SOTCW Forum

granty101 wrote: ↑

Thu Mar 29, 2018 7:42 pm

cartfc wrote: ↑

Thu Mar 29, 2018 7:39 pm

For what it is worth this is the only forum apart from TMP I visit on a regular basis, and I frequent TMP mainly for product announcements.

Cheers Fred.

Hello Fred, I do the same on some of the modelling forums...quick 'in and out' just to see what is going on.

Grant

My aggregator of choice is now The Wargames Website, and those who are there as well as here will have seen me join.

The Society of Ancients has both their annual Battle Day and a weekend retreat. The latter is probably already catered for by the many events such as TANKFEST that people can attend. However, an Annual Battle Day by SOTCW, or several such regional events, could prove interesting. If publishing the Journal was the only objective then I agree the Society has had its day but compared to other Societies it remains active and has the best forum of them all.

Id love to meet you and buy you a pint .

Seret wrote: ↑

Tue Mar 27, 2018 12:16 pm

Honestly, I assumed you'd just go look them up in the Wordpress plugin directory, since you said you were familiar with it.

At this stage I'm just kicking around the idea, I haven't researched a specific implementation in that kind of detail. Exactly which plugin to use would be a decision made further down the track, once priorities and constraints were established. I've not used any of them previously. Yes, it's possible that if none turned out to be what we wanted that it would throw a major spanner in the works. But I certainly wouldn't start the project saying "We must use Technical Solution X to solve problem Y" before we'd even started, that's putting the cart before the horse.

Being familiar with it, I'm aware that there's a wide variation in quality. Ideally I'd like a recommendation from someone that has relevant experience. The tone of your replies had led me to believe that you were familiar with at least one plugin.

Members should have input, and as much as possible the heavy lifting should be shared by those willing to donate their time and skills. If it's just run as one member's pet project it would probably fail.

In theory, I'm all for the idea of the workload being shared. I honestly think you'll struggle to find people willing to help out with it, but I may be wrong. In the past, things have happened because someone had the idea and implemented it. We got our first website because someone set it up. The WWI Compendium happened because I put it together and published it. This forum exists because I set it up. Back in the day, we had a Vietnam sub-group, a model range, and bulk-discount Osprey book purchases because someone thought they were good ideas and set them up.

Honestly, I don't know if your idea is a good one or not. Right now, I don't have the time or the inclination to work on it. If you want it to happen, your best bet is probably to work on making it happen. Research the WordPress plugins and work out which one would best suit our purposes. Get permission from the copyright holders to include their content. Ask Pete if he can install WordPress for you. Find people to help maintain it once it's up and running.

I recently received an email from Rob Morgan and in it he outline how other Societies have adapted in recent years so I will share some of his experiences. They all seem to suffer from the same problems, mainly a lack of articles and contributors.

Naval Wargames Society: Their magazine ‘Battlefleet’ hasn’t been published in over two years. They survive by the competence and reliability of their monthly e-newsletter, ‘All Guns Blazing’. Fifteen or so pages every month. (Membership has doubled).

The Ordnance Society: has a quarterly newsletter, it’s almost a 10 years since their ‘annual’ Journal.

Solo Wargamers Association: abandoned their paper magazine ‘Lone Warrior’ about 18 months back for an electronic one. Struggle for material like SOTCW.

Lance and Longbow Society: has dropped from bi-monthly to two, at best three a year, due to less articles.

So here are some ideas. I like the idea of a monthly newsletter and occassional Journal but what do others think?

Well these are useful 'meeting places' for members via a monthly newsletter and occasional Journal.

The newsletter may be defunct by virtue of our use of the Forum and our less well used Society webpage? But we could try to state its purpose on this site and see if we can make a case for trying it out?

I think Richard B has given us many a clear statement about benefit of a Journal. I think this could be both paper and ecopy. If we have funds / membership to pay for it, and I am ok paying more for a paper membership and someone paying less for ecopy membership to reflect the varying costs.

Perhaps we should try to create an annual Sotcw day (or weekend?) where we try to gather as many members as possible in one place (that could move around so not just one place or same place each year) and where we try to create something enjoyable to share? Talks? Games? Films? free trader stands? and venue paid from subs?

I dont know how the geography of membership works out? But I suppose we could use that to help maximise participation? I know this can be difficult if we have sizeable minority membership in more than one country? our Iberian members ? our USA members? Scotland? Wales? (Just citing places where Forum participants post from, I think!)

