Rules: Play games, have fun. /end

~SE++

Usually when its a group for a site or a game or something where you eventually end up with a large and myraid crowd there are rules to keep things from rapidly declining.

Rules against begging for free stuff, or spamming the chat with the crappy coupon that you're trying to trade, or making racist/sexists/obscene etc comments in the chat and what have you.

Its not at all uncommon.

So far, it's been unnecessary, but if the group grows it can certainly be revisited.

~SE++

I'm not saying its been necessary, I'm saying it would behoove the group to be sharp looking and organized upfront and not scrambling to try and set some sort of rules once someone has already began to act out.

Go jump in some of the bigger Steam groups and see what they tend to be like even with rules and moderation.

I'd concern about that when people actually start to use the chat.

I joined! I'm sad that I apparently missed out on a tf2 event.

That was a trial run of an event from what I heard. Join us here for any discussion on it you want.

~SE++

I think BH has a point. a good way to get a lot of people is to look like you're prepared for them. it's not difficult to find or write a basic rule set, and it makes you look more like a serious group.

then again I don't use Steam so I don't know anything about how that community works.

Looking like a more serious group / site is always better than looking like a 'fan-made' project or whatever that someone slapped together.

Same goes for websites with their own look instead of a free-page, A WoW guild that actually recruits and has a site instead of just one guy spamming invites to anything that moves, etc etc.

Why not just say "all NGA COC standards apply to this group as they would on the forum"?

Completely logical.

Though considering the nature of things, since it's mostly just a fan group and not the "Official NGA Group" or whatever right now I was mostly just suggesting some minor ground rules without trying to enforce the CoC or what have ya. The group can by all means be as lax as those that run it decide they want it to be I was just offering some advice for longer term health.

Ah, that makes sense. I was assuming the aim was to be semi-official.

I don't see why it shouldn't be. why not treat it as an extension of the community, rather than a splinter?

It's not a "fan group," it's members of NGA who want to play games together.

~SE++

Meh, I joined just because I've already got Steam (or is it that "I'm on Steam"?). I'm actually logging in rather frequently right now because of all the Fallout I'm playing; otherwise Steam has been making so many bad moves lately that I don't want to even start it up.

See: Guise of the Wolf, Earth Year 2066, Air Control, Clans, a lot of early access games, a lot of greenlight games (including Guise of the Wolf), their monitoriing and editing of the public tagging system, the release of bad mobile games on PC, the flooding of the front page with old games which are being given new release dates according to when they're put on steam, and I'm sure a host of other issues.

No reason it cant be, just a matter of if it becomes the official group now Admin is semi responsible for making sure its up to whatever standards the site chooses.

Lets say you're in the chat and someone calls you a racial slur.

If is just a bunch of players who made a steam group NGA doesnt really have the grounds to try and enforce anything or give you a warning etc.

If NGA makes it the official steam and then puts appropriate rules in both the CoC and the Steam group, now there its more appropriately their jurisdiction.

all that would take, in my opinion, is designating someone, probably Cato who made it, the GobO in charge of that branch of the community. it's not large right now so one person should be enough. Bun wouldn't need to directly oversee it.

my main thought on this is that the more areas our community has, the wider the net we cast and the more potential new members we catch. if we're gonna have an off-site group of members, with our name attached, I think it makes sense to make them officially linked. that way people can come and go "hey they have a steam group too!" instead of "hey some of these people are also on steam!" so, unless it's a huge amount of work for Bun I don't see why we shouldn't, and I think that putting a GobO on it is really all she'd have to do.

not to mention it'd expand us past WotC games, which is nice. a lot of us come from that community originally but we're not bound to it.

Aye.

Yeah, it would be great to get more things going here than Magic. Though Mafia and Resistance are doing well, more video game related things is always cool.

~SE++

One of the tricks with video games is that what we can do creatively as far as campaign settings and character designs and fanfiction are concerned is potentially a little more limited...

Although on the other hand that should be equally true of Magic and well... [gestures at M:EM and YMTC]

I wonder if we could use a larger video game population to springboard an actual game design board. That'd be pretty sweet.