yes, make it automagically happen please.

I'm interested in this now that I am back to fulltime Gearing but I would like to know how the automation would work. How would the games get started? Would veteran players just start a "Welcome" game and all new players that haven't been invited to one be invited automatically, or would new players automatically be invited to a game along with 1 or more veterans?
I'm just curious. I figure most of these games would be on a standard map and you all know how I feel about those maps but if it's something that I would just do once in a while and it wouldn't be a huge commitment I would be interested.
I fear commitment so much I don't even buy milk.

i'd be in for playing every once in while too.

Sign me up for "welcome-wagon/beating up on new guys" duty as well.

Suggestion on how to automate this:

First step -

Make a setting "I will host Welcome games for new players yes/no"

and then -

1) Every time a new player joins the site send them an invitation to join a private, 5 player, 3 day, Global Warfare game

2) When 4 people say that would like to play such a thing then send an invite to all the players who turned their previously mentioned setting to "on"

3) Then when joins we have a game.


This seems like it would work good, but I don't think it would interact seamlessly with the current "invite people to games" process, so maybe something else would work better.

tom wrote: Do you think this process should be automated? Would it work better that way?

Yes.  I would be happy to do this. 

I think that when I look at about 90% of the players play 10 games or less I have to believe they lose interest because they don't know what is going on and they lose too much.  I lost 9 out of my first 10 games just  trying to get a handle on some things, especially the dice.

Personally, I learn better by doing and asking questions, which of course doesn't work well with this site as most of the really good players really don't answer questions about why they do what they do. 

Therefore, you have to be good at reading instructions and then playing.  Or looking at histories of games (hate that, my game time is limited) and trying to figure out why they did what they did.

I had another thought:

Maybe more players, new and experienced, would be willing to do this if the game doesn't count for anything and is just a "free" learning experience.  I know that on some sites they do similar things. 

An example is the Cook's Society on CC.