 2018, so I guess we (Racket?) should figure out how structured this will be.

I'm ok with delegating the choosing, but wouldn't mind chiming in on a vote.
So are we just going to do forum posts instead of blog posts as well? I feel like the blog post is an burden/overhead that isn't worth the effort right now -- especially if there's not a strong focus like a particular game.

What other specific questions do we need to answer?

I like Dave idea in theory for content creation, but I don't know if its the right fix for this problem.

[alienjesus]

I think community participation on choosing themes is a good idea and could encourage discussion, but I think the old free-for-all format we used to have is messy and cumbersome, and with the breadth of possibilities could be far too hard to narrow down.

How about something like Racketboy assigns 1 person to each month of the year, then that person suggests a couple of themes and posts a poll which the forums can vote on to choose?

So something like:

1. Racketboy chooses Fastbilly for January, Ack for February, Noiseredux for March etc.

2. Ack comes up with the ideas '5th gen survival horrors' 'SNES fighting games' and 'PC RPGs' and posts a poll in the together retro board.

3. Community votes for 'SNES fighting games' as their favourite and that becomes the pick for January.

[noiseredux]

Dave's thing is nice for content, yes. But like others I don't see it as really being a TOGETHER Retro.

Racket, I guess you just need to decide how we'll run it.

1. Do you want to (now) pick 12 folks to be in charge of each month? Do you want to pick someone for January and have them pick the person for Feb and so on? Should we just have 3-5 Themes be nominated for each month and give the community a week or two to vote? I guess just we need to have some kind of order understood.

In my opinion, whoever picks that month's Theme should make it their mission to motivate others to get involved. Like by offering up suggestions on games or just really trying to keep conversation active.

2. Should the Theme be announced on the first of that month? Or one month or two weeks prior? Or should all 12 be announced before January 1st?

FWIW, I don't think that we need the blog posts right now. Might as well feel this experiment out first anyway.

[PartridgeSenpai]

FWIW, I don't think that we need the blog posts right now. Might as well feel this experiment out first anyway.

I second this notion!

I, uh, also never knew there were blog posts about these

[Exhuminator]

I am all for TR being themed monthly forum posts, with some leeway as to which game a person can pick and play. This can work with retro series too, because at least the participant can pick whichever game they want from the series.

If you guys let me do a King's Field month, I will make a badass thread starter.

[alienjesus]

I am all for TR being themed monthly forum posts, with some leeway as to which game a person can pick and play. This can work with retro series too, because at least the participant can pick whichever game they want from the series.

If you guys let me do a King's Field month, I will make a badass thread starter.

I feel like a King's Field month might be a little too close to the old-school 'game of the month' format - we covered whole series in that sometimes. I wonder if there is a broader theme that could include King's Field.

[BoneSnapDeez]

First-person dungeon crawlers.

[racketboy]

Dave's thing is nice for content, yes. But like others I don't see it as really being a TOGETHER Retro.

Racket, I guess you just need to decide how we'll run it.

1. Do you want to (now) pick 12 folks to be in charge of each month? Do you want to pick someone for January and have them pick the person for Feb and so on? Should we just have 3-5 Themes be nominated for each month and give the community a week or two to vote? I guess just we need to have some kind of order understood.

In my opinion, whoever picks that month's Theme should make it their mission to motivate others to get involved. Like by offering up suggestions on games or just really trying to keep conversation active.

2. Should the Theme be announced on the first of that month? Or one month or two weeks prior? Or should all 12 be announced before January 1st?

FWIW, I don't think that we need the blog posts right now. Might as well feel this experiment out first anyway.

1) I think we should have volunteers -- I don't feel comfortable just signing people up...
2) This first month might be tricky, but I think we should give a heads-up on later ones? Maybe we can announce the next month's when we kick of the new month?