I am realistic about costs being a deterent for some who may have other calls on their cash, but if we think of it as an annnual social and Society bash where its chance to meet and share common cause this might work?

CarlL

CarlL wrote: ↑

Wed Jun 27, 2018 7:16 pm

Perhaps we should try to create an annual Sotcw day (or weekend?)

I like that Idea Carl

Grant

freewargamesrules wrote: ↑

Wed Jun 27, 2018 12:50 pm

I recently received an email from Rob Morgan and in it he outline how other Societies have adapted in recent years so I will share some of his experiences. They all seem to suffer from the same problems, mainly a lack of articles and contributors.

A very helpful analysis that shows others are dealing with facing the same issues

granty101 wrote: ↑

Thu Jun 28, 2018 5:19 am

CarlL wrote: ↑

Wed Jun 27, 2018 7:16 pm

Perhaps we should try to create an annual Sotcw day (or weekend?)

I like that Idea Carl

Grant

I may be wrong but wasn't this the origin of the Bovington Show?

I seem to remember, way back when, that the SFFWS (?) and SOTCW had the idea of a Society themed war games show / day. The concept was that members would meet, play games and encourage new membership by attracting non-members to a C20th themed show (or SF / Fantasy) with a few traders.
SFFWS had Bifrost and SOTCW had a southern show at Bovington and tried a northern show at Elvington (?) there was also some kind of attempt at a joint event through Steve Blease being a member of both.

My memory is hazy but I seem to recall it all collapsing with a fair amount of acrimony.

The nub seemed to be lack of support from members (sound familiar?) with such a poor attendance at a couple of events that they failed to cover costs.

Doesn't Richard Crawley organise something already along the lines you're suggesting?

The idea is nice but you come back to the same issues of someone organising such an event and enough people attending to make it worthwhile.
I don't know if the lack of success previously was due to overreaching ambitions; there is also the issue of competition with various shows throughout the country, all of which give the punters what they want.

There seem to be a few events organised by small groups of individuals, usually from a shared group like this one. They seem to work by someone organising it and often because attendees being willing to fork out for a contribution to venue hire, accommodation travel etc.

It's probably pertinent to say here why I probably wouldn't attend, as it's linked to why I never got around to contributing to the Journal.
Life gets in the way. Time and money are limited, work and family demand commitment. I admire people who can do all that AND find the time to write articles for or edit the Journal. Some people get to almost every war games show. For me I am lucky if I get some time at the weekend to paint or model.
I don't think I'm unique; I would love to be able to do more but cannot see myself having the time until I'm so old I don't have the energy (or tolerance!).
Neil

Neil

I`m pretty sure your right (from my suspect memory) I went to two Bovington shows, to be honest i don`t think the SOTCW had actual games running, but Mark W had a table selling magaines and subscriptions (though he wasn`t very approachable or chatty), did get to meet Colin Rumford, Richard Marsh, Stuart from Battlefield Miniatures and put faces to a few names i knew through the Journal.

I attended three "Gatherings" in Sheffield - two at a pub (a former barracks) and one at a games store, the last was last was really depressing with only about 6 attendents, we could only run a single game did get to meet John Dowman, Rob Connolly, Rob Rowell (who quit shortly there-after - may have been something I said?? ), Neil, Phil Gray, Richard Crawley - all supporters and contributors to The Journal

More recently Pete, Will and Richard Crawley tried to organise "big games" at the Broughton show "Gauntlet" - they ran "Salerno, italy WW2", Andrevia (a modern Balkans type affair), Siege of peking, Vietnam and a Rif War game run by someone else over 6 succesive yrs - so we did try.....

The most players and members we ever had attend was 8 (including those running the game), and although the weekends were great fun, it was very soul sapping

Richard still runs his sheffield based big game "Crisis" each year, unfortunately I`ve never managed to attend any of these as life just got too busy for a whole weekend off

Don`t know waht else to say really - we did try

Panzer21 wrote: ↑

Sat Jun 30, 2018 7:12 am

SFFWS had Bifrost and SOTCW had a southern show at Bovington and tried a northern show at Elvington

The problem with Elvington, (in my mind), was it cost £10.00 to enter the museum, so if you just wanted to come for the wargames or see the traders, you had to pay to gain access to the main museum first...and if you have a family of four, that's a lot of dosh to fork out.

Grant