Why EN World vs Other Forums

While some folks are very active on many forums, most, I would think, eventually migrate most of their activity to a favored gaming community.

I've found, for me, that has been EN World. The reason is:

1. The News Pages. Originally, I game to EN World to just look at the news page for new gaming news. Since I was coming to the site so often, it became convenient to posting my questions here.

2. Community size. It seems to be one of the largest online communities for TTRPGs. It is very rare to post a question and not have anyone respond.

3. More than D&D. Although nearly all discussions I take part in are D&D 5e related, I like that their is news and discussion on other systems.

How about you? What brings you to EN World? Are their anyone other must-visit online gaming communities that you are equally or more involved in?

Official forums shut down and rpg.net is really toxic (or was 5+ years ago). That said, I check out of habit more than anything, and almost never find enlightened answers or questions here. giantitp.com seems to have less arguing, and rpg.stackexchange is much better for getting questions answered. Reddit is kind of hit-or-miss, depending on the general state of its "hivemind." So that mostly just leaves enworld. For me, the main problems here are...

1. Threads go on for way too long and tend to derail very quickly. Just look at the 5e section and most of the threads are dozens or more pages long, and often have huge tangents where a two sides of an argument keep bashing their heads against the wall until one goes to sleep. In many ways, it seems almost pointless to respond to half the threads on the main page.

2. Site performance is abysmal. Not going to beat the horse any further since I've said my peace, but it's annoying.

3. I feel like the XP (xp/laugh) system really doesn't serve much purpose when there's no way to really sort or organize the threads by post value. A random thread will usually have a highly-rated response within the first few posts, and then anything else that gets XP is probably just tribal politics on the issue. Not sure what value that brings. Sites like Reddit and stackexchange use similar systems, but with an actual purpose behind it; threaded conversations on a topic means new responses can be posted as children to specific posts rather than the total linear system used by old school forums, and you can quickly see what the best-rated posts on the topic are.

So what do I like here? Well the news section is useful, and it's a great way to keep informed on new products and stuff (Morrus does a great job with that). Reviews used to be solid, although with 5e's slower product line I don't rely on them as much. Still, there's some good information here.

Yeah, there are many threads where I get most of what I need out of them in the first page or two of posts and then ignore the subsequent 10-20 pages. Having the ability to filter on XP given would be helpful. That said, Reddit does this and it is helpful to find good answers on active Reddits, but it breaks the thread as a conversation. For topics that I'm really interested in, I like to follow them daily as a conversation.

Because I really don't know of any place else after the Wizards forums closed?

I've tried reddit, but the format there makes no sense to me 80% of the time.

MNblockhead said:

How about you? What brings you to EN World? Are their anyone other must-visit online gaming communities that you are equally or more involved in?

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It's much friendlier than RPG.net's forum. (Which is not to bash RPG.net, it is to say that EN World feels easier to understand the rules of the road on and be part of the community.)

For me it's the community, plain and simple. You can get interesting discussions where people disagree and still act like grown ups with respect to manners, constructive criticism, and synergizing opposing ideas. That's just about unheard of on the internet. It's definitely not the D&D focus - my interest is with RPGs in general and not 5E. I was active in rpg.net for years but the community and especially the folks in charge just got to be too awful, so I left.