Wargaming Communities

[bayonetbrant]

Moving this discussion over here so as not to totally hijack the Newsday thread

based on this past week's TN

The Wargaming "Community"
https://www.armchairdragoons.com/news/the-wargaming-community-tuesdaynewsday-2-8-22/

Tolstoi asked the following

I'm not sure my question belongs here. I've been thinking about this for a couple weeks and Brant's intro to the Feb. 8th Tuesday Newsday prompted me to ask you all what you think. If this should go into the Symposia section, (or somewhere else more appropriate), can one of the admin please move it?

So, here's my question: I'm curious to learn how everyone manages their wargaming community info collection/participation. Here is what I mean:

Until ACDC 2022, I didn't use Discord. I knew it was a combination of social media and a communication platform and it just didn't interest me. After ACDC, I began to understand how much more of a social media presence Discord is and I've started logging in a couple times a week to see what's posted in the text channels. One of these days I'll even participate in the ACD Happy Hour. At first I only joined, (or do we say follow?, do you follow Discord servers?), anyway, I joined the ACD Discord server and the International Kriegsspeil Society Discord server. I wondered how many other wargaming Discords were out there and then discovered ConsimWorld has a Discord server, joined it, and lo-and-behold, there's BayonetBrant in the #general text channel!  Are there other wargaming Discords people would recommend?

I use Twitter and I don't engage much with it. It is more of an environmental scanning tool for me.

I don't use Facebook and don't have a desire to, and I know there is a large wargaming community there too.

The ACD website is my go-to place for news and a place to participate, even if I don't contribute that much. There are other places to get info, or contribute, such as Consimworld, Grognard.com and the Grognard Wargamer Thread! at Quarter to Three; however, I rarely participate in those places. I normally just scan for info. There's YouTube; however, I don't consider that a pace for me to get wargaming news or participate in wargaming discussions. It is a place to get info, which I do, so that's another item to manage.

I use RSS for some sites: Hex and Counter & Wargaming at Reddit, Tally-Ho Corner, RockMountain Navy Gamer, the usual suspects.

So, the wargaming community is large and it made me wonder, how do you all manage all the info generated by this community?

So...  have at it y'all!

[trailrunner]

Hmm.  I made post on the other thread about the same time you created this thread, but it looks like my post disappeared. 

[bayonetbrant]

Hmm.  I made post on the other thread about the same time you created this thread, but it looks like my post disappeared.

nah, it's still there.

in the interest of completeness, though, I'll share-quote it here

So, the wargaming community is large and it made me wonder, how do you all manage all the info generated by this community?

ASL is about 80 percent of my wargaming.  In some ways, the online ASL community is a bit fractured.  There are at least two ASL discord channels  One channel I like, and will make dedicated sub-channels (or whatever they're called) for special events such as ASLOK and WO.  The primary ASL forum is on GameSquad, although there have been some churn there over the last couple of years.  Both the Discord channel and GameSquad are pretty active for rules discussions, which not surprisingly is a very active topic with ASL  There are two parallel ASL groups on FB, and a SK group also (IMO it would be nice to merge all of these).  Our local club (DC Conscripts) has a page on FB and an email list.  BGG has ASL forums organized by module, which really spreads things out, and I think there is an active community on Consimworld, although I never go on that site so I don't really know.

Our local ASL club has monthly game days.  For a while, I was also organizing local SK players, and hosting small game days at my house.  When COVID hit, I expanded that a bit, but I've moved on to the full game and a few others have more or less taken over leading the SK group.

For other wargaming, we have a local club (KGB), but I've only been able to make it to one game day, and that was right before COVID.  They have an email list, but it's not super active.  They have a FB page, but my request to join was never answered and AFAIK it's not active.

I'm fortunate to have two friends who happen to play wargames, and I get together with them whenever our schedules align.

[thecommandtent]

My main sources of wargaming community is here on the ACD forums and in their Discord and then following a bunch of wargaming types on Twitter.

I listen to two wargaming Podcasts, ACD's own Mentioned in Dispatches and History on the Table of which I recently joined the latter's discord server.

Other than that I follow a number of wargaming YouTube channels but only regularly watch and interact with Ardwulf's content. Anything else I watch will be recommend by others or while I'm in search of info on a particular game.

I don't do FB for anything and never could get past the interface for Consim. Most everything else I need/want I get either through wargame companies email newsletters, links in twitter conversations or on Tuesday Newsday.

[mcguire]

I follow the ACD forums here, and I ... read BGG. I subscribe to the general wargame forums and some specific games. Since I'm not interested in the "what I bought today" threads, it's usually a pretty quick check, but sometimes there's interesting discussions.

I don't Facebook, and never figured out any of the other major forums. I did recently start following on twitter, but mostly following ACD folks.