Maybe we could do something like an ‘Explain like I’m 5’ thread where
people could post what they regarded as ‘n00b’ questions and people
could answer.
I’d support reserving a space for more beginner discussion (does seem a lot like the new player discussion thread, though) but I cringe at calling it “Explain like I’m 5” or similar. This is precisely the sort of unwelcoming language we should avoid. Many of the people just starting Netrunner are adults, really smart ones even, learning a complicated game in an intimidating environment. Infantilizing them does not help. It recalls the benign sexism of “so easy your Grandma could do it.”
Possibly. It’s also possible that the adults that would actually feel “infantilized” by the name would also feel that way about the term “beginner” or “basics” or just about anything, really. So what do you propose for a more inclusive name?
That sounds less like a thread specifically “where people could post what they regarded as ‘n00b’ questions and people could answer” and more like something similar to the broad new player help thread that already exists. I believe what @groober was proposing was more narrow in focus than that.
I think we’re in danger of going off-topic. Perhaps my idea is similar enough to the existing ‘new player help’ mega-thread that we don’t need anything else.
It’d be nice to have an L2P thread associated with each “Deck Archetype” thread, so that up-and-coming competitive players could get a bunch of L2P-type content (hopefully including Q&A with well-known players) for whatever netdeck has struck their fancy and be spared the latest and greatest iteration of the “SymVis + 2 QT vs 3 ProCo in PPVP Kate” debate and maybe also moderators could … prune MEMSTRIPS-type content a little more aggressively, and then you could have a bunch of links to said L2P threads in the “New Player” thread.
Except, you know, call them “Deck Primer” threads instead of L2P threads because L2P is combative-flavored gamer jargon.
For cyberpunk, I wouldn’t say liberal, actually. I would say more libertarian, though probably more specifically I would say anarchist, or minarchist, or criminal (which makes it cool that those showed up more or less as the runner factions).
I think honestly, it is probably best and safest to avoid real world politics and religion entirely in any gaming community or you will alienate and cut off groups of people who otherwise would have been good and fun members of that community.
I was referring to values, not politics. Most Netrunner players I’ve met seem to be more liberal in their views on things like drug use and gender roles and that sort of thing. Of course, I play most of my Netrunner in hipster central downtown Minneapolis.
I mean, even the name of the site we’re using to have this discussion is a freaking drug reference.
One thing I want to do, should I ever play ANR at a tournament, is play Stimhack, start yelling “Druuuuuuuuuuugs”, have a friend come out of the audience with a needle filled with saline, and have him inject it into my vein, just for the hilarity.
“Arrrrghghghhgufhgufhguhsdifgjklfsjgfjsklhjkfs! Feel the hacking potential!”
lifestyle games are a tough sell to a lot of people regardless of sex or race. ive taught a lot of people woman and minorities included how to play netrunner and biggest barrier to entry is time. the time footprint for absorbing the cardpool and gettting in enough games to even be moderately skilled is daunting and the groundwork often has to be laid painstakingly with other games first.
one of my best friends who i game with regularly admitted she had a tough time initially playing games because she had to get over what her girlfriends would think and over her own hang ups over what spending so much time playing games made her. she is a very confident and independent person in most scenarios i’ve ever seen her in so this makes me think this is not uncommon. im fully comfortable being thought of as a gamer/nerd/ whatever but that has different ramifications for a woman among other woman which is not something i had considered.
I would venture to say that most netrunner players are more on the liberal side in their politics as well. Also, values and politics do tend to be somewhat intertwined.
If politics essentially boils down to competing ideas about how society should be organised, then surely ideological values are more political than any notion of tribal “party politics” or who voted for who!
While different things tend to attract different types of people in some way or another, so that you might find general tendencies in political outlook amongst your Netrunner chums, I have to say that I am slightly uneasy at the idea of any political mindset being “prominent” (although I can’t tell exactly what you meant by the word). It would be a real shame if any part of the Netrunner community ever had the potential to be seen as uninclusive because of any perception of some dominant political stance or other.
Oh absolutely. I’m from the UK too. It does seem to me as a view from afar that the two-party system in the USA seems to lend itself to an idea that the concept of “politics” just boils down to “Are you a red one or a blue one?” I think in a way the more official parties your country has, the more obvious it is that you can’t ever expect to entirely agree with any of them!
As I say, I wasn’t sure entirely what you meant. I was only really worried that you might be saying that politics itself (whether party politics, social campaigning or whatever) was a prominent part of your Netrunner experience.
Politics in the USA has bred a lot of tribalism so it can get really toxic, even within one of the parties various factions. Would be best to not get into the quagmire of US centric politics.
