"HMGS Cyber Wars" Topic

All HMGS members will have received an announcement for Cyber Wars being held on July 23-26.

link

My group intends to put on a virtual game. What do people think of this event?

TRU

Where's the "thumbs up button" here?

:)

Love it

Good idea. They're doing it on Facebook though, which lets me out.

Just doesn't move the needle for me. I greatly appreciate their efforts and hope that many others can take some enjoyment out of it. Look forward to the next actual convention, whenever that may be.

Facebook is just something I refuse to support, I hope people have fun and i would have run something if it had not been a Facebook event.

I will be supporting Games Expo and GenCon virtual conventions.

And how much does HMGS intend to charge people to play games from home on their computers? I've stopped contributing to their ridiculousness years ago.

Not on FB so I'd be out.

Yep, their using facebum means I won't be attending. What a bummer, in more ways than one. Definitely a poor choice of platforms, especially since there are wonderful ways to get games in via the internet without using facebum.

And that name seems so odd for a military miniature convention. There had to be something better than that, especially with all the wackos out there looking to mess up people's computers and software and such.

At the Lets Roll Con there was more than one piece of software being used for games. There were even links to various vendors who were supporting the convention, and they offered discounts for making purchases. And there were links to how-to lectures, and live podcasts, these were great!

There's talk of having another convention by those folks this fall, and that is soon enough for me. Besides, I've been using Zoom for games, five in the last 2 months, and plan to continue.

Yes that name seems like a pretty poor choice.

Sorry, no Facebook. I've tried several times on account of the ODMS guys' cons, but I'm techno roadkill. I always end up ripping FB out by the roots.

If you read the post from HMGS, it says that games are being run on a variety of platforms. I'm guessing that Facebook is just going to be the linking site to those games. Also, depending on how they have it set up, you don't necessarily need a Facebook account to access the Facebook page. Many pages are public and can be accessed without an account. It is also possible to get a free email account and set up a Facebook account that you don't use for anything else.

As to the original question, I think this is a great idea. It can actually bring gamers from all over the world together, without the travel issues and associated costs (even without the pandemic). Anything that actually helps foster new games and players is a good idea.

It's not the expense, pvi99th. If you have ANY sort of FB account, they're allowed to do research on you--and to sell that information to anyone they please.

Which, of course, they do. I'd as soon sign on with a foreign intelligence service: the effect would be the same, except that they'd pay me. By the wonders of FB, I actually pay to have my privacy invaded.

Yep, read the email received with the odd name for the convention on it, and read the website. Perhaps if there is another way to participate, great. Except if it means accessing facebum, nope, so we'll see.

Heard if you use facebum at all, even pages made public, they still track your info, which isn't surprising. Not interested in facebum making money off of me in any way.

Yep you have to opt out if you don't want them tracking your non-FB activity.

Regarding "virtual cons" in general I'm less interested than a con I would have to go to in person. I would most likely buy stuff from vendors participating and hearing lectures and interviews, but not playing. I would register though to get a savings from participating vendors and the lectures/interviews. I've been playing on fantasy grounds for rpg action and it just doesn't have the same feel or interaction.

Oh that's interesting, hadn't learned that yet. So if you're on facebum they'll even track your non-facebum activity. More reason not be on facebum.

@pvi99th

I dont much care about info tracking. Anybody tries tracking my info is liable to die of boredom. I'm like the Pulsifer character in Good Omens. Any attempt at doing anything tech ends in frustration and disaster. I retired 3 months early to skive out of having to learn a bunch of new computer garbage.

Facebook, Facebook lite, Facebook for kids, Facebook Jr.
They're all non-starters as far as I'm concerned.

If there is a more plug and play platform they're planning to use,…maybe.

I applaud the attempt to do on on-line convention.
I deplore ANY use of FB in that attempt.

+1 to PJ's comments.

