I'm willing to write blurbs about random NGAC cards since I'm available every M-F, except for some Grand Prix or Invitational weekends.


Also doing a deck per week is easy if that's available.

I'm willing to help only if I can have a segment titled "altimis' Alliterative Analytical Area" and have it make sense in some way.

I'm willing to help, but I tend to be too busy for anything in depth. But if I got my own area...
I can probably help out someone else with another potentially difficult schedule for a combined effort mayhaps?

I had been thinking a short blurb written by either the creator, the nominator, or barring that the Content Czar in charge of that piece. (Which would probably be TPmanW, since they run the actual threads.) If people are interested in writing whole articles that would be great, but I think getting insight from the designer is optimal, and asking everyone whose card gets nominated to write a whole article seems like it's asking too much.

Both of those are absolutely available and you are one of the top people to do it. I think it'd be good to get some differing perspectives, but I would love to have you in charge of that area.

If there's areas you'd like to write in, you can just write articles for them whenever you want and submit them to the Content Czar for that area. You don't need a consistent output in order to contribute.

Regardless of what the front page looks like, can I request that we still have some page like the one we do now? I want to be able to bookmark it and use it to get around the site rather than a front page, which I wouldn't have much use for.

Why would we not still have this? Think old wizards site where they had a front page and a side bar with forums and gatherer and whatever.

Weekly Deck Challenge?

I think I'd also limit the price of cards to under $15 per card or under $100 per deck according to TCGplayer.com's 'Average' cost. I know linking to an external site is probably kinda bad, but to be fair, I'd want something that players generally respect for the prices so there isn't a Black Lotus in every design. I mean, it's more an exercise than competitive deckbuilding, right?

~SE++

It's a giant pain in the *** to navigate on the mothership. I could not be bothered to check as many forums as I do (right now I think I check 6?) if I had to go through that much of a navigation hurdle. Right now I only need two clicks to get anywhere on the site.


I see no reason to make the site harder to navigate just because we can have a front page. Why couldn't the front page just have a link to the forums, a link to each highlighted article, a link to the wiki, etc.?


Edit: Checking, I visit Metaboard, Off Topic, Magic General, Other Games, Duels, Forum Posting Games, The Creative Corner, and You Make the Card. I have none of these bookmarked right now.

I was under the assumption that the front page would have a link to the forums here, and that these forums would still have their index page. I don't think anyone is proposing a navigation change, just adding a new aspect to the site.

~SE++

I have come under the impression that the exact purpose of the main page and how it was going to affect the site navigation is not the same on a person by person basis, and I feel it is best to make my opinion clear rather than hear "well no one brought this up" later. I also wanted to make sure that absolutely everyone is clear on exactly what the front page will entail before we actually make the change (or any changes), so now is the best time for these kinds of discussions. It's a "just in case" thing.

Fair enough.

Also, for the M:EM, I know you guys don't wanna do anything you haven't vetted yet, but what about working on something new to serialize (eventually), but keeping it to PMs? You can share, edit and perfect it, but the community at large would be unaware of it until it's posted? I dunno, I just like the idea of new content as well as highlighting old stories.

~SE++

Hasn't MaRo repeatedly claimed that Johnny fits with any kind of build-around strategy? I mean not to encourage MaRo's... anything, but I think the Johnny Quest name really could fit without biasing it towards combo decks in particular. I'd be in favor of it.

Hm, for a successor to Taste the Magic... and Savor the Flavor...

...

...

Lick the Cardstock?

@Squinty:

Yes this is probably the most logical way of doing things. The one project I know about is already being developed via PM so I don't know that it'd be a huge deal to spread that to all active M:EMbers...

Maybe we could do essentially a Secret Project Poll... put the poll up as normal with a message saying "check your PMs for the story for this Secret Project Poll"...

Luna, you'd be handling that, probably, since upkeep is your wheelhouse. What do you think about the feasibility of that? Would that be possible for you and also acceptable from the perspective of vetting new works before putting them up on the main page?

The really tricky thing is that it means we would have to decide BEFORE THE STORY IS WRITTEN whether a story is even suitable for main page serialization! That would be... weird. But maybe not as risky as it sounds given the quality of our writers.

Well, yeah, I can kinda see that as tricky. On the other hand, if a writer thinks it could be a serial piece, that writer could simply PM the story to the Content Czar (as Laz puts it) and ask their opinion first.

~SE++

This is absolutely our intent. The front page may get to steal the redirect from nogoblinsallowed.com but the arrangement of the forums will be completely unaffected by the front page, except for the possible creation of a forum to discuss articles.

I suspect the best approach would be to vary the format along with the card. Have a Content Czar running that area, and have them pick whatever set of restrictions they think best fits the card. If you get Soratami Cloud Chariot, then you don't want people trying to build for competitive Vintage, whereas if you get Tarmogoyf you're not really looking at a budget build no matter what. Plus varying the formats and restrictions allows different deckbuilders to shine under different circumstances.

MaRo can say what he wants, but the impression the community has of the name is that of the combo player. (See: Johnny, Combo Player) I'm not saying no to the name, since it's not really my decision anyway, just voicing my concerns about the perception it creates.

