Where do we go from here?

[Lago PARANOIA]

You are deeply delusional to suggest the world has changed.

Just so you know, this is the kind of denialism that has made people extra-suspicious and hostile towards your brand of 'let's just go and game'.

Trump is now President. All previous relations and commitments are being re-examined. And a lot of them are found wanting. But that's what happens, man.

[Mistborn]

"Banning politics" in the way reactionary nerds often demand is untenable for the Den, but let's be clear that's not why fbmf did what he did. Rather the discourse in the General Election thread got so bad that our site owner would rather delete MPSIMS than continue read it as part of his mod duties. Like that ought to be a reality check to certain posters whomst I need not name.

[The Adventurer's Almanac]

You are deeply delusional to suggest the world has changed.

Huh? Since when hasn't it changed? Shit changes all the time! Perhaps not enough or in the ways I'd like, but still. You'd be delusional to suggest the world hasn't changed.

[Harshax]

You are deeply delusional to suggest the world has changed.

Just so you know, this is the kind of denialism that has made people extra-suspicious and hostile towards your brand of 'let's just go and game'.

Trump is now President. All previous relations and commitments are being re-examined. And a lot of them are found wanting. But that's what happens, man.

Switched to my computer, Lago. Here we go.

Fuck. You. You motherfuckers just woke up and you're going to tell me what kind of what I feel?

You all have a couple of choices. Frank, I hope you're lurking.

You can, A: disinfect your online existence. Sign-off. Cop-out. Have a crisis of character and create cognitive dissonance around being part of this community and also being a giant sell-out douchebag for leaving it.

Or, B: You can choose to accept that your contributions to this community are valid. You can choose to accept that there are new ways to look at the world and new ways to be inclusive. You can choose to view your contributions to gaming as non-political. You can also accept that dipping toes with the pieces of shit that spout garbage MPSIMS is an expression of bravery and not filth.

You can choose to accept that inclusion is better AND choose to be a part of that inclusion.

You can accept the fear of association for being part of this community and what that might do in your real life career. You can also choose to not accept it, in which case, I can understand that some of you are in positions where your past has caught up to you. If that's the case, great!

I hope the pyre you built burns brightly!

[The Adventurer's Almanac]

Fuck. You. You motherfuckers just woke up and you're going to tell me what kind of what I feel?

... what?

[Harshax]

Fuck. You. You motherfuckers just woke up and you're going to tell me what kind of what I feel?

... what?

I take issue with your assumption that I do not know who is president of the US, thus I have assumed you’re an idiot.

[The Adventurer's Almanac]

What the fuck, man. We have usernames for a reason, you can't just mix people up like that. You might want to calm down a bit.

[Harshax]

What the fuck, man. We have usernames for a reason, you can't just mix people up like that. You might want to calm down a bit.

I guess the den is a bad MC, because all the voices sound the same.

Mea culpa.

[Foxwarrior]

This is why profile pictures were invented.

[Harshax]

There's no honest discourse behind masks. To think otherwise is to be comfortable in a hood.

[Foxwarrior]

Oh, is this like that "you can't have a good discussion with someone unless you're allowed and able to punch them in the face" thing?

[Harshax]

Oh, is this like that "you can't have a good discussion with someone unless you're allowed and able to punch them in the face" thing?

More like, you're not having an honest discussion if your point of view is nothing to lose.

[Harshax]

I remember when the grossest thing to talk about was rancid condiments.

If you're here to get some shit out of your rancid brain, then instead of turning off MPSIM, there should be another forum calling SATE.

Short for, Screaming At the Echo.

The posts are symbolically linked to > /dev/null and the only record of them should be your cookies.

[PhoneLobster]

It's pointless trying to make the Den a safe haven, because what's been going on in the past few months has been happening to every forum. ...Peoples' politics get revealed, and the relationships we've nurtured through a shared interests become hollow.

I doubt anyone would treat this with any consideration or respect, but.

This is exactly the reason I've been quietly on an extended, very extended, hiatus from this forum. But then in a last minute twist it also isn't.

