Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Board and table games/Archive 1

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This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.

Structure

"A brief synopsis of the rules. If the rule synopsis is too long for the main article, the article's rules should be placed in its own article: for example, the the rules of the fictional game Meeples of Catan should be at Rules of Meeples of Catan."

Compare with Wikipedia is not for instruction manuals. I'd say the guideline should be:

"A brief sysnopsis of the rules. Lengthy rule sections are to be avoided, but a link to a full explanation of the game's rules is encouraged in either the External links section or as a reference for the synopsis."

Percy Snoodle 09:35, 8 August 2006 (UTC)

This is where we have to draw a line somewhere. Abstract strategy games by their nature will lend itself to a very detailed synopsis in a short paragraph. However, those games that recreate detail (say, Axis and Allies or better) will still potentially draw separate articles that are themselves "brief" synopses. Similarly, games that have similar concepts may need a common rule synopses just so that we don't repeat ourselves (Carcassonne). kelvSYC 23:44, 8 August 2006 (UTC)

It's my feeling that the "rules of..." articles come under WP:NOT. Articles on expansions and spinoffs can refer the reader back to the parent game's article, and have a brief synopsis of what's changed. Alternatively, it might be better to make an article about the game series, and merge each of the game articles into that. Percy Snoodle 10:13, 9 August 2006 (UTC)

Another problem is that a spinoff may be independently notable for a completely different reason from the original: Ghettopoly and Anti-Monopoly are examples. Some spinoffs and expansions also further drastically alter the game by adding a great amount of new features or by overhauling the game mechanic completely -- Axis and Allies: D-Day is drastically different from Axis and Allies, and even then the third edition of the latter is greatly different from the second. To effectively give a comprehensive article in such a case would effectively be to write two separate articles. kelvSYC 03:43, 10 August 2006 (UTC)

If a spinoff is independently notable, then it's fine for it to have its own article. I think in the case of spinoffs which aren't notable but which make huge changes, we don't need to wrry about being "comprehensive" where rules are concerned. Percy Snoodle 06:45, 10 August 2006 (UTC)

UPDATE 2006-09-11: I've updated the advice to take into account the deletion of the Settlers of Catan rules article. Percy Snoodle 12:40, 11 September 2006 (UTC)

"For commercially released games, a link to the official site of the game from its publisher(s) website."

Many game articles just link to the publisher. We should add a note not to do that. Perhaps:

"For commercially released games, a link to the official site of the game from its publisher(s) website. Please do not link to the publisher's homepage, but rather to a page specifically for the game or game series in question."

Percy Snoodle 09:35, 8 August 2006 (UTC)

There are two schools of thought to this matter: some games have specific devoted sites (The Settlers of Zarahemla has a separate site from the rest of Inspiration Games' lineup), while others have publisher sections. Whichever is most appropriate, I guess... kelvSYC 23:44, 8 August 2006 (UTC)

It's my feeling that unless the publisher only publishes one game, it's inappropriate to link to them from the game article. Percy Snoodle 09:57, 9 August 2006 (UTC)

Again, different publishers have different ways of marketing their product -- some publishers produce specialized sites for one game, while others go for a more centralized approach. Those that have specialized sites should link to those and only those, IMO. kelvSYC 03:43, 10 August 2006 (UTC)

Agreed. Percy Snoodle 06:45, 10 August 2006 (UTC)

I'm not so sure we need the current "if a game is notable for its rules" language. A brief overview of the rules of a game serve (to my thinking) as part of its vital statistics ... it's how you recognize one game as distinct from another, regardless of whether the rules are notable in their own right. I'd claim that such material is part of a clear identification of the game being described.

Actually, a good working definition of what such a "brief overview" would constitute might be that it is sufficient only to the purpose of clearly identifying the game from other similar games. Otherwise, you can't really tell Boggle from Scrabble. - Stellmach 13:47, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

For board games, a link to its BoardGameGeek entry.

This entry should be removed. There should never be a generic instruction to link to an external link. Board game geek, or anything, should only be linked to when the target of the link merits it. Some BGG pages have almost no useful content, while others are just great. I've changed that text to For board games, a link to its BoardGameGeek entry when it meets the criteria of WP:EL. 2005 22:36, 9 September 2006 (UTC)

Userbox

I created a userbox:

This user is a member of WikiProject Board and Table Games

~~I'm currently keeping it in my userpage, [[User:Some P. Erson/userboxes/WikiProject Board and Table Games|here]~~]. Some P. Erson 16:44, 9 August 2006 (UTC)

Nifty. Love the icon; less sure about the yellow background. Percy Snoodle 15:34, 10 August 2006 (UTC)

I changed the color; Is it better? Some P. Erson 20:47, 10 August 2006 (UTC)

Yeah, nice one. Tiny nitpick - I'd take out the word "the" before WikiProject. Is it time to move it to {{Userbox BTG}}? Percy Snoodle 09:15, 11 August 2006 (UTC)

