Big changes a'coming! Merging the D&D forums

Mengu · Oct 6, 2012

I don't mind 4e and DDN getting mixed together, 4e discussions are peetering out anyway. I don't know anything about Pathfinder... It feels a little awkward to me, lumping it together with D&D.

The identity of ENWorld in its early days, was all about the next edition of D&D (whatever that might be), or the New edition of D&D, new products, what's exiting, etc. 4e is currently in a stagnant state, doesn't necessarily need a forum. I don't really know if Pathfinder constantly has hopping new things, maybe it warrants its own forum, maybe not, no clue... I don't really mind forum identity being focused on the Next edition of D&D, and all Next editions of D&D.

S'mon · Oct 6, 2012

I'm definitely in favour of fewer fora, so I think this is a good move. Splitting 3e from Pathfinder in particular never made any sense to me, when the 3e players were lumped in with OSR dudes in Legacy.

I think rpgnet's General vs d20 forum split worked well for them, but one reason for that is that the rpgnet d20 forum creates a bit of a safe space for people who want to talk about gaming without being constantly harrassed about political stuff - the political threads ('Racism in Pathfinder'/'Too Much Whiteness in 4e art' sort of stuff, mostly) are there, but a minority, whereas in rpgnet General it's very heavy. The rpgnet d20 forum also makes players of d20 games less likely to be attacked for their play preference, which also used to be a problem there.

ENW is different - political debate is banned, moderators here don't allow posters to be harrassed, and d20/TSR/WoTC/Paizo games are the dominant interest, so I'm not sure if there is the same value in having a d20 subforum separate from the General forum. Why not just one Tabletop Gaming forum, including D&D?

delericho · Oct 6, 2012

Morrus said:
This will create something of a challenge in terms of 'edition wars', and we mods will be monitoring things fairly strictly.

I was of the impression that that was the motivation for splitting the forums in the first place?

Personally, I would prefer the 5e forum remain separate, as it's liable to swamp the other three to the point where any topics there become lost. However, I do support merging the other three. (And, indeed, once 5e is released, and so discussion isn't so all-encompassing, merging it with the rest would be a good idea. But not now.)

In any case - it's your place.

(Having said all that - for a while we had an "All threads" button, which was extremely useful (and which essentially merged all the forums, of course). Any chance of that coming back, or do technical issues prevent it?)

Whizbang Dustyboots · Oct 6, 2012

trancejeremy said:
Personally, when I lost my interest in 5e, I only stopped by the legacy forum. Now I guess I won't be doing that anymore. It might not have gotten a lot of posts, but at least they were relevant to me.

Most of the threads in each of the D&D forums have nothing to do with the individual edition, but are edition-agnostic discussions. By seperating those out onto smaller forums, that means less input, less discussion and less cross-polination between self-selected tribes, making the quality of all the discussions worse as a result.

The prefixes are coming back (hooray!) so the rules-specific stuff will still be obvious and available. But now, when someone wants to know about structuring a campaign or dealing with a problem player or new ways to make dwarves interesting, they can discuss it with the entire D&D-playing community, not just the subgroup using their particular rulebook, despite those all being issues that span the years and editions.

airwalkrr · Oct 6, 2012

My reaction is guarded. As long as the clickable prefixes has a simple UI it shouldn't be much of a problem. But I foresee it as a potential barrier to new and relative newcomers to the site.

Plane Sailing · Oct 6, 2012

Whizbang Dustyboots said:
Most of the threads in each of the D&D forums have nothing to do with the individual edition, but are edition-agnostic discussions. By seperating those out onto smaller forums, that means less input, less discussion and less cross-polination between self-selected tribes, making the quality of all the discussions worse as a result.

The prefixes are coming back (hooray!) so the rules-specific stuff will still be obvious and available. But now, when someone wants to know about structuring a campaign or dealing with a problem player or new ways to make dwarves interesting, they can discuss it with the entire D&D-playing community, not just the subgroup using their particular rulebook, despite those all being issues that span the years and editions.

Something went wrong with my xp awarding, so I'll use a whole post to say thanks Dustyboots - this is indeed a major factor, and highlights the main mitigation method for those who don't like fish fingers in their custard.

I think this approach is going to work well for us.

Mark CMG · Oct 6, 2012

I wonder if keeping the 5E forum alone might be an alternate way to go, and combining all others back into Tabletop? 5E is going to surge periodically with each playtest round and each barrage of big news from WotC, so at least until 5E is released, it should get plenty of traffic on its own to warrant a separate forum. Combining D&D and PF back into Tabletop solves the problem of folks wanting to discuss any of the D&D-like games (d20 variants) in threads where they'd likely love to have opinions from anyone playing something similar like D&D and PF. Seems a more natural division and should help curtail some of the edition warring you might otherwise get as folks poke and prod 5E during the playtesting with their own pre-5E preferences in tow. It might make for less work for the mods and admins in that way. Just a thought and I'm sure however you proceed will be worked out in the long run.

Thalain · Oct 6, 2012

Mark CMG said:
I wonder if keeping the 5E forum alone might be an alternate way to go, and combining all others back into Tabletop? 5E is going to surge periodically with each playtest round and each barrage of big news from WotC, so at least until 5E is released, it should get plenty of traffic on its own to warrant a separate forum. Combining D&D and PF back into Tabletop solves the problem of folks wanting to discuss any of the D&D-like games (d20 variants) in threads where they'd likely love to have opinions from anyone playing something similar like D&D and PF. Seems a more natural division and should help curtail some of the edition warring you might otherwise get as folks poke and prod 5E during the playtesting with their own pre-5E preferences in tow. It might make for less work for the mods and admins in that way. Just a thought and I'm sure however you proceed will be worked out in the long run.

This might be a very viable idea, but in general, I am very much in favor of flexible filters on a flat forum. I hope they'll extend beyond just editions. I am for example primarily interested in player-created rules variants (new classes, races, magic systems, whatever) regardless of edition, but finding those in a large list of topics is not always easy, especially when the server once again has a slow day.

The idea, if implemented properly, will essentially allow each user to have their personal subforum structure whenever and however they want it. Can't be a bad thing.

Minigiant · Oct 6, 2012

I hope it works out but I predict:

Mon-Thurs: The D&D Next Forum
Fri-Sun: Everybody else Forum

Probably adding a New and Upcoming Games forum for DDN, 13 Age, Numenera, etc

Olgar Shiverstone · Oct 6, 2012

I think I'd prefer to keep the 5E forum separate until after it has been released for a bit, but the others can be combined. That should reduce the most egregious edition warring.

I like the filtering option, though.