Are the official WotC forums worth going to?

[Ogrork the Mighty]

I only go for the Dragonlance board. If I have a question, I ask it here b/c this board has a lot more knowledgeable posters.

 

[Dismas]

I used to be a fairly regular poster on those boards, especially the d20 Modern message board, and mostly a lurker on ENWorld. However, I don't have much reason to go there anymore, and I can't really post here that often. They used to tolerate discussion of real-world politics, religion and history within a game context on the d20 Modern board, as long as everyone kept it respectful. It lead to some threads I truly enjoyed, like discussing different spell lists or spell domains for divine spellcasters of different real-world religions, devising game statistics for real-world historic figures from the last few decades, or a very popular thread about using real-world news headlines (usually with a link to the story) as game hooks.

Then a few jerks had to go and put up a thread, starting a thread that was laced with incendiary political opinions, hateful flames, and general ill-will. They changed the board rules, it was now all off limits. Anything that mentioned a real-world political figure, organization, religion, or pretty much anything that made it recognizable to the real world in any way, shape or form was off limits. Ironically, WotC's own d20 Modern books don't hold to that standard, the Menace Manual talks about Scientology (through a section on a fringe element called Neo-Scientology) and an ultra-militant offshoot of Al-Qaida dedicated to kidnapping and torturing westerners. Proposing either of those would get a topic closed, and I haven't seen anybody brave enough to discuss those parts of the book after they changed the rules.

WotC's opinion, expressed via WizO's, is that it's a roleplaying game, so nothing related to the real world has any relevance to the game. I understand the need to be moderate about sensitive topics, but that is pretty bad. It's literally a mixed message from WotC on d20 Modern. In the core book and Urban Arcana, they say that the setting is the world outside your door, everything out there is up for grabs, and it's a big world. However, nothing outside your door is tied to any specific religion, political organization, or recognizable real-world figure.

The WizO's policy towards the modern boards was to treat everyone as adults and for a long time it was working. However recently there have a few people that have spoilt it for us all. The same thing happened on the Dark*Matter mailing list, provided everyone acted as adults there was no problem, then (IIRC) a big flame war sprung up over the Concorde explosion in Paris.

I am thinking about setting up a 'real world' d20 Modern section, members only and moderated. I just need to get a few ground rules sorted out and finish my re-arrangement.

Also, I've noticed some of the the WizO's being ill-informed and very heavy handed as of late. On my last visit to the d20 Modern message board, one fellow asked for an explanation of the Sanity rules from Unearthed Arcana. A moderator closed the thread saying that since Unearthed Arcana isn't covered by the OGL sending someone a copy of the rules is copyright infringement, and it's a breach of board rules just to ask. Does this moderator have a copy of Unearthed Arcana that doesn't have the OGL on Page 222 and a clear listing of Product Identity and Open Game Content on the bottom of Page 2?

That thread has since been re-opened and moved to the correct place (the Unearthed Arcana boards). I just politely emailed the WizO concerned pointing out the fact that it is Open Content.

As an aside, I know that UA is open content, even though I do not have the book, however I had a hard time finding anything official on WoTC site that says the book contains open content, so if a WizO doesn't have a copy they might not know, esp. if they do not moderate boards covering that particular product.

 

[jeffh]

You've got to spend a lot of time sorting the wheat from the chaff on either board. Whether I'm here or on the WotC boards, I'm not interested in 90% of the threads; that's not a problem with either board, it's just reality. The highly compartmentalized nature of the WotC ones does sometimes make the other <10% hard to find, but I understand the reasons for it.

I suspect the comments about different average ages are probably pretty accurate, though I have no proof.

I do find that a lot of interesting and usable new base classes get posted on the WotC boards. I have about ten copy/pasted into Word documents on my hard drive, over half of them by one poster (Shadowfoot) and most of the rest of which came to my attention through his periodic contests. Those alone are enough to justify the WotC boards' existence, at least to me.

 

[nHammer]

I would say dreaded_beast now has a good selection of opinions to go by, and I don't see this thread going anywhere positive soon. As I said when I first posted, this kind of thread makes me uncomfortable simply because it inevitably turns into "why we rule, and why they suck" which I don't feel is a very fair thing to do especially in a sort of "behind the other's back" kind of way. EN World is part of a larger community of gaming websites and as such we need to treat the other sub-communities with respect. I dunno. Does anyone feel that there needs to be a lot more discussion on this issue?