Good point. Some P. Erson 17:57, 11 August 2006 (UTC)

I moved it to the template namespace, under Template:Userbox BTG. Some P. Erson 18:04, 11 August 2006 (UTC)

19:45, 11 August 2006 Cyde (Talk | contribs) deleted "Template:Userbox BTG" (Malformed userbox name)

It is true that the userbox does not follow the usual naming convention. ~~I have it at User:Ptkfgs/BTG~~. —ptk✰fgs 17:46, 12 August 2006 (UTC)

I've moved it to Wikipedia:WikiProject Board and table games/Userbox -hopefully now it's in our namespace it'll get left alone. Percy Snoodle 15:49, 15 August 2006 (UTC)

Would the following be an improvement? I think it stacks better with other user boxes (I've noticed several boxes being changed to have a "two tone background to fit general Userbox design"). I also wonder about the color (it's hard to read) and have suggested something more subdued (and a match for {{user bgg}}):

This user is a member of WikiProject Board and Table Games

AmbientArchitecture 14:45, 8 September 2006 (UTC)

Looks fine to me. Perhaps it might be good to soften the outer border to #666666, say? Percy Snoodle 15:08, 8 September 2006 (UTC)

Thanks; see changes to the template (feel free to revert). AmbientArchitecture 15:27, 8 September 2006 (UTC)

Different treatment for PD games?

One thing I'm concerned with is that, by nature of a PD game being PD, we could give a more detailed treatment compared to commercial games. An example of this is Alquerque, an abstract checkers-like game. Is this a good idea? kelvSYC 22:40, 10 August 2006 (UTC)

I'd say the WP:NOT guidelines apply equally to public-domain games; although the concern is partly one of copyvio, it's also one of quality of content. Percy Snoodle 09:16, 11 August 2006 (UTC)

I also think it's just a matter of brevity being good style. The point of an encyclopedic article on a game (I claim) should be to give a good general idea of how it works, and of its significance (social, artistic, commercial, whatever). Exhaustive specifications are rarely necessary to achieve this, regardless of whether the game is in the public domain or not. Stellmach 17:07, 12 August 2006 (UTC)

Guides to Public Domain games are certainly to be encouraged on WikiBooks, though. Stellmach 17:07, 12 August 2006 (UTC)

Wikibooks has a no game guide policy last time I checked (in March). They were all chucked out by executive edict from Jimbo. kelvSYC 20:13, 12 August 2006 (UTC)

Hmmm, yeah, I can see that. It'd be nice to be able to have WikiHoyle without opening the door to a jillion WikiHaloHints, though (not that I have anything against videogames; they just seem to particularly attract half-baked articles). 66.30.205.65 21:19, 12 August 2006 (UTC)

So, to follow up on this I actually went and looked at the current state of WikiBooks. They do actually have some video game strategy guides, though they're certainly more prominently indexing non-digital onces in the Arts section. To me this seems to make more sense with WikiBooks' mission of building textbooks, in that non-digital games are much more the sort of thing you can actually sometimes learn to play within a curriculum. In any case, they've got strategy books on Chess, Go, Poker, Diplomacy, Reversi and such already in progress. -Stellmach 22:16, 19 August 2006 (UTC)

Again, it was an executive edict, and any remaining game guides would be deleted soon. The rationale behind it was something along the lines of the fact that not a single game has been in part of any known standard high school or university curriculum (even if games like Diplomacy or Axis and Allies were used to explain historical concepts...). Wikibooks, however, is known to be full of bureaucratic nonsense, and hardly anything would get done there... kelvSYC 00:24, 20 August 2006 (UTC)

There are b:Chess, b:Go, and b:Backgammon wikibooks. See b:Category:Board games for more. —ptk✰fgs 01:52, 20 August 2006 (UTC)

Template:BTGProject

This doesn't seem to exist at the moment — I assume it's forthcoming? Or should I create it? —ptk✰fgs 06:12, 12 August 2006 (UTC)

Just finished it. kelvSYC 06:14, 12 August 2006 (UTC)

Alright. I've applied it to the talk pages of the tables-related articles I've been working on recently. A lot of them deal with historic games (i.e., games that haven't been played in hundreds of years), but they are relevant to the history of the category as a whole; I assume those fall under the scope of this project? —ptk✰fgs 06:19, 12 August 2006 (UTC)

Collectible Card Games

I just discovered that there's a Wikipedia:WikiProject Magic: The Gathering and added it to our list of similar projects, based on what seems like the general consensus of not asserting scope over prior WikiProjects.

There's also talk over on Talk:Collectible card game about organizing a WikiProject for that genre. I've pointed them to us until they figure out what to do. Hopefully I seemed friendly. Stellmach 18:20, 12 August 2006 (UTC)

Prioritization

So, it looks like at current count we've got 116 articles tagged as part of the project. Some, like Xiangqi and dice, are already excellent through no fault of our own, but a lot of them could probably use a lot of work. How to prioritize?

