Slowly but surely, The Border House community is gathering steam. We’ve had a great month getting things up and running since my last post. The IRC is busy with a mix of authors, editors, readers, and some people who stumbled in from places like the wonderful GirlGamers on Reddit. We’ve played a few games of DOTA2, Guild Wars, Uno and word games in our IRC games channel, talked about a huge range of issues, and generally plotted world domination.
To join our IRC, Mumble, Steam, or anything else - the server connection details are on the last post. A “proper” community page will be up soon. On to the new features!
Multiplayer Mondays
This month we’re going to try a new feature – Multiplayer Mondays. Every Monday, an article will be published (this is the first!) with a set of gaming get-togethers in the coming week. So far we have volunteers for organising Magicka, Left4Dead 2, Guild Wars and DOTA2.
Organizing cross time-zone is very confusing, so we’ve made an iCal feel you can add to your Google Calendar/iCalendar. If you’re signed into Google, it should convert all times to your current timezone – I recommend “agenda” view.
View our Public Events calendar on Google
If this doesn’t work for you, here’s the list in the two most requested timezones! This won’t definitely be kept updated though in the event of change, so check with the calendar in the first instance.
- 29 Feb, 00:00 GMT – 28 Feb, 19:00 EST: Dota 2 with kimadactyl.
- 29 Feb, 19:00 GMT – 14:00 EST: Magicka with Llamaentity.
- 1 March, 19:00 GMT – 14:00 EST: Left4Dead 2 with Llamaentity.
- 2 March, 23:00 GMT – 18:00 EST: Guild Wars with SerCorbiuGeisha
For Magicka, Dota 2 and Left4Dead 2, join our Steam group chatroom. To do this go to the “Groups” tab on your friends list, click the arrow next to “The Border House” group and click “Join Group Chatroom”. We will start the game from there.
For Guild Wars, join our IRC, and we will add you to the clan guild as soon as possible.
If you want to play some games with fellow readers, we’re happy to book you in for next week’s calendar – join our IRC and let you know what you want to see.
Finally, we’re starting a Dwarf Fortress succession game soon, organised through the IRC (and Dropbox?). Register interest in the comments, or pop in. A succession game is where everyone takes it in turn to run the fortress for an in-game year, so are suitable for novices and experts alike.
Community Survey
This is now closed – thanks for all the responses, we have had over 500! A very generous reader and statistics wizard has volunteered to process all of this for us and give us the results. Watch this space, and thanks again for all your wonderful feedback.
Two Magicka heros standing between multiple fantasy enemies
And much knighting was done that month.
Thanks, kima! Looking forward to some multiplayer fun this week.
If my Wednesday/Thursday times don’t work too well for many people, I’ll try to switch them up next week to see if I can find something better.
I’ve been lurking around Border House for awhile and I’m glad to see there’s something I can participate in to get to know all of you awesome people. Definitely looking forward to the L4D2 get-together.
I’d love to make the Left 4 Dead game, but I’ll be at work that night. Also, if you ever want to try for a TF2 night, I’d gladly loan the use of my server for the evening.
Thanks for the offer! I think borrowing a server for an eve might be an endless faff, I’m not sure but I know how much of a pain it was when I used to play pickups.
Could you recommend the best way to set up a server though? Do you use a VPS or rent one from a specialist supplier?
I rent one through gameservers.com, though there are other hosts like nfoservers. Setting one up is fairly simple, though configuring it exactly how you want it can be somewhat time consuming.
“Loaning” my server would be fairly easy since I’m the owner, and I could handle admin tasks myself or give someone else limited admin rights. Send me an email if you want to work something out.
Also, I’ve been considering setting up a L4D2 server as well if you’d like to make use of it.
Alright, thanks for the offer on both and I’ll get back to you in the coming weeks
Dwarf Fortress?! Wicked! I absolutely love that game, but haven’t had energy to dive into the latest new release yet. I’ll definitely want a turn.
I will definitely try to get on for the L4D2 night. I would not mind organizing a League of Legends game night in the future. A quick question about Guild Wars and Magicka, do we need the expansion packs and downloadable content to play with others?
My plans for Magicka currently will focus on going through the main, original campaign, so expansions won’t be necessary (I don’t have them, yet).
If a steady group shows up and plays each week and we make it through the original campaign, I might see if people want to play the expansions at that point.
Also, I haven’t played League of Legends in quite a while but if someone gets a group going, I would definitely consider joining in.
I’m up for LoL too but the only prob is summoners are region locked! I suck at it anyway but I’ll join in for sure
Re: Magicka, no you don’t; in fact I think the Stars Are Left DLC can even be played if only the host has it. Not sure if the same applies to Vietnam. At any rate, I’d recommend running the original campaign first anyway, because Stars Are Left is 1) hard and 2) features puzzles that are made rather frustrating by the UI when in a group. I love the game, but it definitely works best as a fun “Crap did I just kill you again? Sorry!” romp instead of a puzzler like in that DLC.
I’m in for League of Legends, if a group ends up coming together for that.
I’d love to join up with other in Guild Wars. Admittedly, I got distracted when trying to finish the storylines and unlock the GW2 goodies, but I’m happy to jump back into things when there are others around to chat and smash with.
“The Border House community is gathering steam. …We’ve … generally plotted world domination.”