FYI, not all parts of "HMGS Cyber Wars 2020" depends on Facebook.* The "Virtual War College" is currently available directly from the HMGS web page. Go to "Programs" and click on "HMGS Videos" for a variety of lectures and reports. Videos include lectures from the HMGS War College at Historicon 2019. Speakers and topics include the following:

Jared Fishman on Historical Gaming in the Classroom;

Paul Westermeyer on the History of Wargaming; and

Nick Lloyd on the Second Punic War.

There are also other videos from Little Wars TV and the New York Wargaming Association (NYWA). Other lectures should be posted in the near future.

Enjoy.

*An extremely poor platform for communications for an organization which mainly consists of independently minded, social media averse males over 50, as evidenced by the comments above.

"…independently minded, social media averse males over 50…"

Hey! I resemble that remark.

I'm not adverse to social media – I'm very adverse to Facebook

For all the "I don't use FB because I don't want them to collect my data" some clarification:

What sort of data do you think the social media is collecting? Your banking information? What info are you giving them?

If you are on the internet and think by staying off of Face Book, no one is collecting data on you, then think again.

Do you use Google as your search engine? Do you use Chrome or Internet Explorer as your browser? Do you ever go onto Ebay, Amazon, Kijiji, Youtube, Reverb, or use Netflix or Amazon Prime? Congrats they all collect data on you and that list is nowhere near exhaustive.

The data collected is browsing preferences in order to advertise to you. For instance, if you belong to a "Wargaming in the Black Powder Era" FB group, then FB may suggest an "ACW Wargaming" or Napoleonic" gaming group to you. That's it.

If you are paranoid, you can always get a free Gmail address that you only use for FB and get yourself a good VPN. If you do internet banking you should have a VPN anyways.

Hi Bowman nice to see you posting again. All good points.

;)

I just don't like the Facebook business model and what it has meant for democratic elections that can be meddled with. I appreciate it can also do good but it's just not my thing and even less so based upon how it can be used to harm.

YMMV

holien,

I'm certainly not trying to encourage FB use against anyone's will. I do discuss this with my friend, TheKing30, who is also averse to it's use. His comments are directly above.

Oh and thanks for the support. I much appreciate the kind words.

If you guys won't use Facebook, I won't even mention the HMGS TikTok dance party *ducks*

Sundance… I believe the cost for each event will be zero.

I intend to run my game via Microsoft Teams (not completely decided). The organizers will connect Players with GMs.

Be open minded and give it a try. I don't know how it will turn out, but am willing to give it a try.

TRU

FYI, the HMGS Round Table at Cyber Wars has an excellent list of speakers on a variety of topics.

Well done, HMGS.

Enjoy.

Bowman is dillusional that no one is collecting data from Facebook…the HMGS virtual convention will be seen by virtually no one.

Sundance… believe the cost will be zero.

I intend to run my game via Microsoft Teams (not completely decided. The organizers will connect Players with GMs.

Be open minded and give it a try.

TRU

Bowman is dillusional that no one is collecting data from Facebook

Try reading what I wrote again, please.

Hey Bowman,

I hope all is well and you have recovered from your delusional spell.

I am personally inviting you to our Rev War game (Not sure on our 2nd Game yet) at Cyber Wars this November. We are using Google meets (Since I am not a facebooker) but Google will still record all our meta-data! Our last game we had players from around Philly/NJ and one surfer dude from Hawaii checked in to see the game.

Convention Director AAR- Cyber Wars in Aug.
I'd like to include the following highlights:

We had four days of virtual gaming across a variety of platforms. We had twenty games, all of which had enough players to run through the games.

We had a virtual club room in which we were able to highlight nine different clubs.

We had a virtual painting competition with 26 entrants, who submitted 66 entries between 6 different categories. Our vendors provided excellent prize support for this competition.

We had a virtual Hobby Room in which we posted 7 videos. Greg Zuniga ran a live Twitch stream on Friday night, and James Wappel live streamed on Twitch for over 15 hours for us.

