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

[Yora]

I don't see the purpose in this.

 

[joethelawyer]

I don't see the purpose in this.

Looking at your membership date, you don't know how ENWorld used to be. It was a place where people who played dnd, mostly, got together to talk about the game. Most of the good discussion happened in one general forum area, regardless of edition. True, it was mostly 3.x, but people who played older editions also engaged with players of newer editions on all manner of topics they had in common.

Then 4e hit, and edition wars flared.

Lots of people left ENW due to that, and a perceived bias of the forum owners and moderators.

Then basically every edition had its own corner of ENW to discuss stuff. Basically everyone was put in time out.

People lost what they had in common and I think the gaming community suffered for it, and apparently ENW suffered in number of posts and posters because of it.

Now with Next coming out, acting as an olive branch to players of older editions, attempting to heal divisions, it makes sense that the forums should merge back together.

That's my take anyhow.

 

[Umbran]

Now with Next coming out, acting as an olive branch to players of older editions, attempting to heal divisions, it makes sense that the forums should merge back together.

That's my take anyhow.

Moreover, it has now been several years since 4e's release. Years. After all this time, we should not need to enforce division to play gently with sensibilities - if you can't learn to play nice after several years, it isn't our fault, and the boards should no have their otherwise awesome dynamic hampered.

 

[DaveMage]

I don't care for the change, but I'll live with it.

 

[Viking Bastard]

I, for one, wholeheartedly approve of this change!

 

[pogre]

I like the idea. I have found value in all of the specific edition forums (forae?). Adventure ideas, campaign advice, D&D sacred cows, etc. are largely edition independent. I hope it jacks up participation.

I'm curious why Morrus felt compelled to "warn" or alert us to the change? Just courtesy - I suppose....

 

[Mishihari Lord]

Great idea. I've played every edition except OD&D and 4th, and I'm interested in talking about any of them. This puts most of the threads I'm interested in in one place, which makes things simpler for me.

 

[Sunseeker]

This will be an absolutely horrid change. It will be nearly impossible to tell what a topic is about unless it is expressly tagged. Simple topics asking for 3.X character help or 4e DMing suggestions will vanish in moments to MASSIVE discussion about 5e.

Relying on the honor system and the dedication of mods to ensure that all topics are appropriately tagged is IMO, going to be more work than keeping them all separate.

 

[Matthias]

The forum merger would not bother me EXCEPT that D&D Next/D&D 5E needs to stay in its own forum.

My reasoning is that D&D Next forum traffic will flood any combined D&D forum because everyone will still be trying to learn the new rules, putting up character builds for peer review, changing and manipulating rules they have quickly decided they dislike, and so on.

All previous editions of D&D and Pathfinder (yes, even 4E) have already gone through that opening phase of "post-release playtest". Everyone that still likes Pathfinder or 4E has figured out 99% of the game already, figured out all the house rules that will make their homebrew campaign like they want it to, and all the kinks and loopholes of the game system have been fixed, embraced, or retconned, and its now mainly the players who have just now gotten around to discovering or warming up to Pathfinder, and those who just enjoy endlessly tweaking rules like myself, that come up with new and different ways to reshape the game system or write new content for it.

D&D Next (and any other brand-new game system) should have its own forum. If you must merge, only merge forums for the game systems that have been around for awhile.

 

[GX.Sigma]

It seems to me that it would be more useful to divide forums based on the topics of discussion (GM advice, character builds, rules theory, homebrew, etc.) rather than throwing them all into one big bucket.