DEV - playing the unplayed!

[Matt W]

OK, this is a serious question for players and PG-HQ users. Obviously Daniel and I are playing PG pretty constantly, yet our plays are NOT showing on the statistics. As I mentioned earlier most of our playing has been in the form of development which means that:

1. In many cases we do not play a scenario through to its final stages as we have played it far enough to know that it is competitive, historical (to the extent that such history exists), necessary to the story being told, and fun. As a result, our "play" doesn't have a win or loss necessarily but could have some value to the players through AAR notes, etc.

2. In other cases we played the scenario nearly to completion and have drawn some conclusions about tactics, etc., again possibly having value to the group. In these cases we might have a winner, but have changed the designed victory conditions to provide better balance. Therefore the win/loss statistics might not be final.

3. In some circumstances we may have enjoyed the scenario as designed and played it to a decision.

I am curious as to how you (all) would want this information catalogued. As developers and the source of at least some of what you see in the published games, we are probably inclined to rate the scenarios higher than other players might. I know that one can look at the statistics without designer/developer ratings but I still want to know what you (all) would like us to do with respect to ratings. I expect that we have some thoughts about some specific tactical solutions (working through terrain, special unit use, etc.) that really don't have a better place to be than in AARs.

Previous developer's notes were posted on the AP website and consisted of the scenario intro, conclusions and one or two sentences about the scenario game play and what was done to the scenario in development. I have tended to provide more of an overview of the product as opposed to a terse statement as to what we "messed with" scenario by scenario.

My suggestion as to how this knowledge should be entered is:

1. In cases where we played a scenario nearly to completion because we really liked it and our changes, to the extent we made any, were tweaking it as opposed to anything major, is that we enter the data as plays since we were almost exclusively players in the development process. This will actually not be a large component of the plays.

2. In cases where we didn't play the scenario through because we thought it was all set and didn't need much adjustment, do not enter anything. We don't have a "winner".

3. In some cases we might feel that there need to be tactical notes, etc. (e.g. the use of Land Cruisers, or how to negotiate the jungle) and there is no good place to log those (since we didn't play a scenario all the way through) we might have a place in the PG-HQ forums to place a developer's discussion. There we could provide the ability to have an ongoing discussion with the development team that both helps the players understand the intent or some of the nuances of special situation but also provide a dialogue between the players and developers which can only continue to improve the product.