Hi Redscape! My name is Rob, and after seeing a few mentions of Redscape over on VDip, I decided to come see what was going on over here. Supposedly there's a few Vdippers on here? Care to come out of the woodwork and say hello? And to everyone else, I hope to get to know you in the coming days. Human GM'ed games have always intrigued me and I think I might stick around awhile : )

Welcome Rob!

There are a few opportunities for you now:

1) Redscape Games looks to be kicking off again in the next month. I'm not familiar with the tournament format being used but it's sure to be well run with few NMR's, especially given the player list.

Redscape Games announcement

2) I'm attempting to run a standard game to hopefully include new Redscape players like yourself. Ideally it will be filled in a few weeks, tops.

Diplomatic Mission

If we are successful in offering more games, I'm confident you'll also see more variants advertised in the future.

Best of luck and happy stabbing!
Mike (SLOTerp)

New people, what is this craziness ?

Good to see a bit life coming back into the old place. You've come along at a good time because it seems Randy is getting the tournament going again, which should be a lot of fun. This place always used to be a good spot to come for old-fashioned human GMed games with much greater love and attention put into them and a LOT more in the way of interaction between the players than you tend to get in the automated sites. We had a bit of a moribund spell for a year or two but it seems like we may be about to come out the other side of that and if enough of the old crew return, and a few newbies like yourself can be convinced to join, then I'm sure you'll find that the experience you get here is a lot more satisfying than you may be used to, if a little more sedate.

Just try to steer clear of all us bitter weirdos in the politics forum

Randy is right, we used to have a lengthy list of games in progress and new games would start every week. Things got stale for a while when we attempted to automate and, well, that's not what our niche is and it failed miserably, couple that with ownership dropout at the time, and other factors and redscape was teetering on the edge of oblivion. But a few people came together and are now running the site with greater interest, we decided to start getting things going "after summer" and you now see human run games forming yet again. A standard is just starting, another standard is just forming, the tourney is starting (we used to host "Patriot Games" that had at it's height I think about 30 games in one tourney!) We are home to variants I know you are familiar with WWIV, NWO, and Explore! We used to (and will again) have a whole host of variants running at any given time (I myself want to play Ancient Mediterranean some day).

The fantasy sports section is alive and well, never missed a beat there. We were hosting "other" games such as Kingmaker, Civilization and Game of Thrones. The Politics forum is for nut-jobs so please feel free to jump in and be an idiot there as well!

Thanks for the warm welcome everyone! I plan on participating in the Redscape Games (Ruffhaus, are all those games simultaneous, or sequential?) and hopefully some more over here. To be entirely honest, things are getting a bit busy for me, so the slower pace would probably be better anyways.

As for Politics...if Redscape is anything like webdip, I'm sure the political discussions will make me want to break out the popcorn and enjoy! : )

Again, thanks for the warm welcome and I hope to get to know you all a bit better soon!

drano019 wrote:Thanks for the warm welcome everyone! I plan on participating in the Redscape Games (Ruffhaus, are all those games simultaneous, or sequential?) and hopefully some more over here. To be entirely honest, things are getting a bit busy for me, so the slower pace would probably be better anyways.

As for Politics...if Redscape is anything like webdip, I'm sure the political discussions will make me want to break out the popcorn and enjoy! : )

Again, thanks for the warm welcome and I hope to get to know you all a bit better soon!

Human-run games are, in my opinion, far better. I've played on most servers, but I'd rather play here, even when mistakes are made.

Welcome!

and while the games are run by humans, most (probably everyone but me) uses a judging program. So mistakes are pretty much nil, almost the same as a server game. (again, except for yours truly).
Human moderators make certain orders are received, they send reminders (and second or third reminders) they can delay a game if a major power is late on his orders, in fact most deadlines are set earlier than the games GM plans on really adjudicating, a built in fail-safe of sorts. The human GM is more aware of situations that might cause problems. ex. a player says he has a family member very ill, if my Mother passed away, I am not even THINKING of contacting the games GM! I had a situation where a player was late, I knew where my players lived and saw a hurricane had passed his way, he lost power, my delay for this probability helped not just him but the whole game.

The forum based set-up here also lends itself to more fun.
Players can post pictures, tease others in public, role play, etc

You can also have your very own Chuck Norris icon with punching beard!

Ok, so maybe only Tom can have that one...

and not to take ANYTHING away from our brothers over at VDip, they have a bazillion games always going on. I don't care for server type game systems but hey, they can handle a real load with ease! Some like one way, some like the other, many could care less and either is fine with them. It takes all kinds and we strive to be that "Niche" for those who prefer human moderated games.
and the VDip forum is lively as well, they aint bad!

As some may know I'm quite active in converting variants into the php format. But I do miss being able to make impossible orders.

kaner406 wrote:As some may know I'm quite active in converting variants into the php format. But I do miss being able to make impossible orders.

Yes, and I've enjoyed them over at vDip, as well. On the other hand, you have the opportunity to still do variants here, but in a different way:

1. You can do variants by hand (making your own maps with whatever application you wish). I think GMTom indicated he still does that with his own variants that he GMs. There are a few other players who were quite famous around here for creating variants.

2. You can program your variants into RealPolitik (as you know), which most of us old-timers still like to use. It would be fun to see Dark Ages or MARS available. I'd especially like to see an implementation of Ambition & Empire.

In any event, welcome to the site and I hope it is not a short visit.

I've looked at Ambition & Empire before.

Easy enough to put neutral units on neutral SCs, but the coding of the Diplomacy Points would make a true conversion really difficult.

Can all you VDip people put down your VDip names as well so I know who I'm talking to? Would be somewhat silly to get to know you here one way and think of you as another person over on VDip!

re: Ambition and Empire => is the Black Sea adjacent to Aegean Sea?

kaner406 wrote:re: Ambition and Empire => is the Black Sea adjacent to Aegean Sea?

Yes, just like Standard: http://www.variantbank.org/results/rules/a/ambitionandempire.htm
But I agree about the Dip Points. You'd probably have to do that via some nice little coding or maybe a prepared Excel file. Clearly, RP or even jDip are not designed for that bookkeeping.