Dominion Strategy Forum

Dominion => Dominion General Discussion => Topic started by: Beyond Awesome on October 18, 2017, 06:04:32 pm

Title: Dominion Round Table: New Dominion Blog Article Format-This month's topic Donate
Post by: Beyond Awesome on October 18, 2017, 06:04:32 pm
Hi everyone,

I've created a new Round Table blog article. Essentially, various people chime in on a topic and give their thoughts. This month, the focus was on Donate. You can read that by clicking here https://dominionstrategy.com/2017/10/18/dominion-round-table-donate/ (http://dominionstrategy.com/2017/10/18/dominion-round-table-donate/).

Anyway, if you have any thoughts or suggestions, feel free to post them. In the future, one idea I have to make the flow of Round Table discussions better is to have a set start and end time.

Anyway, feel free to discuss the Round Table.
Title: Re: Dominion Round Table: New Dominion Blog Article Format-This month's topic Donate
Post by: dedicateddan on October 18, 2017, 07:32:14 pm
I played a few games on the Donate/Market Square board and was surprised at how well Summon/Black Market/Menagerie played.

With unique cards coming out of the Black Market deck, Menagerie is almost always active, and Summon lets you start each turn with a few Villages before you find more in the Black Market deck.

On that note - I actually like skipping Peasant on this board. The terminal space is pretty tight early on and later on the deck builds up quickly, even without Teacher tokens.
Title: Re: Dominion Round Table: New Dominion Blog Article Format-This month's topic Donate
Post by: Cave-o-sapien on October 18, 2017, 07:37:45 pm
Hi everyone,

I've created a new Round Table blog article. Essentially, various people chime in on a topic and give their thoughts. This month, the focus was on Donate. You can read that by clicking here https://dominionstrategy.com/2017/10/18/dominion-round-table-donate/ (http://dominionstrategy.com/2017/10/18/dominion-round-table-donate/).

Anyway, if you have any thoughts or suggestions, feel free to post them. In the future, one idea I have to make the flow of Round Table discussions better is to have a set start and end time.

Anyway, feel free to discuss the Round Table.

Why is the Donate image on the article so crappy?
Title: Re: Dominion Round Table: New Dominion Blog Article Format-This month's topic Donate
Post by: J Reggie on October 18, 2017, 07:46:48 pm
Hi everyone,

I've created a new Round Table blog article. Essentially, various people chime in on a topic and give their thoughts. This month, the focus was on Donate. You can read that by clicking here https://dominionstrategy.com/2017/10/18/dominion-round-table-donate/ (http://dominionstrategy.com/2017/10/18/dominion-round-table-donate/).

Anyway, if you have any thoughts or suggestions, feel free to post them. In the future, one idea I have to make the flow of Round Table discussions better is to have a set start and end time.

Anyway, feel free to discuss the Round Table.

Why is the Donate image on the article so crappy?

It looks like the one from the rulebook.
Title: Re: Dominion Round Table: New Dominion Blog Article Format-This month's topic Donate
Post by: Cave-o-sapien on October 18, 2017, 08:02:06 pm
I really enjoyed the first part, prior to the Kingdom-specific discussions, but after that point it became a bit unwieldy for me. For one thing, it was difficult to keep track of which kingdom was being referenced and what was in the kingdom without constantly scrolling back to the image.

Maybe there's a better way to visually present this sort of longform Kingdom analysis. Or perhaps in this instance, a brief summary of each person's opening strategy would be better.
Title: Re: Dominion Round Table: New Dominion Blog Article Format-This month's topic Donate
Post by: trivialknot on October 18, 2017, 08:33:31 pm
The round table is a great idea.  I would put a "read more" tag somewhere, so that the post doesn't appear in its entirety when you look at the front page.  In Wordpress, you just insert "<!--more-->" into the html.
Title: Re: Dominion Round Table: New Dominion Blog Article Format-This month's topic Donate
Post by: Deadlock39 on October 18, 2017, 08:35:19 pm
Some javascript to float the kingdom image at the top as you scroll through the discussion for it would be fancy.
Title: Re: Dominion Round Table: New Dominion Blog Article Format-This month's topic Donate
Post by: jsh357 on October 18, 2017, 09:40:49 pm
I'm not really a fan of the format, at least with so many people talking. I'd limit it to 3.
Title: Re: Dominion Round Table: New Dominion Blog Article Format-This month's topic Donate
Post by: Beyond Awesome on October 18, 2017, 09:48:52 pm
Yah, less people is probably a good idea for the next one.
Title: Re: Dominion Round Table: New Dominion Blog Article Format-This month's topic Donate
Post by: Beyond Awesome on October 18, 2017, 09:49:04 pm
The round table is a great idea.  I would put a "read more" tag somewhere, so that the post doesn't appear in its entirety when you look at the front page.  In Wordpress, you just insert "<!--more-->" into the html.