Offhand, I'd think of looking at a handful of the most significant traditional games, some mass-market games (some of which seem to have got surprisingly little editing attention) and some designer games (maybe recent Spiel des Jahres and Origins winners?). Maybe also about a game designer or genre? One or two articles in each category would probably be enough to start considering with just a few participants still.

Thoughts? -Stellmach 12:26, 13 August 2006 (UTC)

Lowenherz and Domaine

It seems that Lowenherz and Domaine should be two separate articles even though the latter is a revision of the former: it appears (judging from my copy of Domaine and the rules of Lowenherz on BGG) that a significant part of the mechanic has changed (gone are the decision mechanics and politics cards, for instance). As it is right now, it is a stub, and there should not be a problem separating the two.

Also, should Entdecker, Die Neuen Entdecker, and Oceania be separate by the same token? The second is a revision of the first and the third is a two-player version of the second. How about the Nova Axis and Allies, the MB Axis and Allies, and the Avalon Hill Axis and Allies?

kelvSYC 05:10, 14 August 2006 (UTC)

I'd keep them together - I'd far rather see one good article than two less good articles. Percy Snoodle 10:38, 14 August 2006 (UTC)

Part of this is that the rules are significantly different enough to warrant separate articles and possibly a comparison article:

In Lowenherz, the action cards are drawn one at a time, with each player choosing one of three actions on the card. A bidding war ensues if players choose the same action. Actions may allow the player to draw and play Politics cards.
In Domaine, each player keeps a hand of three action cards, which costs ducats to play and which could be sold for ducats. There are no Politics cards in Domaine.
In the Milton Bradley Axis and Allies, submarines may withdraw and retreat one space, and treat sea zones as friendly unless any enemy ship is present.
In the Avalon Hill Axis and Allies, submarines treat sea zones as friendly unless an enemy destroyer is present, and have a submerge ability.

Both of the above would fit comfortably in one paragraph - no need for a new article. Perhaps what's needed is a less vague guideline. I propose the following:

"The recommended length for the summary of the rules of a single game is the same as that for the lead section:

< 15,000 characters	medium size	> 30,000 characters
one or two paragraphs	two or three paragraphs	three or four paragraphs

If an article covers more than one game, multiple editions of a game or a series of games, then it is recommended to add at most one paragraph per additional game in order to summarise the differences in rules"

How does that sound to people?

New Project Page

I created a new project page that I'd like to see replace the existing one. I removed some of the sections that didn't have information in them and made a lot of other cosmetic and functionality changes. I wanted to give everyone a chance to look at it though since it's a major change. Ryanminier 15:02, 14 August 2006 (UTC)

Not that major -- but we don't need the picture of Hasbro's Game of Life though. Also, links to category pages should be like so: [[:Category:Board game stubs]] kelvSYC 23:12, 14 August 2006 (UTC)

Comparison articles

Right now I have a REALLY lengthy (but incomplete, perhaps slightly inaccurate) comparison article between different editions of Axis and Allies at User:kelvSYC/Comparison of Axis and Allies games. The comparison raises many issues:

Length -- as it is, it's 30K. And that's without a comparison of rules on AA guns, rocket attacks, and bombers (possibly fighters once I play D-Day again), as well as an expanded blurb on other game aspects (such as the different phases of play in Nova).
Separate articles on revisions -- the Nova Games' gameplay is radically different from the Revised Edition, enough so to possibly be put in a separate article (the current article as it is only covers MB and Revised).
Rules complexity -- the only reason the comparison is this long is that the rules are complex, and many games with similar gameplay are being compared.
Comprehensiveness -- this fails to cover first edition rules, tournament rules, unauthorized expansions, popular house rules, etc. I'm actually basing the MB version on the 2nd edition rules, having failed to find the 3rd edition rules from the computer game.

Gaming comparisons may also become this convoluted (for example, if we were to compare Carcassonne with its spinoffs, we may get a similarly convoluted article), so I need input on what to include and what to trim, which details are important for comparison purposes and which could be purged.

Your thoughts?

kelvSYC 05:21, 19 August 2006 (UTC)

My take would be to start by considering just what the lead paragraph of what an article would say, perhaps by imagining that you had a friend who (for example) was familiar with Carcassonne and was sitting down to play a game of Carcassonne: The City or something. You would naturally start by explaining the difference in quite broad, general terms. There's your lead paragraph. Then, your article body would be a discussion of those differences in more detail. Finally, you might well end up with small differences between the two games that were not significant enough to even be mentioned in your lead paragraph. These could be glossed over or simply bulleted out as "Other Differences," without the need of discussion. -Stellmach

One other thing to bear in mind is the guidelines on original research - an article like the above one can easily fall into the OR category. Percy Snoodle 15:48, 19 August 2006 (UTC)