Trump got elected, fake leftist masks were dropped by prominent members who engaged in McCarthyist conspiracy smears, Clinton worship, Neoliberal worship, crazy anti-Bernie, anti-Corbyn, broadly anti-left and (for me) ultimately a total denial of the open history of the evils of American interventionism and Imperialism as a thing that has somehow even happened. And on top of that no one other than me at the time even gave zero push back.

And I was like. I can't talk to people about politics if they refuse to acknowledge you know, factual modern history.

I don't even want to post funny gaming stories for people that would so earnestly flak for things like the endless genocidal coups sponsored by the USA.

But the thing is I might have stuck around for game rules discussion, maybe...

However the den had already demonstrated that the gaming dens principles on rules discussion had devolved to the point that as long as I was the target then "fuck RAW the gaming den doesn't DO RAW anymore" was an entirely acceptable way to thread shit me with again, zero pushback. Well to be fair fbmf gave it about one half an attempt.

The "politics problem" is everywhere right now, it is worse but it's always been there. Your local dominant clique spending months on end earnestly singing "Love me I'm A Liberal" like they actually believed it (look it up Phil Ochs was a musical saint) certainly didn't help especially amidst the drought of D&D 5. But basically the same clique or at least social dynamic had long since rendered plenty of other discussions non-viable and for me at least politics was just the straw that broke the camels back.

And for the forum, or its dominant clique it was not even a straw, it was really just the pretext for the inevitable Frank explosion every damned one of us damned well knew was coming for at least a decade. It's not even worth denying it, anyone could see it coming.

Banning politics is neither here nor there. It probably won't hurt as long as it's not overzealous. The gaming den just had a social disruption and at this point floats or sinks based on how the social cliques fall out and whether as a result it becomes broadly MORE open to push back and interesting discussion as a result of events, or less.

I'm not sure you CAN control that, I am fairly sure the politics ban won't control it though.

More people expressing more interesting opinions or producing more interesting content might help. Half the problem is probably just due to an already shrunken active community in general. I think will even try and make a contribution, but I gotta say, I've been pretty happy with the lurking ever deeper into murk and hell, I suspect plenty of other posters are more than happy to ignore my contributions over the years and throw any amount of utterly hypocritical bile my way for even checking in during a community crisis.

[Mord]

fbmf, if you choose to shutter the forum, can you please make a backup available for download from your Google Drive or MegaUpload or suchlike?

I don't know how much more valuable content the community is going to produce going forward, but there is certainly a huge amount of valuable material here from the past that I'd hate to see lost.

[Koumei]

More people expressing more interesting opinions or producing more interesting content might help. Half the problem is probably just due to an already shrunken active community in general.

This is probably a thing. I can't remember the last time I gamed in person, and that's not just because I have a poor memory, it was definitely several years ago, not including one-off nights of Eldritch Horror (we're still talking "probably last year"). Even IRC/Discord-based gaming has been "I ran some short-lived paid Godbound games which stopped a few months ago when the player (singular) vanished without a trace". Forum-wise, there is a Palladium (TM) RIFTS (TM) game that is slow-moving but I'm in that.

I'm going to guess a lot of other people here are in broadly similar positions, or at least could say "compared to 5-10 years ago, I do a shit-tonne less gaming". I'd like to blame 4E for killing D&D and shrinking the entire Roleplaying base, but that's a standard for my go-to of who to blame for anything.

The fact that White Wolf had already White Wolfed themselves into oblivion (not the Wraith kind), Shadowrun took a turn for the worse (and also the goings-on with the company) and so on... there's only so much discussion you can generate by reviewing Big Eyes Small Mouth: the Slayers Supplement or creating your own "SLA Industries: new skills and stuff to allow for Battletoads" or whatever.

[MGuy]

Your opinion doesn't change mine PL but honestly I think your opinions on what counts as pushback is framed by whomever you consider the dominant clique(s) is because I can't remember a time I wasn't arguing with people here.

[Prak]

There's no honest discourse behind masks. To think otherwise is to be comfortable in a hood.