Thanks!
Title: Re: Dominion Round Table: New Dominion Blog Article Format-This month's topic Donate
Post by: J Reggie on October 18, 2017, 11:38:53 pm
I really enjoyed it, especially the discussion about the kingdoms. I feel like that's where I got the most insight from. I also loved the range of people you had, although I agree it would also work with slightly fewer people.

I think it would be fine to use next month to talk about the travellers. It might even be refreshing with the inevitable amount of Nocturne content coming our way (not that I'm not excited). And there might be some new insights into how to use travellers with Nocturne cards.
Title: Re: Dominion Round Table: New Dominion Blog Article Format-This month's topic Donate
Post by: markusin on October 18, 2017, 11:51:26 pm
Yeah, it might be hard to digest the kingdom specific discussion from just reading the dialogue. At the time, we all had time some time to think about the boards as we were discussing them, and each board was pondered for maybe 10-15 minutes.
Title: Re: Dominion Round Table: New Dominion Blog Article Format-This month's topic Donate
Post by: tim17 on October 19, 2017, 01:07:57 am
Another situation where I think multiple donates are optimal is with goons. The general approach is to play several goons in a turn, and then buy a bunch of coppers and donate to trash the coppers you just bought.

This could maybe also be viable (though not nearly as good) with merchant guild in place of goons.
Title: Re: Dominion Round Table: New Dominion Blog Article Format-This month's topic Donate
Post by: SevenSpirits on October 19, 2017, 01:30:44 am
I loved this format.

As someone who's only popped into the forums a couple times but enjoys the blog whenever it's updated, it's sometimes hard to tell where a statement lies on the scale of truth to personal opinion, and the certainty with which the writer believes it.

The discussion format gave me a better sense of which aspects of strategy are common knowledge and widely understood, and which aspects are hard and still very much being learned.

For what it's worth, I followed the kingdoms without much issue, and even felt inspired to try them out plus a few more Donate kingdoms.
Title: Re: Dominion Round Table: New Dominion Blog Article Format-This month's topic Donate
Post by: Donald X. on October 19, 2017, 02:01:23 am
One thing you could do is, put the questions in a different font or color or something. Or just bold. You know. Or have some other kind of breaks that accompany them. In the boards section the images divide things, but in the other areas nothing does.
Title: Re: Dominion Round Table: New Dominion Blog Article Format-This month's topic Donate
Post by: faust on October 19, 2017, 02:09:32 am
I would read these just to enjoy Donald X's humor.
Title: Re: Dominion Round Table: New Dominion Blog Article Format-This month's topic Donate
Post by: BBL on October 19, 2017, 06:03:06 am
Thanks for putting all this effort into the blog! I like this format a lot, as I usually do not have the time and / or audio device to listen to the podcasts. With the new format, I get the chance to enjoy  it even if there are no speakers available.
Title: Re: Dominion Round Table: New Dominion Blog Article Format-This month's topic Donate
Post by: Chris is me on October 19, 2017, 08:14:24 am
Take a look at how FiveThirtyEight formats their Slack chat round tables. I think that’s a good way to frame this sort of post.

Also yeah, four people, maybe four plus a host. Also, edit and merge people’s responses together generously.