Yes, good point. However, these sorts of comparisons are the sorts of things that are a frequent topic of discussion in what game literature there is, particularly in reviews of new products that are variations on older ones. In some cases, they would not be terribly difficult to do from secondary sources. - Stellmach 22:05, 19 August 2006 (UTC)

Would it be OR as I am using the rulebooks as sources (of which four, possibly five of the six are available online)? kelvSYC 17:33, 19 August 2006 (UTC)

It's not really possible to avoid synthesis or original commentary when working from primary sources such as the rulebooks. If there are no existing secondary sources (analyses and commentaries), then it may not be possible to write a proper Wikipedia article on the differences. You'd be limited to saying what the rules are and then letting the reader develop their awareness of the contrasts and similarities on their own, and for that we only need normal stand-alone articles (or sections in a larger article) on each version. — Saxifrage ✎ 20:57, 19 August 2006 (UTC)

Again, another issue is that I have to explain the mechanics of the rules, possibly in great detail, and possibly for one particular edition where it is found. Example: atomic bombs are only found in one edition. If we had a separate article on that one edition and expalained the atomic bomb mechanic there, I would not have to explain the atomic bomb mechanic in the comparison article, which allows me to cut some length out. kelvSYC 17:33, 19 August 2006 (UTC)

If you find yourself having to explain rules in great detail, you should question whether the article is suited to wikipedia, rather than wikibooks or a games-specific wiki. Percy Snoodle 17:43, 19 August 2006 (UTC)

WB has a no game guide policy (except in the case of the truly abstract classical game like Chess, or mathematical games such as Nim, in which case they qualify as instructional material). Furthermore, there are some fine-grained differences that drastically alter gameplay but require an in-depth explanation of the game mechanics (how else can you explain that tanks defend on a 2 in some games and 3 in others, when no one knows what "defending on 2" means?) kelvSYC 20:47, 13 September 2006 (UTC)

How about something like "Tanks are stronger/weaker in defense, which drastically alters the gameplay, making anti-tank units less useful and war elephants more useful"? There is usually a way to phrase things without recourse to in-depth rules explanations. Percy Snoodle 06:52, 14 September 2006 (UTC)

Agreed. If gameplay is drastically altered, it should be easy to explain what that alteration is without getting into rules minutiae. -Stellmach 14:43, 14 September 2006 (UTC)

FAR listing of Go (board game)

The article Go (board game) is currently on featured article review, meaning it may lose its featured status if not significantly improved. — Ambuj Saxena (talk) 17:09, 4 September 2006 (UTC)

BTG watchlist

I've compiled a list of pages in WPBTG here. This makes it easy to use "related changes" to see list of recently edited BTG articles here. The list is not automatically updated (and I can't think of a way to do it without a bot), but I will refresh it from time to time. —ptk✰fgs 15:57, 6 September 2006 (UTC)

Sudoko FAR review

Hi everyone. Sudoku is currently undergoing a Featured article review. Please go here to leave comments and help us maintain its featured quality. Marskell 09:45, 8 September 2006 (UTC)

Marskell, we deal with games here, not puzzles. (Although, obviously one might stretch the definition of game and include puzzles as single-person games.) Having said this, I am sure one can in principle construct a 2-person Sudoku game... JocK 18:15, 11 September 2006 (UTC)

In fact, table games based on Sudoku lagged not far behind its current burst of popularity. Stellmach 17:56, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

Interesting. In that case the article Sudoku needs an overhaul. JocK 18:07, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

Good point. I've seen 'em for sale (a quick search on funagain.com reveals several, including one by no less than Reiner Knizia) but I myself don't have any good references to cite (except maybe to show that they exist). -Stellmach 18:45, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

Assesment?

Should we use article assesments, like many other WikiProjects do? Some P. E rson 19:44, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

Given the number of pages to attend to, it might help prioritize. Stellmach 14:58, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

Mechanic categories?

We have the board games categorised by theme.. I wondered whether we should also categorise them by game mechanics? So, for example, Category:Roll-and-move board games or Category:Auction board games? Percy Snoodle 12:41, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

That's a good idea - in Robert Charles Bell's work Board and Table Games from Many Civilizations, Bell categorized them by (very broad) mechanics:

Race games (such as backgammon) where one seeks to get all their pieces to a goal before everyone else, including Cross and Circle games. Bell included a few commercial race games (Royal Game of Goose) in the mix.
War games of equal sides, such as chess and checkers - this does not presumably include board wargames as the capture mechanic is abstract (then again, Bell never covered any true board wargames, only abstract war games)
War games of unequal sides, mainly tafl games
Games of position, where the key to victory is in piece position - tic-tac-toe, Nine men's morris, Hasami shogi, peg solitaire, and Go are the examples here. The problem is that it is vaguely defined.
Mancala games, subcategorized into two-row, three-row, and four-row games
Dice games, either with "long dice", standard D6s, cowrie shells, and so on
Western (double-six, double-nine, etc) domino games
Chinese domino games such as pai gow
Mah-Jong, which Bell argues is both Chinese and domino but not Chinese domino (well, the first part is true anyways)
"Games requiring manual dexterity" such as shuffleboard