Doesn’t this sort of language reinforce an imperialist mentality? (Using the Dictionary of Human Geography’s definition of imperialism: “the creation and/or maintenance of an unequal economic, cultural, and territorial relationship…based on domination and subordination.”)
I know the author is being tongue-in-cheek, but jokingly talking about world domination like it’s a good thing is like jokingly using “pimp” as a positive identifier of coolness.
Would love to see some peaceful strategy games make the list, like Civilization V and The Settlers!
Thanks for hosting this new feature, though. I like the ideas you guys have so far about becoming a more participatory community.
I am totally in for the Fortressing of Dwarfs, if possible!
I am so excited about the dwarf fortress succession game, enough to come out of lurking!
I want to try dwarf fortress, however I know nothing about it and it seems it needs excel spreadsheets D: What is this?
It’s… not easy to explain. Let me see what I can do.
The main gameplay is essentially a management sim, with the player directing the actions of a bunch of Dwarfs (initially 7, but that number will fluctuate a lot). You can have them mine, craft, farm, train as guards etc. There’s no real objective per se, but the most obvious one to take for yourself is “don’t let all your Dwarfs die”, since most of the procedurally generated world is reasonably dangerous, and the game will let you start anywhere. On top of that, you can trade goods and, once your fortress becomes valuable enough, you’ll start to be raided.
The main appeals include the depth of the simulation – you can examine each Dwarf to see what they’re happy or sad about, what they last ate, how they relate to other Dwarfs etc., and you can examine pretty much anything to get qualitative information about it, like detailed descriptions of any- and everything that any Dwarf makes. Appealingly, Dwarven society is extremely egalitarian – gender seems to have no effect at all on the roles or abilities of Dwarves, aside from that female Dwarves in relationships can occasionally have children, which they will tend to take everywhere with them (including into battle against trolls, dragons, the undead etc.). Another beloved feature is the difficulty of long-term survival – when balanced with the detail of the simulation and the lack of direction, every failed Fortress will have a rich story that you’ll want to tell to disinterested friends and colleagues. The mantra of the Dwarf Fortress devotee is “Losing Is Fun”.
Here’s a great introduction to the kind of story that you could end up seeing unfold in DF: http://www.nzfortress.co.nz/forum/showthread.php?t=20768
Or how about this for a longer-form story: http://www.bravemule.com/
However, that level of simulation comes with a price. It would be prohibitively expensive and time-consuming to model and animate every detail that Dwarf Fortress simulates, so the developers don’t bother. The game is presented completely in ASCII graphics, with a typical screen representing a horizontal slice through the nearby area, so that you see a floor at a time, from above. All the commands are given through keyboard shortcuts, which can take a while to learn (although they’re usually listed). The menu interface is frankly awful, even for an ASCII game, and it’s the biggest barrier to entry, as cited by most of the players I know. It’s so bad, in fact, that some players even claim that the game is unplayable without helper apps like Dwarf Therapist, which look up data from the game and display it more clearly, allowing you to tweak your Dwarfs’ orders much more quickly. I usually play without those apps, since they tend to lag behind the latest game version, but they do speed up the game a lot.
If you can’t stand how the game looks, it can be marginally improved by finding a nice tileset. such as those distributed with the Lazy Newb Pack, an easy setup package for the game and its various helpers.
If you want to shortcut some of your earlier “Fun”, it can be very helpful to follow along with one of the many excellent tutorials on youtube – I think I watched the one by capnduck once I got stuck.
Apparently, the most famous account of a Dwarf Fortress game is the saga of Boatmurdered…
My two favourite stories are Ardentdikes and Towersoared. The former is a succession game, the latter a community fort played by one person who allows others to “claim” a dwarf and determine what those dwarves will do.
Ardentdikes: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=60408
Towersoared: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=60827.0
They demonstrate what is possible in terms of building, too. Ardentdikes is a sprawling random mess, Towersoared is painstakingly planned ahead to perfection.
I’m up for Magicka or L4D2, but I typically don’t get home from work until 18:00 EST. Is there any interest for a later session?
I might dig on some L4D2, I’m PST but have some insomnia anyway. What’s your platform?
I heartily support the public Google Calendar. I’ve added that to my Calendar and will try to participate on Guild Wars nights if I can. (Unfortunately it looks like the upcoming one takes place in the middle of the afternoon of my workday.)
Totally down for some Guild Wars with everybody!
I wonder, is there a chance that maybe we could throw some browser based free-to-plays into the mix? Glitch, Runescape, A Mystical Land, that sort of thing? I currently have a netbook as my only computer, and I don’t have the money, hardware, or hard drive space for a lot of games. ^_^;
It might be a neat way to get a lot of people participating and trying new things, as we wouldn’t have to commit anything either in terms of money, download time, or installation space, and there’s a big variety of stuff out there… *wheedles*
Oh, well. If I have to, I can just wait until we do something in WoW. WoW is the one gaming expense I’m allowing myself, and my poor little netbook is doggedly chugging through it, though it is NOT happy about it… XD
Definitely. I’d like to get some board games going – I used to play a lot of Go, and I’m really into stuff like Agricola and Carcassonne. I’ve not played Glitch for ages but plenty of us do. We also have an IRC channel with a chat games bot in we play uno and word games in sometimes!
Anyone else here a Magic player?