Renaming The War Room

[Lone_Garurumon]

Hey everybody, as you may have seen in the announcements, TWR is getting a little bit of a promotion in the coming forum restructuring. It is now becoming its own section as opposed to being tucked away as an F&G subsection, along with a slight content expansion in an effort to include a wider variety of strategic games such as more long-form games in the style of the Defeat the Boss system pioneered by Enzap and Snowy. Though our main focus is still, and will likely forever be, mafia.

With these updates however, we’ve had a few concerns with the name of the section. Namely that its title is kind of intense in tone, and a tad… Vague as to what you’ll actually find inside. It works fine once you actually know the place, but it’s not obvious to a person who’s never seen it before. A prospective user could quite easily look at the title, become confused and decide it’s not worth the effort to solve, and then just go on with their day not sparing us a second thought, even if they were a person who’d otherwise be interested if they could understand the title. Which is not a desirable outcome when we want an active and thriving section.

So, basically, we’re considering renaming the section to make it more obvious at a glance what kinds of games you’ll be finding here, and we’d love to give you guys the chance to get involved and offer your suggestions and feedback on renaming. What we’re looking for in the title is something that’s both clear about what kind of content you can expect in the section (being mafia and general strategy games), as well as fun and light-hearted to suit the general mood of the section.

Some ideas thrown around by staff include:

• The Game Table
• The Strategy Room
• The Strategic Retreat

Feel free to give feedback on which of these ideas you like most, or give some suggestions of your own, or maybe you feel like The War Room is obvious enough already. Whatever your feelings let us know! The TWR staff will take a look at all of your suggestions and feedback and discuss things amongst ourselves, and then we’ll hopefully have a decision for the new section name for the move.

 

[Soulmaster]

I'm not that active in here anymore but I still have opinions.

I believe that The War Room should be kept as the title. I know in the past it was The War Room (Mafia Games) and if something along those lines can be done again that would be great. Because it keeps TWR, which is what all of us see it as, but the parenthetical would give a little more context. It could be (Strategy Games) rather than Mafia but it still gets the point across. I'll also make a point, it takes quite a bit for new names to stick, I know of a few other sections here on BMG and other forums that went through a name change in years past, only to switch back after a bit because it ended up no one liked it.

To go hand in hand with this, the forum description. This description has not been updated since the original War Room forum was created (at least not in the 8 years I've been playing here). Might make a change to that instead to give an easier time to new people and actually ya know, describe what we do alittle better. Because "Home of the Bulbagarden Mafia" while sounds funny, ain't that descriptive.

 

[Rainbow Cloud]

Think it's probably best sticking with The War Room, everyone knows it as that and it's a good name, changing it will cause more confusion and seems an unnecessary change.

 

[ZinnLav]

Think it's probably best sticking with The War Room, everyone knows it as that and it's a good name, changing it will cause more confusion and seems an unnecessary change.

"Everyone knows it as that" does nothing to tell new players what it means.
When I first joined the forums it reminded me of those big confusing board games like Risk. Mafia is much more simpler than that.
Only time I've ever had to think a lot in Mafia was as a host or in big OC games or when I'm Mafia and have to lie.

Especially that description, it's very cold and doesn't tell you much about the section at all.
Only reason I ever even went into the section is because Lone told me that it was where you could play Werewolf (which I was playing in person at the time) otherwise I probably wouldn't of even given the section a second look.

 

[Rainbow Cloud]

"Everyone knows it as that" does nothing to tell new players what it means.
When I first joined the forums it reminded me of those big confusing board games like Risk. Mafia is much more simpler than that.
Only time I've ever had to think a lot in Mafia was as a host or in big OC games or when I'm Mafia and have to lie.

Especially that description, it's very cold and doesn't tell you much about the section at all.
Only reason I ever even went into the section is because Lone told me that it was where you could play Werewolf (which I was playing in person at the time) otherwise I probably wouldn't of even given the section a second look.

Why not just call it The War Room - Strategy Games?

 

[ReturnofMCH]

personally I agree with the compromise of what soulmaster said by changing the description and adding a parenthesis that says (strategy games), it gives a better idea of what we do here without sacrificing identity.

that being said strategic retreat is a pun worthy of ME, it makes sense and is punderful

 

[Enzap]

I'd like to clarify a bit further the reason we're proposing this change. A big factor of promoting TWR back to a full section is the opportunity to expand into new territories we haven't before. This means trying out new styles of games and hopefully attracting new community members. Not all of these games are going to necessarily be "strategy" games in the traditional sense. We've talked especially about pushing more story or adventure style games, think kinda D&Desque. While these still might involve some strategy, they're not going to have that same PvP element that mafia and similar games have, so in my mind The War Room may not fit very well with this direction.