The modern commercial board game is arguably not one of any of those (for example, under Bell's classification Settlers of Catan would be a "game of position", being the closest thing matching the description, but that's really pushing it), and even Bell's own classification has its faults: "race game" is overly broad, and some games are categorized in a counterintuitive manner (Hasami shogi is a game of position, although the rules suggest that it is a war game of equal sides, as it is a variant of Shogi). To capture the evolving nature of board games, we may need to make our own categories, yet to do so might be skirting OR. kelvSYC 17:23, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

For modern games, we could classify them according some or all of BoardGameGeek's set of mechanics, without having to worry about OR:

Acting
Action Point Allowance System
Area Enclosure
Area Movement
Area-Impulse
Auction/Bidding
Betting/Wagering
Campaign/Battle
Card Driven
Card Drafting
Chit-Pull System
Co-operative Play
Commodity Speculation
Crayon Rail System
Dice Rolling
Hand Management

Hex-and-Counter
Line Drawing
Memory
Modular Board
Paper-and-Pencil
Partnerships
Pattern Building
Pattern Recognition
Pick-up and Deliver
Point to Point Movement
Rock-Paper-Scissors
"Role Playing" - which we should probably call "Player roles" to distinguish such games from real role-playing games
Roll and Move

Secret Unit Deployment
Set Collection
Simulation
Simultaneous Action
Selection
Singing
Stock Holding
Storytelling
Tile Placement
Trading
Trick-taking
Variable Phase Order
Variable Player Powers
Voting

Percy Snoodle 09:08, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

Diplomacy - Great Powers section

In an effort to bring the Diplomacy (board game) article into line with policy and guidelines, I propose to remove the long section describing strategy and geographic limitations of each Great Power. Several people have attempted to rewrite it to meet their own experiences, and each rewrite brings new original research with no cited sources. Further, each rewrite brings its own oversimplifications and overgeneralizations. This section is of no real help to understanding the game in an encyclopedic sense, it's "material of interest only to fans of the game". If you have an opinion, please comment on the Diplomacy article's talk page. If you want to debate the guidelines on strategy sections of game articles, please start a section here. The draft for that topic on the project page looks like it's consistent with Wikipedia's general policies. Barno 14:45, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

BoardGameGeek link template

~~I created a {{BoardGameGeek}} template for linking to games on BoardGameGeek, based off {{MySpace}}. It works the same way the MySpace one works. For example:~~

{{BoardGameGeek|1406|Monopoly}}

~~I've only linked two games so far, feel free to link more!~~ Pimlottc 21:59, 20 October 2006 (UTC)

hmm, we already have {{bgg title}} (in addition to {{bgg designer}} and {{bgg wiki}}); does this do something new? —ptk✰fgs 22:13, 20 October 2006 (UTC)

Oops, I didn't see those; The few games I checked didn't use it and I only checked for permutations of Template:boardgamegeek. Updated {{boardgamegeek}} and {{BoardGameGeek}} to redirect to that one. Pimlottc 22:18, 20 October 2006 (UTC)

Project Directory

Hello. The WikiProject Council is currently in the process of developing a master directory of the existing WikiProjects to replace and update the existing Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Directory. These WikiProjects are of vital importance in helping wikipedia achieve its goal of becoming truly encyclopedic. Please review the following pages:

User:Badbilltucker/Culture Directory,
User:Badbilltucker/Culture Directory 2,
User:Badbilltucker/Philosophy and religion Directory,
User:Badbilltucker/Sports Directory,
User:Badbilltucker/Geographical Directory,
User:Badbilltucker/Geographical Directory/United States, (note: This page will be retitled to more accurately reflect its contents)
User:Badbilltucker/History and society directory, and
User:Badbilltucker/Science directory

and make any changes to the entries for your project that you see fit. There is also a directory of portals, at User:B2T2/Portal, listing all the existing portals. Feel free to add any of them to the portals or comments section of your entries in the directory. The three columns regarding assessment, peer review, and collaboration are included in the directory for both the use of the projects themselves and for that of others. Having such departments will allow a project to more quickly and easily identify its most important articles and its articles in greatest need of improvement. If you have not already done so, please consider whether your project would benefit from having departments which deal in these matters. It is my hope to have the existing directory replaced by the updated and corrected version of the directory above by November 1. Please feel free to make any changes you see fit to the entries for your project before then. If you should have any questions regarding this matter, please do not hesitate to contact me. Thank you. B2T2 21:10, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

Sorry if you tried to update it before, and the corrections were gone. I have now put the new draft in the old directory pages, so the links should work better. My apologies for any confusion this may have caused you. B2T2 23:54, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

Chess

Chess is up for a featured article review. Detailed concerns may be found here. Please leave your comments and help us address and maintain this article's featured quality. Sandy (Talk) 14:54, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

how is rules complexity and strategy depth calculated?