But like, otherwise this shit is dope.
Title: Re: Dominion Round Table: New Dominion Blog Article Format-This month's topic Donate
Post by: 4est on October 19, 2017, 10:33:15 am
Great job everyone, especially Beyond Awesome, for putting something like this together!  The Round Table format is a really fun way to discuss content, and could work with so many things: talking about individual cards, analyzing a kingdom or a game, discussing broader strategy paradigms like pile control or engine-building, and speculating about how Nocturne cards will interact with the rest of Dominion.  Podcasts and more detailed articles aren't everyone's thing, so having another medium for discussion is cool. 

Chris ninja'd me to referencing FiveThirtyEight's chats (here's a recent example (https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/where-is-the-trump-presidency-headed/))--I really like their format.  Having a more formal host to guide conversation and keep things on track is super important, and yeah, eight is definitely too many people.  FiveThirtyEight usually keeps their round tables to no more than three or four plus a host.  This keeps chats shorter, reduces redundant responses, and gives more space for each person to share.

My only other comment is when discussing kingdoms, it might be better to limit the number of kingdoms analyzed in a single chat.  I get that the point was to show how Donate works in various situations, but five random kingdoms is probably too much for many readers to take in and really follow (or even for those participating in the chat to discuss productively).  Analyzing just one or two kingdoms in-depth at most per chat will probably be more effective and impactful for most readers. 

All that to say, this is an awesome format for blog content, and with a few tweaks, these round table chats could be an excellent space for continued conversation.  Keep up the great work!
Title: Re: Dominion Round Table: New Dominion Blog Article Format-This month's topic Donate
Post by: Polk5440 on October 19, 2017, 12:38:18 pm
Re: redundant responses. It's really ok to completely eliminate duplicate answers from the final transcript or combine 4 people's identical answers into one as part of the editing process. Not everyone has to say something for every question and the editor doesn't have to present every answer even if they do.

I do also prefer round tables to be no more than four plus host.
Title: Re: Dominion Round Table: New Dominion Blog Article Format-This month's topic Donate
Post by: teamlyle on October 19, 2017, 03:43:48 pm
The Round Table is a great idea. Thanks and keep it up, BA!
Title: Re: Dominion Round Table: New Dominion Blog Article Format-This month's topic Donate
Post by: Beyond Awesome on October 19, 2017, 05:09:53 pm
Thanks everyone for your feedback! I am glad to see so many people enjoy this format. Your comments have helped a lot, and I expect that the next Round Table will be all the better due to everyone's suggestions.  8)
Title: Re: Dominion Round Table: New Dominion Blog Article Format-This month's topic Donate
Post by: Beyond Awesome on October 31, 2017, 01:32:27 am
Newest Round Table is up! Today's topic is the Nocturne Preview cards! https://dominionstrategy.com/2017/10/31/dominion-round-table-nocturne-preview-cards/ (https://dominionstrategy.com/2017/10/31/dominion-round-table-nocturne-preview-cards/)
Title: Re: Dominion Round Table: New Dominion Blog Article Format-This month's topic Donate
Post by: Cave-o-sapien on October 31, 2017, 01:46:51 am
This was great! I loved the focused format. Looking forward to the next one.



Quote
markusin: It does have to be said and emphasized how good Imps are. From Devil’s Workshop at least, which can amass them trivially.

drsteelhammer: I didn’t want to make the Impression that they’re weak, they definitely pretty strong. I’m just a little more cautious.

I suspect this capitalization was intentional, and I endorse it.
Title: Re: Dominion Round Table: New Dominion Blog Article Format-This month's topic Donate
Post by: Willvon on November 02, 2017, 02:30:34 pm
This is a great idea.  The format works well.  And the discussion stays on point, rather than devolving into debates on things not really connected to the subject. 

The discussion on Donate was great, but I especially enjoyed the discussion of the Nocturne cards.  I didn't get to play with them online.  So I appreciated getting the different perspectives on the previewed cards.

Thanks again for another great feature on the blog.
Title: Re: Dominion Round Table: New Dominion Blog Article Format-This month's topic Donate
Post by: crj on November 02, 2017, 05:23:12 pm
Good, solid, interesting stuff here!

People have said it's long; people have said it's hard to work out which example kingdom is being discussed. A simple potential solution: split the article up into a preamble then one page per kingdom?