I know it might not be comfortable to think about the section taking on a new identity, but put yourself in the shoes of a new user for a moment. If you're just here for a casual good time, the name The War Room can easily come across as intimidating and misleading, especially if we start introducing new, more strategy-light games. Of course the current community matters, but anything we can do to be more inviting to new faces would go a long way. The name change is definitely not a done deal, but it is something I would appreciate if we at least gave a fair chance and explored the possibilities of before dismissing it completely.

 

[ZinnLav]

that being said strategic retreat is a pun worthy of ME, it makes sense and is punderful

Might have something to do with it being his suggestion

Exactly as Enzap mentions, Mafia is easy enough to even just drop in for seasonal events like Halloween or December Holidays.
I've been looking at ways to promote TWR to players outside of the current community for awhile now, occasionally advertising other people's and my own games on the Bulbagarden & Elaria Discords.
This sort of change is a big one that I'm for. I've grown to love the name The War Room, but at first I was confused and when you throw the word War around you assume it's something very serious when in fact TWR is quite the opposite, a mostly silly, chaotic place where people have fun.

 

[Enzap]

For what it's worth I'm also a big fan of the name Strategic Retreat. It's possibly my favorite ME pun to date

 

[Mijzelffan]

I got sent this thread and had to reset my password to post here, I haven't posted here in at least half a decade but I guess I'll give my input as this board is basically my baby. I didn't come up with the war room name, Rayne did I think, I personally would've probably just named it something like "Mafia" so that it was immediatly clear that this was the mafia board. One of the reasons for naming it the War Room, besides it probably sounding cooler, was the idea that other larger strategy games could also be hosted here. I think that was also a requirement from the fun&games mods at the time. So it's cool to see that, despite taking years, the other strategy games are finally getting some traction haha.

I agree that the War Room is kind of a vague name. I like The Strategic Retreat a lot as a name and I would not mind the name change, though I wonder if it will make it that much clearer that this is a board for mafia type games than it is right now. You could argue that the board description will make it more clear what it's about, but you could also use that as an argument to not change the board name at all. Unfortunately I think the best way to immediatly make it clear what the board is about is to give it a super descriptive name, like "Mafia & Strategy Games".

I peronally think the best options are The Strategic Retreat, keeping it The War Room or changing it to something descriptive akin to Mafia & Strategy Games depending on what people prefer. I don't mean to dictate what should happen as I haven't been here in ages, but maybe my input will be useful to some people still mulling over what they prefer. ^^

 

[Enzap]

I wouldn't say clarity is the number one reason we're making this change. Plenty of other sections have names that take some creative liberties and aren't just purely descriptive. We'll have an updated section description to clarify exactly what is found here. I think it's more important that the name catches users attention and matches the vibe of the section. I know that's not something that can really be measured, but as people have said earlier, The War Room name just has a bit of a rougher and more serious tone than I think we actually have in the section.

So yeah, clarity is important, but I think clarity of tone trumps clarity of content.

 

[Snowy]

I've added a poll, if you haven't already seen it.

 

[HumanDawn]

The War Room (Mafia & Strategy Games) is a much better name in keeping both its uniqueness and giving a better idea of what it means.

 

[Enzap]

Thank you everyone for your participation in helping us decide on a new name for The War Room. After much deliberation, the staff has chosen to stick close to our roots and we will be using the name The War Room (Strategy and Story Games).

While we hope to see community growth through the changes we're implementing, we decided it was best to honor the history of the existing community and keep the identity of The War Room. However, some clarification in the title itself seemed necessary so new users would easily have a general idea what they would find here. Strategy games refer to the classic games we've hosted such as Mafia as well as some of the newer additions like Pokémon Chess and Defeat the Boss. Story games may come as a bit of a surprise. As you may know, we are disbanding the Roleplaying Games forum and redistributing its content. None of the current threads from that section will be moved here, but we hope to bring a bit of the spirit of roleplaying to The War Room by expanding on the types of games you may find here. We've discussed the possibility of more D&D style games and other story or character driven games that are more collaborative and less about strategy and PvP action. The new name of the section is intended to reflect both the traditional style of play here as well as the new directions we hope to expand in.

We will also be updating the forum description to better match our current goals for the section. We hope you enjoy the new content we'll be bringing and if you have any ideas for games or game systems you'd like to pitch to the staff you are more than welcome to do so at any time.

 

[Snowy]

Going to go ahead and lock this. If you have any thoughts to share on this subject, feel free to share them in The Situation Room 4.0.

... Why does a room have a room inside it anyway?