Go, contract bridge, and chess, among others, have three fields - rules complexity, strategy depth, and random chance. Each seems to range from Easy to Very High. I'm kinda curious as to how these are calculated?

I ask because, in addition to being genuinely curious, I'm curious how canasta would rate. Also, I don't suppose there exists lists of games, sorted by their strategy depth, rules complexity, etc, are there? TerraFrost 02:10, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

You could probably make such a list at BoardGameGeek; however, the existing ratings are just whatever the editor felt like adding. I think they probably constitute original research and should be removed from the template. Percy Snoodle 09:41, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

Agreed. I've had the same concern about the template for a while now. Some reviews provide these sorts of ratings, but rarely in that much detail, and never the same way from publication to publication. And I've yet to see an article that provided a citation for these assertions. -Stellmach 15:44, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

Some game manufacturers have their own systems for describing these factors, and publish them on the box. While these are verifiable through primary sources (read the box, maybe read the publisher's catalog), I can't imagine they've ever generated third-party coverage except WP:RS-failing sources such as BoardGameGeek reviews. I don't believe there's any way to include such information without violating WP:NOR. Since we don't know where the editors of the cited articles got those ratings, I think we have to delete them; we can't tell whether they were made up by someone who only played chess, tic-tac-toe, and Candy Land. Barno 20:00, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

It's entirely arbitrary as I am concerned. Clearly there is a great contrast between chess and Candy Land, as one is entirely determined by a deck of cards and the other is all skill. However, between Settlers of Catan and Carcassonne it can go down into bitter arguments (some argue Carc is entirely determined by luck due to the tile drawing, while others argue that meeple placement, and thus skill, entirely determines the game), and thus it would be impossible to objectively place all board and table games into a linear order. Furthermore, publishers may have different metrics regarding rating games in such a manner - a lot of folks will claim that Caylus is more complicated than Monopoly, but can't objectively compare Finance with Monopoly, especially if the former had its rules drastically altered over its lifespan (Finance was originally a Monopoly clone after all). Even variations on the same game there will be great contrast: American Mahjong may rely on a fixed list of possible winning hands to go for (or barring that, stalling tactics), while traditional Mahjong find strategy in flexibility - determining which scoring opportunities to go for. Furthermore, mathematical aspects may or may not be a factor: Connect Four is a solved board game, yet enjoys "decent strategy value". kelvSYC 05:01, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

I've removed the parameters in question from the template. I was tempted to remove "skills required", too, since that gets (ab)used in the same way, but thought I shouldn't without further discussion. Percy Snoodle 13:25, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

Style guide

Hello, I'm involved with the 40K project and we've been discussing italics for game titles. MoS:T says that computer and video game titles should be italicised, but doesn't specify any other kind of game. I had a look at Monopoly (game) and Mouse Trap (game) and noticed these two great articles did not italicise their titles. However, I couldn't see anything on this project's style guide on this topic. What does everyone else think? - Heavens To Betsy 19:43, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

Titles of major works (of whatever type) should be italicized in English. Minor works (essays and short stories - I'd be hard pressed to think of anything that would qualify in games) are surrounded by quotes. This isn't done with any great consistency in game articles on Wikipedia, but any any article I work on gets italicized titles. --Rindis 22:19, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

I've kept Diplomacy (game) filled with italicization where needed. I agree that MoS:T requires itals for major works including computer and video games, and implies that standalone published boardgames and card/tile/dice/etc strategy games should also be italic. Looking through examples linked from the MoS:T page, I see that itals aren't used in the URLs nor on the title line at the start of an article. I propose the following two additions to this project's style guide...

At the start of the section, include a link to WP:MOS with text such as "Articles should meet Wikipedia's style guidelines for all articles, as listed in Wikipedia:Manual of Style and its subpages, except where editors reach consensus that a special case warrants different style."
Add (before or after existing sections) a sentence or two saying that titles should be italicized for all games which are major works. Perhaps it can offer guidelines such as "commercially published as a standalone game".

