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The Review Platoon


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I just finished doing a CMBB review at Scenario Depot, and what is interesting to me is that a number of the CMBB scenarios have LOTs of reviews, some have just one or two, others have NONE at all.

And, it addition, as a newbie scenario creator, it was a kick to see my first effort reviewed almost immediately after it was posted.

So, I would like to start The Review Platoon, a loose gathering of CMBB players whose mission is to play, and review, scenarios at the Scenario Depot so that EVERY scenario gets reviewed at least once.

What I would propose is that members of the Platoon commit to the following:

to play and review a scenario once every one or two weeks. If we had 5 volunteers, we could get 100 scenarios reviewed in a calendar year.

And the more volunteers we could get, the faster we could get scenarios reviewed, and then we could add ADDITIONAL reviews to those scenarios that have only one or two reviews.

And of course, the more folks who help out, the greater the variety of our reviews, and the more useful those reviews would be.

I would be happy to organize this, gear up the troops, and assign scenarios to review.

So, e-mail me if you want to join The Review Platoon. Please put "The Review Platoon" in the subject line of the e-mail.

Thanks.

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OGF Keller,

This campaign has my full support and endorsement. Let me know if there is anything I can do to facilitate your efforts.

In addition, have you already thought about establishing a set of standards or a checklist of aspects of a scenario by which your group can evaluate each battle or operation? Perhaps the authors themselves can chime in here and suggest criteria by which the Review Platoon can more easily execute on this idea.

[ January 13, 2003, 09:58 PM: Message edited by: Admiral Keth ]

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Neat idea, I heartily support it.

I used to review every battle I played, and wish others would. Now most of the battles I play are in playtesting at Boots & Tracks, and I don't review those for obvious reasons. Still, I am playing one now by Vader's Jester and another by an outside author, and I will review those when I get done.

Incidentally, when I review a scenario I use the following criteria for my numbers:

1. If I would not change anything in a given category, I give it a 10. If I would recommend very minor changes, a 9, etc. A lot of changes could reduce a given category score to a 5 or so. However, a really horrible grade in a category means that IMO the designer really screwed up.

2. If I played PBEM, I leave the AI section at "0", so it is not graded. I do not try to "estimate" how it would play against the AI.

3. Unless I played the scenario more than once, I do not grade the replayability. Too many people give a low replayability score to an otherwise excellent scenario and the scores consequently drawn down as a result. (If I were to make a recommendation for a change to the Admiral it would be primarily for the elimination of this category)

jw

[ January 13, 2003, 10:10 PM: Message edited by: jwxspoon ]

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OGF Keller,

I volunteer to be the medic. Where do I sign up ?

btw, a couple of comments since you are a scenario creator:

* pls give ample number of turns unless historical, but I understand alot of battles took longer than 25 mins (turns)

* doan assume all players are grogs

* historical would be preferred, but i understand a lot of research is needed

cheers!

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Originally posted by jwxspoon:

Hey Keith,

Any hope of getting the Author's Only section up and running?

smile.gif

Keep up the great work!!!!

jw

Yep, I've got it 2/3rds complete (was working on it this morning). I just have to make sure all of the CMBB Battle and Operation fields are on the new forms. The new Authors Only section will no longer be email address dependent, so if you change your email address, you can still get to your scenarios. I have 1 minor detail to work out with regards to new scenario submissions, but that's just a procedural thing (1 more field for the authors to fill in). I was going to be working on my 15 gallon all-grain homebrewing system this weekend, but I'll dedicate that time to putting all of this back online.
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Remember, the key principle here is to get reviews done for scenarios that have NOT YET BEEN REVIEWED up until this point. Great scenarios that they are, we don't need another review for Hill 312 or....grrrrr....Jagermeister (I'm sorry Tim, but I give it a 10 on the MADDENING meter!!!)

So, here's is my general plan:

First, we will start with just scenarios.

Second, I will parcel out to each platoon member scenarios against the AI ONLY. Each of you will have a group to do. If by some chance a scenario that is against the AI has been reviewed by the time you get to it, then move onto the next.

Third, when we have completed the vs AI scenarios, we with then do the two player ones. We will start from small, to medium, and then, last but not least, large. I will try to host one TCP/IP game per week, trying to solicit players outside The Platoon.

Fourth, we will move onto operations.

That should keep us going for quite a while.

To come: some "standards" for review so we have a bit of consistency. I will e-mail them to you for comment, and when we reach consensus, I will publish them in this forum.

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Originally posted by Michael Dorosh:

Admiral - what about enabling a sort of all reviews by a given reviewer? Sometimes I read a particularly good review and I immediately want to see what the guy had to say about other battles.

Technically this is possible, as long as the reviewer maintained the same Reviewer Name/Email Address throughout the system. This seems difficult to enforce, and I especially want to avoid having people log in to submit reviews, as that would stymie most people's urge to review.

I could create a graphical link next to each reviewer's name which, when clicked, would search the battles/operations review database and display the results list in a popup window. I'll add this to the Giant List O' Things To Do.

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I think being able to search the critics is a cool idea, if it's not too much work for the Admiral.

Meanwhile, though I don't want to formally join the platoon (because I can't commit to a specific number of reviews per week/month), I try to review a lot. And what I'd recommend is that reviewer try to target scenarios that have not yet received a single review. It's that first review that brings a scenario into the realm of further discussion.

As I just wrote in the context of a grumpy Mr. Spkr thread about not getting reviews at the CMBB forum:

One thought I have is that everyone try to write the FIRST review of some scenario or other, because reviews and ratings tend to beget other reviews and ratings. I remember writing the first review of Wild Bill Wilder's classic "The Wrong Hill,"--which somehow had gone without any ratings for a long time. This seemed to attract a lot of attention. Quickly it started to get other reviews, and it kept posting high numbers, and now has 25 reviews (and an overall rating of 8.53).

So, be a good guy and write the first review of some scenario....Designer should arguably be leaders in reviewing their colleagues stuff. That can help get the ball rolling.

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You can say that Scenario Designers should review more battles, but you have to remember most of us spend a lot of time working on our own battles. I spend most of my time testing and working on my own battles, maybe 5-10% of my CM time is playing other peoples battles (aside from testing other battles within the design Team). So this could be done, but not always.

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i'd like to throw my 2 cents in saying "great idea"

as a relatively new member to the CM community i can say from first hand experience it's very helpful to look at reviews and comments on scenarios - the shear volume of CMBO scenarios is very daunting

which brings me to my question: i've noticed there are more than a few cmbo scenarios unreviwed as well - are you'll just sticking to cmbb on this effort?

i've bought the bundle and started with cmbo (and plan on sticking with it for awhile before installing cmbb) - so even though it's probably viewed as long in the tooth, i'll be working on playing unreviewed scenarios for cmbo

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