Originally posted to Miniature Trading on December 7th, 2017
Pirates CSG History Wiki
I had an idea recently. I LOVE naval history, especially during the Age of Sail. I like reading books about the topic of course, but also the convenience of going on Wikipedia and reading about various wars and battles.
I would like to start a “Pirates CSG Naval History Wiki” that documents games in a new format. It would pretty much be completely derived from Battle Reports, but it would be in a Wiki-style format almost exactly the same as a Wikipedia entry.
I’m mostly doing this out of a pure passion for playing, BR’s, naval history, and my/our own “alternate history” that parallels the actual Age of Sail. It’s a VERY long-term project, and I have TON of other Pirate things to do first. Not to mention that my older (non-campaign game) BR’s are ruined due to the photobucket crash, and I would also like to work on that (likely replacing them with videos instead of redoing picture links only to have postimages.org disappear suddenly). It could be open for others to edit so everyone could add their own battles and games to the full “history of Pirates CSG”.
This is exactly the type of thing that I won’t have time for, the type of thing that will be put off, and the type of thing that won’t ever be finished (although, the latter is partially since you could just keep adding to the wiki with every game if you wanted to). 
However, I wanted to put the idea out there since I’ll probably start it soon and at least figure out how to format the wiki and start doing things slowly but surely. (not expecting any comments here haha)
| xerecs wrote: |
| Interesting idea. Like super battle reports. XD I’ll help when I can, but as you said this is an ambitious undertaking….. |
Yeah… I love the statistical side of things too, so trying to have X ships per side, losses/casualties/etc would be cool to document. I just love the thought of creating our own Wikipedia-style alternate history. It would be fun to tell the story of the battles and wars in a past tense where we can analyze the effect the battle had for the rest of the game/etc. Also, we could keep track of how many battles each faction has won and see how successful each is against specific factions and whatnot. We could also expand the wiki to have pages for certain islands, like The Flat for example. (“The Flat was an island in the middle of the Sea of Karkuda that was fought over by the French and Americans during Command the Oceans…”)
| karningul wrote: |
| It’s not exactly what you’re talking about, but I’d love to see a compilation of the story elements that unfolded over the course of the game. Try to make sense of what happened to the various factions and characters over the life of the game through the little bits of flavor text that were on the cards.
I’m pretty sure no real-life pirate remained in the profession over such a wide geographical range as our Jack Hawkins. |
Check out this wiki started by godmason! 
I’d like to contribute there as well, but I’m much more a fan of epic games than the flavor text (which I still love, don’t get me wrong).
| pariah wrote: |
I think it’d be cool. I don’t think it’ll get a huge following, or participation rate, even from the active community; but, for those that do add to it, and for yourself, it’ll be worth it once it gets that half a dozen, dozen, two dozen, etc. on there for the community to look back on.  |
I’m not expecting it to; it’s literally almost a long-term gift to myself. XD I just love the thought of having “my own Wikipedia” as far as history goes, but of course for this game since there are already entries on the real battles fought in the Age of Sail. With the new year approaching, I’m thinking about doing an “anniversary” approach: creating pages as the days of past battles approach (for example, I would create an entry for the Experimental cumulative game in January and just go down the list of battles and games throughout the year). Unfortunately I certainly won’t have time to keep up that pace (especially during the summer craziness when a ton of CG’s have been played), but it’s a super long-term project I’m excited to embark upon.
12/28/2017: Endless time commitment ahead… XD
I have a new idea on this. In addition to making pages for battles and wars, I could make pages for individual ships. Through the years almost every ship I own has appeared in at least one campaign game, with collection veterans like HMS Titan appearing in almost ALL of them. 
This provides an opportunity for something I might call “Ship Chronicles”. For example, I can recall that the Grendel was beat up by a huge iceberg in the FN anniversary game, and then fought the Cursed in multiple battles in Command the Oceans. Telling a ship’s story could help bring them to life and almost provide an “alternate flavor text” type of thing. Of course the main problem would be using ships again in games after they’ve sunk in others, but I guess we could just say the faction rebuilt the ship.
1/16/2019: Update
As I republish this on my fansite here, I have gotten even busier and have literally dozens of Pirates CSG tasks and goals to accomplish LONG before I’d ever even be able to start a massive project like this. Besides, I’d rather just play THC instead for the time being. I’d love to do this someday, but it will probably be near the bottom of my priority list for DECADES… maybe look for something on this in the 2060’s or something lol. (assuming I should still be around then) In addition, given the potential demise of wiki’s, it would definitely be something I’d have to own myself. I would make sure to own the domain (and maybe more than that) in order to even start something like this that would be a lot of work. Who knows, maybe I could even make it work here on Pirates with Ben?
Feel free to comment your thoughts on this idea in the section below. I’ll make sure to respond!
-Admiral A7XfanBen