Question: What about games that are distributed by the publisher as an expansion to an existing game? In the cases where an expansion is just "this year's NFL teams/players" or "more different boards to race around", the expansion may not be notable enough to treat as a major work worth italicizing. On the other hand, I've played expansions of Settlers of Catan and Carcassonne and Ticket to Ride which required the original set but changed play enough to get widely discussed (reviews, BoardGameGeek pages, blog threads). Some have probably gotten multiple WP:RS nontrivial mentions, enough for WP notability. Shouldn't these be italicized? We ought to offer some guidelines to help editors make this distinction. Barno 00:31, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

It really depends on the type of game. Everyone will agree that "classical board game" such as chess or mancala can be used without italicization for standing the test of time, cultural reasons, and the like. Commercial board games, however, are trickier. In general, I propose "italicize unless otherwise", with the "otherwise" being the following:

Some commercial board games are effectively commercial implementations of classical board games or puzzles. Now any random game in this category should be deleted for non-notability IMO, but anything worth keeping in that category shouldn't be italicized.
Some games such as Connect Four, Nim, Set are effectively implementations of abstract mathematical games. Those are not worth italicizing in general, unless referring to a specific implementation (eg. Milton Bradley's Connect Four).
Some commercial games have stood the test of time, and have lapsed into the public domain. Monopoly is an example. Those should not be italicized unless referring to a specific clone/edition/etc. (eg. Late for the Sky's various -opoly games like Canada-opoly)
Others are entirely original, and should be italicized.

Expansions are a different matter altogether, and require a bit more fleshing out. This is probably due to what expansion is considered notable: Seafarers of Catan is notable, but the Puerto Rico expansion is on the other end of the spectrum, with the Monopoly Stock Exchange somewhere in between. In general, though, when discussing outside of the context of the parent game, it should always be italicized, while it is context-sensitive within the context of the game (eg. it would be proper to not italicize "Tower" when talking about the Tower expansion of Carcassonne).

There is also a thing on re-releases: should it be "Carcassonne Big Box" or "Carcassonne Big Box"?

kelvSYC 05:19, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

Actually, while I agree that Chess and the like is old enough, common enough, and generic enough for 'non-proper-nounage' to be acceptable, I'd wouldn't necessarily call it 'proper'. I'd also say that Monopoly (as a game) is no where near that point. It is acceptable when talking about the class of "Monopoly games" - see the difference between Star Trek (the series) and Star Trek (the universe).

My general policy is that an expansion still has a proper title, and that should still be italicized (no matter the context; it either is a title or it isn't). However, only in rare cases would it be notable enough for its own article, and should merely be discussed in the article on the game itself.

Your final question: What's the title on the box, or used in the body of the rules? The full title should be italicized. I suspect it might either be Carcassonne Big Box Edition, or "the Big Box edition of Carcassonne" (if the rules and catalogs don't seem to give it a separate name). --Rindis 19:23, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

Both are used: as it contains the base set and expansions, the box says "Carcassonne Big Box", the game is Carcassonne. kelvSYC 01:19, 16 December 2006 (UTC)

Also another point: what about new (likely commercial but also likely to be PD) modern games derived from classical games, like yari shogi or Crib Wars? kelvSYC 01:19, 16 December 2006 (UTC)

Horizontal Categories and other category structure issues

Having someone reverse-merging Category:Catan, perhaps we should resolve this issue:

The only reason I created this category is to group games according to some thematic connection. Clearly, Candamir: The First Settlers is connected thematically to Settlers of Catan, but is otherwise a separate independent game with few common game mechanics, and thus grouping it in Category:Settlers of Catan would not be appropriate (because the latter is a category grouping articles relating to Settlers itself. If it was reverse-merged, then this information would be lost.

And this isn't for Catan in particular: Arguably the Blue Moon games, Axis and Allies games (with Battle of the Bulge, Miniatures), Carcassonne (with The Castle), Alhambra (with a Carat remake), Killer Bunnies (with KinderBunnies), Monopoly (with Free Parking, Advance to Boardwalk), and so on are part of thematically similar but otherwise separate independent games. We should have categories representing these thematic connections. After all, not all games sharing this connection share authors (eg. Leo Colovini authored a Carcassonne game with The Discovery, but Klaus-Jurgen Wrede is the series author) or publishers (USAopoly and Winning Moves Games are publishers of Monopoly clones, but Hasbro is the series publisher).

We should also have categories of games by designer (eg Category:Games by Klaus Teuber would contain all the Catan games, Entdecker, Barbarossa, etc., while Category:Games by William Attia would contain Caylus) and possibly by English language publisher.

Your comments? kelvSYC 05:32, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

IMO, Candamir is sufficiently related to the Settlers line to be sensibly included in Category:Settlers of Catan. If they do go ahead and rebrand the entire series to "Catan adventures", then it would make sense to rename the category, but for now it's sufficient to add blurb to the category to say it's "articles related to Settlers", not just "articles about settlers".

Another concern is that we haven't got a good set of notability criteria. I'm not sure that any of the Carcassonne games beyond the base set warrant articles of their own; if they were deleted, Category:Carcassonne would have only one member.

