Re: 2018 Meeple Choice Awards - Final Results

Some people are quite defensive of their games.  Had I voiced an opinion
against including a certain game I felt like I would have had a
flamethrower on my back.  So I decided to not mention it this time.  I
honestly did not see Birmingham going so far.  I guess we can voice our
concerns in private.

I feel like the main gameplay mechanisms need to change - not so much the
strategies - for me to view a game as being unique.

But I'm like you, Larry.  I'm fine with what the majority says.

Jacob



On Saturday, 29 June 2019, [email protected] [spielfrieks] <
[email protected]> wrote:

>
>
> I've played Brass: Birmingham (only once) and my feelings are pretty close
> to Jimmy's.  It felt like an expansion of the original game, albeit a
> fairly extensive one.  I also hated the artwork (not that that's relevant
> to the discussion).  But I also understand what David is saying--to a truly
> skilled Brass veteran, figuring out the ramifications of the new rules
> would be quite a challenge.  I love Brass, but I've never been that good at
> it, so that's not the sort of thing that would make an impression on me
> after just one play.  I can certainly see where one could say that the need
> for these new strategies make it a new game.
>
> And that may be the crux of the situation.  Some spinoffs may be too close
> to the original to qualify for the award, while others are sufficiently
> different to warrant inclusion.  But different people will differ on where
> to draw the line.  There may be a few straightforward cases, but most will
> fall in a gray area.
>
> The way it works right now is if the Geek says a game is an independent
> one (and their rules for that tend to be very forgiving), a spinoff is
> eligible for the MCA.  Then we, as a group, decide if it deserves to be
> nominated, and then if it deserves to win an award.  We make that decision
> with our votes.  In this case, enough people decided that Brass: Birmingham
> was an independent game for it to win one of the awards.  It's certainly
> not the only way of doing things, but it seems to have worked over the
> years (and there have been no shortage of spinoff games to get nominated in
> the past).
>
> If there is sufficient interest in coming up with another way of doing
> this in the future, I'd be happy to implement any suggested changes.  In
> point of fact, we do have a way of sorts, since during the initial few days
> of the process, when I ask for games to be included in the first election,
> I also ask if anyone has objections to those that have been proposed.  I
> realize that inertia is a big factor here, which is probably why no one
> thought to object to Brass: Birmingham or Concordia Venus (not to mention
> Endeavor: Age of Sail or Azul: Stained Glass of Sintra--you see, spinoffs
> *are* quite common).  We probably could vote on games that seemed too close
> to the original and winnow some of those cases out ahead of time.  Or we
> could just continue to let people make their feelings known on these games
> by how they vote in the general elections.  I'm happy to do what the
> majority wants, so now is the time to raise discussion points if you'd like
> to change how things work in future years.
>
> Larry
>
> 
>