Green Mountain Gamers

A sampling of groups on Green Mountain Gamers.

One of the central elements of the Green Mountain Gamers website is the group. It’s a way for people with similar interests or a common purpose to have their own meeting place. The focus of a group is its forum, where members can carry on conversations and share ideas.

The main advantage is using a group forum for discussion over activity updates is visibility. It’s easier for users and search engines to scan a forum for topics of interest than it is the site activity stream, where items can quickly scroll off the bottom of the page and vanish into the mists of a user’s personal stream.

So what are some ways you can use a group on the Green Mountain Gamers network to your advantage? Consider these examples:

Common Interests

Green Mountain War Gamers is a group here on the site that Matt (@wha2donow) created recently for fans of old school strategy war games: your Advanced Squad Leaders and so forth. Before there wasn’t an easy way for visitors to the site to recognize there were people here discussing those games. Now there’s a one stop shop for that style of gaming. Members can subscribe to the group and be notified of forum posts and such via e-mail, staying on top of conversations without having to remember to check the site.

Regular Gaming Meetups

Groups can also serve as a central point of contact and communication for regular gaming meetups. Such a group might cover a geographical region or area of interest, with forum topics devoted to discussing when they happen and what went on or will happen.

Upper Valley Gamers, Border Board Gamers and Burlington Board Gamers are all examples of geographically-oriented groups used by their members to discuss and promote their game nights and days.

Campaign Headquarters

A group can host a role-playing campaign, too, of both the play by post and face to face varieties. In a tabletop campaign, a group can serve as a central repository of documents — house rules, setting primer, adventure notes, and character details for instance — as well as a communication hub for scheduling the next session. Additionally, the group administrator can close and sticky threads, keeping those threads of house rules and setting details from getting cluttered by chatter. In addition to a group here, Der Chelonian Mobile, the Spelljammer campaign in Bennington, also keeps an external blog to document their adventures.

For play by post role-players, a group’s forum works just like any other on the web. Start a thread and go to town!

Now Go Forth

Anyone can create and run a group here on Green Mountain Gamers. Just go to the Groups directory and click the “Create a Group” button. You’ll be led through the creation process, coming out with a group of your own on the other side.

Have fun with your group! Don’t forget to invite some people to join the fun!