Regarding theme connections - we could expand Category:Board games by theme quite a lot further than it has been. "Exploration board games" would cover a lot; as would "Resource management board games". I'd rather see that than "Board games related because their name mentions the same fictional island", which is really just a marketing ploy, or "Board games which are almost identical copies of an original game". I do think that expanding the list of categories by designer is a very good idea, especially for Teuber; though perhaps we should make sure we limit ourselves to designers with at least three already-notable games so we can avoid too many underpopulated categories. Percy Snoodle 09:49, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

By this criteria, if a third Starfarers (Starfarers of Catan, Starship Catan), Catan Adventures (Candamir, Elasund), Catan Histories (Stone Age, Struggle for Rome), or Klaus Teuber Classics (Barbarossa, Oceania) game ever came out (most of which seem likely) then they would need their own categories. Or Entdecker could be added to the Settlers category because it is an article related to Settlers. This makes little sense. kelvSYC 14:25, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

I think you're conflating two things I said: the at-least-three limit was simply to rule out categories for one-hit designers, not a criterion for when theme categories should be made. Further, I don't regard publishing gimmicks as sensible thematic links; so "Catan Adventures" and "Klaus Teuber Classics" I wouldn't count as themes. However, I'd be happy to see Starfarers of Catan, Starship Catan, Candamir, Elasund, Settlers of the Stone age and Struggle for Rome in the Settlers of Catan category, since they are (or are touted as) spinoffs of that game. All of the above are sensible additions to a Klaus Teuber games category. Percy Snoodle 14:50, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

They are not touted as spinoffs of Settlers, they are touted as Catan games, and so, to a lesser extent is Entdecker (the brother), Löwenherz (the other brother), Barbarossa (re-released under the Catan label, or more accurately, as a Klaus Teuber classic), Anno 1503, and a few other works (possibly Drunter, Hoity Toity, etc.). However, I will concede that as no other party to date has published a Catan game outside of Teuber and immediate family (IIRC, Guido Teuber was the principal author behind The Great River, and Benjamin Teuber may have also developed a Settlers add-on), and all Catan games have so far been published by Catan GmbH (and Kosmos/Mayfair/999 by extension), with the exception of Anno, which was a board game adaptation of a computer game. Thus, if anything, we should have a category for Catan games, if at least a subcategory of a Klaus Teuber games category. kelvSYC 17:03, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

I must be misunderstanding something here. Please could you explain the difference between "a spinoff of Settlers" and "a Catan game" - I really don't see how those things are or could be different. I disagree that calling something a "Klaus Teuber Classic" is putting it under the Catan label. Percy Snoodle 10:47, 16 December 2006 (UTC)

A Catan game is a game created by Catan GmbH (Teuber's own company), and sublicensed to multiple publishers (Kosmos, Mayfair, 999, Capcom, Dartmoor, etc). Some sources such as Funagain state that Catan GmbH is the publisher, with Kosmos, Mayfair, et al as the distributors. The following are considered to be Catan games:

Anything related to Settlers, including the Starfarers, Catan Adventures, and Catan Histories line (as well as the PC/PlayStation implementations)
The new revision of Entdecker (and the related Oceania)
The new revision of Lowenherz (as well as its computer implementation)
Anno 1503
The re-release of Barbarossa

Barbarossa and Oceania are the two games so far in the Klaus Teuber Classics line. A few other games are also "borderline", such as Drunter, Hoity Toity, etc. As an aside, a few other non-Catan GmbH products also fall under the Catan umbrella (the Catan novel and the Catan Box have both been endorsed as Catan products, but were developed independently of Catan GmbH, as far as I know).

So really, I do have to concede that a Catan game is itself ambiguous - it may refer to simply the Settlers line, or all the Catan GmbH-published games. kelvSYC 07:34, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

Agreed - I wasn't aware of the existence of Catan GmbH, and though I'd always heard and seen "Catan game" used in the same sense as "spinoff of Settlers", I can see how "Catan game" could sensibly refer to the company's output. Thanks for the info. Percy Snoodle 10:21, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

Recent project-related changes

Based on something I noticed on another WikiProject, I thought it would be useful to add a link to the tool listing recent changes to the project page and each page which links to or from the project page. It turns out to be the same as the "toolbox" section (left frame), "Related changes" link. I put it first in "Resources"; is this good? Should it have a bold italic link up at the end of the intro, instead of down near the bottom? Barno 05:02, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia Day Awards

Hello, all. It was initially my hope to try to have this done as part of Esperanza's proposal for an appreciation week to end on Wikipedia Day, January 15. However, several people have once again proposed the entirety of Esperanza for deletion, so that might not work. It was the intention of the Appreciation Week proposal to set aside a given time when the various individuals who have made significant, valuable contributions to the encyclopedia would be recognized and honored. I believe that, with some effort, this could still be done. My proposal is to, with luck, try to organize the various WikiProjects and other entities of wikipedia to take part in a larger celebrartion of its contributors to take place in January, probably beginning January 15, 2007. I have created yet another new subpage for myself (a weakness of mine, I'm afraid) at User talk:Badbilltucker/Appreciation Week where I would greatly appreciate any indications from the members of this project as to whether and how they might be willing and/or able to assist in recognizing the contributions of our editors. Thank you for your attention. Badbilltucker 16:57, 29 December 2006 (UTC)