No Dice No Glory coordinated the HMGS Round Table for us. These live events ran from Thursday evening, all the way through Sunday evening. We had a total of 18 different presentations from podcasters, historians, game designers and presidents of major gaming companies. Over four hundred people watched the videos live. No Dice No Glory uploaded all the presentations within 30 minutes of the evening's presentations ending on their YouTube channel. As of July 26, 628 people had watched videos from the event.

We had a virtual vendor hall with 105 vendors listed, 24 of which offered either a show discount, prize support for our painting competition, or both.

We created a CYBËR WÅRS Facebook page which gathered 243 likes, and a CYBËR WÅRS Lounge group for people to talk about CYBËR WÅRS which gathered 130 members.

We created a webpage on the HMGS website which had our virtual games, Round Table events, and vendors so those members who don't use Facebook could access CYBËR WÅRS.

Recap-
We had twenty games x 4-5 players- 80-100 people > 0
Painting Competitions- 26 entrants > 0
Video seminars- 628 people had watched videos from the event. > 0
CYBËR WÅRS Facebook page which gathered 243 likes > 0
CYBËR WÅRS Lounge group gathered 130 members > 0
Not bad for their first attempt at this form of Convention. (Sorely miss Historicon and Fall-In 2020)

Looking forward to improving on Cyber Wars 2.0- Nov 12-15!
Will send you an personal invite off line to ensure you "Game in PA" (Virtually) in 2020!!!

+1 114th Pa.

Is anyone doing this? I looked at both sites and could not find any info on dealers.

Considering this started yesterday, kind of quiet. Any feedback so far?

So did anyone do this? I checktg into the site. Many of the links to dealers did not work. Some, you could only cut and paste. A few worked. I did not see any specials on the pages I visited.

There was some sort of chat site, but you had to give it lots of info to get signed in. I passed.

Not sure how the rest of it really worked as I kind of lost interest at that point. Perhaps others had different experiences. No one posted anything here yet.

Actually, it sounds like HMGS' CYBER WARS was a big hit (again).

FYI, Col. Bill did an article about CW for Wargamer.com. You can get all the details there.

I'll let him take the well deserved credit (and post a link). Very nice AAR, Col. Bill. Thanks.

And "well done" to all those at HMGS who made CYBER WARS 2.0 a success.

The games went very well. I played in Tom Vielott's Thursday evening and Saturday afternoon games. Tom has played in several of my Herero and Nama games at HMGS conventions, and he translated one of my Herero War scenarios – "Otjihinamaparero: the Threatened Flank" – to Tabletop Simulator.

If you go to the article on the CYBER WARS convention at wargamer.com, and go to the paragraph entitled "THE FUTURE", the first image in that paragraph is from one of the Herero War games:

link

As you can see, Tom did a great job in taking the map from the Otjihinamaparero scenario from the Herero War book and rendering the two terraces of the Hereros' Rock Wall. Tom did a great job gamemastering and the players had a lot of fun.

The image is from the Saturday game, Turn 3, during the Fire Phase. How do I know it's from the Saturday game, not the Thursday game? Because I recognize the two blue Herero units and one tan/brown Herero unit on the lower terrace that obliterated my Schutztruppen in the valley below.

How do I know it's Turn 3, during the Fire Phase? Because in the valley I see two Schutztruppen figures in one unit near the wall (in the valley, between the two green trees) and a second 4-figure Schutztruppe unit to the south (just below the curved red line in the valley).

Those are my units. I started Turn 3 with a 3-man Schutztruppe unit and a 4-man Schutztruppe unit: only 7 of my original 16 figures still alive.

I ended Turn 3 with only a single 2-man unit (the one that started out with 3 figures): only 2 of my original 16 figures still alive! One tends to remember that carnage – for the rest of one's bleeping life!

And that's how I know it's Saturday, Turn 3, during the Fire Phase!

We Germans ended up marginally winning the Saturday afternoon game, or more accurately marginally not losing, but decisively winning the earlier game Thursday night. I'll be posting AAR's later on this week.

Roy