Birth of a Story?

1. I had never heard of a site doing anything other, but I'm glad what mjack brought up is, indeed, what is being done. I had never considered the possibility of getting rid of the index page.

2.

To be fair, I think I'm the only one in this thread who has said I'm explicitly against posting new material to the front page without it being voted on.

I mean, as far as making something in secret before putting it up for vote, I think we in general would be okay if it's from some of our more active writers (like Raven, Tevish, or Orcish) -- we usually only tell people to hold off on votes when newcomers come in, post their first story ever, and then immediately asking to vote on it without getting feedback and working on it. It's probably a drive among all of us to get that feedback by making our work publicly available before voting, which is why most stories stay up for a month or two before being voted on.

Point being, I wouldn't be against it, so long as it went through the due process.

3.

That sounds like a decent enough plan. Depending on the parties involved, we could also use google docs to read and comment among ourselves. As far as deciding beforehand, we have effectively two years to prepare for this. If something big is planned we can plan to prepare it for the front page, and if it ends up running a bit short, we can just put it up like a normal piece and then move on to the next big project.

I said old wizards, as in before all the crap.

old wizards was still a couple more clicks to get from place to place if your interests were across sections. nothing like what it is now, but still slightly more than it is here. that had a lot more to do with them having a lot more areas than them having a front page though.

For anyone interested, here's all our front page content so far, with some placeholder names from myself:

• Metaboard - Announcements
• Constructed - Weekly Deck Challenge
• YMtC - Card of the Week
• YMtC - Fantasy Fantasy Card Crafting
• YMtC - Pro Tour YMtC coverage
• NGACon - Designing Domination (metagame analysis/deck feature)
• NGACon - Card Spotlight
• AF&S - Living Lore (flavor article)
• M:EM - Highlighted M:EMories
• M:EM - serialized stories
• Duels - Weekly Decklist
• RPG - Campaign Chronicles
• RPG/PbP - Gamefinder

Here are some things we could add to the list that wouldn't take tons of effort:

• Limited - Draft Your Own Adventure
• NGACon - Super League coverage
• NGACon - Draft League coverage
• Duels - Duels Diaries

If someone has the time, we could also mirror MTG and D&D news from other sites.

Duels Diaries is someone who has the game on ios (since most people are on steam and ios got it 2-3 weeks early) talking about the game while the rest of us are in card game purgatory. It would be an almost similar duplicate to whatever else we have.

Also, the weekly decklist has not been a given yet. <- We are discussing this down in the duels community and people HAVE suggested viable alternatives.

I'd just like to say that, while Raven doesn't run it anymore, there was for a time also Flavor of the Week in the AF&S.

Also Tevish once ran a Best Flavor voting thingy where people would vote for the most flavorful cards in a set, with the ultimate intent being to find the most flavorful card across Magic's entire history.

Someone (I think it changed hands, but I remember Barinellos posting at least one of them) also did Artist Spotlight threads for a while, and the AF&S has a general lack of A. Arcades even put together a great big list of Magic artists' deviantarts, personal blogs, etc., which could be used to link people to.

We could always run an occasional article of frequent misconceptions or recently asked flavor questions. God knows Wizards is confusing the fanbase enough...

Considering AF&S stuff isn't needed to be voted on like M:EM stuff, we can pick things out of there much more easily.

I hadn't thought of a series on card design external to actual designed cards, but that could certainly be interesting. YMtC has a lot of very creative people, so you could definitely do something with that.

I mentioned using Birth of a Story earlier for a flavor article, but what are people's thoughts on trying to use more NGA Constructed cards for article names, especially the Magic-related ones? I don't have a lot of them memorized so I'm probably not the person to be making suggestions, but I'm sure we have names that suit a lot of our needs.

Draft Your Own Adventure seems like a lot of work to run consistently, but if someone's interested in doing it it could certainly happen.

Anyway, it looks like we have a lot of suggestions for good content. While I'm certainly not shutting the door on that part of the discussion, I think now is probably a good time to start transitioning more toward figuring out who's going to actually run what.

The M:EM stuff we can probably just put in the hands of the Archivist account and let the community sort that out, they have a pretty strong community-run system down there already. Card of the Week is probably going to fall on TPmanW, since they're doing most of the work for that anyway. Popular Pariah has mentioned a willingness to be in charge of the NGA Constructed stuff. The Duels people are currently having a conversation among themselves as to how they want to handle their content.

Things that seem to need someone to run include the Weekly Deck Challenge, the YMtC general design article if there's interest in that, the flavor series, and the campaign chronicles if there's interest in that. I'd also like someone managing the Gamefinder sidebar, since I don't watch the PBPRPG section too closely, but that should be fairly simple, and if no one else will do it, I can just ask people to PM me when they put up a new game.

Also, as an update on the technological side, it appears that Welder has found a platform they're happy with. I can't give an ETC yet, nor can I confirm that any given feature will ultimately be available because that's not my area of expertise, but things are looking good on that end as well.