Oh you can entirely goddamned fuck off with implying we're klansmen. There are multiple fucking people here, in this thread, who would be targeted by the Klan. So get fucked with that rhetoric.

I'm not sure you CAN control that, I am fairly sure the politics ban won't control it though.

I hate that you may be right about this. It's looking like we can't even fucking control it in this fucking thread.

stuff

Probably right on all counts. I will say I'm in two Discord-based PbP pathfinder games, but they're very slow moving and nothing much discussion worthy has come from them yet.

I do think that we, as a board, need to get over the whole "It's not ideal! We will shit on it unendingly!" attitude the Den has towards games, because, honestly? If the choice is "no game" or "gaming with a lot less power and a weird gutted system with 5e" I would choose 5e. Cuz it's a fucking game. Let's talk about how we'd improve games within the frameworks they already have, because ire and spite gets old fucking fast. Fuck, it got old a good five years ago for me.

Mguy- Honestly, Frank leaving, and a moratorium on political threads should, hopefully, go a long ways.

[phlapjackage]

This is probably a thing. I can't remember the last time I gamed in person, and that's not just because I have a poor memory, it was definitely several years ago

Dare I say it, that the average Denner starts off non-young, and gets older as the years go by. I gamed a shit-ton in my youth, but now...Sounds like some (many?) here are in similar situations. Getting older = less time and interest for gaming.

So you're right, with less and less gaming there's less and less to discuss. And with the current "modern world", the youngsters are less likely to A) game and B) seek out forums like this to post on.

[Stahlseele]

Apart from the odd game of CBT, i have not done any non computer gaming in . . yeah, pretty much a decade or more by now . .

[Krusk]

Since about 2019, I'm almost back to college level gaming. consistently at least 2 4 hour games a week. (and i know other posters here who are at the same or higher levels)

IMO the diaspora is not because folks aren't playing. Its just not a super friendly forum for new ideas and there are better methods for collaborative homebrewing. If you post a thing and ask for ideas, people angrily tell you to go read some post on page 203 of a 400 page thread where they hint about how it should be done, and explain 70% in a second thread, and then the remaining 30% is hinted at in their post history but never compiled. I get not re-hashing ideas, but fuck, its a lot easier to just walk away than it is to deal with that.

Stickied posts with generally well received ideas would go a long way. Even if there are debates and the well received ideas are in conflict with one another.

You drive away any new blood, and its basically the same people having the same fights about the same ideas until they eventually go scorched earth and quit.

Second problem is thread shitting, and I don't know how you put a ban on that. The "keep out" in subject line is not great, and relies on the OP to decide its gone on long enough and personally offends them. Some sort of "fuck you you keep threadshitting shut the fuck up about diplomacy rules no one wants to hear it from you anymore" thing seems like it would be valuable.

[MGuy]

I still run games. Just not as many as I used to. Too many things I have to do. Job is tiring. It's been worse sense Covid hit. But luckily my games are already just on one day on the weekend.

[The Adventurer's Almanac]

I haven't run a game since May because for a while my players didn't want to meet in person... and then they decided they didn't want to play online, either, because they'd been playing Dungeon World over Discord and it was way easier for them than playing PTU. Kinda left me up shit creek, honestly. What's the fucking point of being unemployed if nobody will meet up to play games?

[Lord Charlemagne]

I still run a very consistent game, but I can see that drying up within a couple years as many people in my group are on the edge about staying in the community & thinking about moving away.

I agree with Krusk that the idea that just breaking into the forum is a very difficult thing. Not only are forum pages on the decline just in general because of alternative modes of communication (which I'm also of the opinion aren't fully healthy to the greater whole of the community if said thing is believed to exist), but the den has had a lot of information in it that conversations are still built off of. I've archived crawled through the den & the sheer unorganized but dense information still results in there being things referenced that I have no idea about & a new outsider looking in certainly doesn't as well.

While not the best solution, maybe an informative topic thread that is pinned & has a bunch of links or reposts that the den considers very informative could be helpful.

[Prak]

Apart from the odd game of CBT

I'm not sure fbmf will let us talk about CBT here...