Closing this thread probably would be best. I'd go as far as saying it should have been closed when Nightfall started his personal attack.

 

[Bendris Noulg]

Reading the responses that talk about board moderation on WOTC's boards and on these boards, something came to mind. The title of this thread is "Are the official WotC forums worth going to?". Nowhere in dreaded_beast's first post did he ask for a comparison of WOTC's boards and EN World's boards. I think a comparison of the boards is just asking for trouble. Maybe some moding is need here.

True, but partially necessary. That is, some complaints about one don't always stand alone without something to compare it to. That said, if I answered the same question elsewhere (say, like, Mortality), I would have made different comparisons, but they would have amounted to about the same thing: What I don't like about the WotC boards and why I find other boards more interesting, informative, and friendly.

 

[Power_Word_Wedgie]

That thread has since been re-opened and moved to the correct place (the Unearthed Arcana boards). I just politely emailed the WizO concerned pointing out the fact that it is Open Content.

As an aside, I know that UA is open content, even though I do not have the book, however I had a hard time finding anything official on WoTC site that says the book contains open content, so if a WizO doesn't have a copy they might not know, esp. if they do not moderate boards covering that particular product.

Yeah, that was me. I slipped up and forgot that Unearthed Arcana was open content. I have a copy of Unearthed Arcana but am still in the process of cathching up on all of the reading. Still, I think that question is going to be a little hard to answer (the sanity rules cover 17 pages), but that isn't the point. If a guest has a clarification on something, the e-mail address is always there, just like what the moderators have on this board.

As for moderation, really I don't think one moderation style is better than another - it is just that they are different. That is what makes the internet great - it's big enough to surf and eventually find a moderation style that fits your needs. Personally, I like them all and really haven't ran into a problem with it. I just like to discuss gaming since I'm a gamer. I like to visit this board, Monte Cook, Nifty, and Giant in the Playground boards besides the WotC boards. However, like Morrus mentioned, I probably post more on one board than another just due to time constraints. (I have more posts than my name illustrates, I forgot my password and changed e-mail addresses so that name is long gone ...)

As for whether one board is worth visiting, as someone mentioned earlier I've found that the best way to find out is to visit the board yourself under lurker mode and find out. YMMV.

 

[Banshee16]

it completely depends on which forum you go to. there are a ton of boards there, and some very isolated communities. the dragonlance board, for instance, has no interaction with the rest of the site at all, but is a great board. The minis board as well, totally self contained and a cool place to be. Can't say anything about the rest though.

The Dragonlance board is pretty good, as is the Planescape board. The Eberron board is interesting to peruse, I suspect because it's a new setting, and people are just getting into it, and just generally happy that the game's coming out, so they're in good moods.

I think my highwater point of discontent with the WotC boards was back in 2000 a few months before 3E came out....there was a tonne of arguing going on, and I remember threads about multiclassing, whether 3E was going to suck, and to top it off, one stupid thread about whether people who lose their heads are still "aware" that turned me off completely.

That said, I tend to visit both WotC and EN World, as I still find good posts on each. With regards to WotC stuff, I get answers a lot quicker there, whereas anything related to D20 gets better responses, quicker, over here at EN World.

Banshee

 

[Acid_crash]

This is a heavy-handed question and questions like this are wrong and inappropriate.

Asking are certain boards worth going to? is like asking on rpg.net if Enworld is worth going to? or asking a white person if hanging out with a black person is worth it?...and they lead to biased judgements and egoist conclusions of those who choose not to frequent the asked about boards, or topic at hand.

Most of you have replied in a manor to suggest that you are superior to those that go to the WotC boards and not these. We have to be more tactful on these boards because we have moderators who won't hesitate to strike down anyone who would use an 'inflammatory' word, and we know that. The worst I can say is that something sucks, but if I were to go further and use other more appropriate wordage but not as tactfully thought out, I would get banned for a while. And many of you would think I was an immature brat who couldn't speak properly.

If you go to another board, and don't like it, that's fine. To say that the majority of those who do go to those boards are immature and tactless is wrong. You are not superior to those people because you are on enworld and they are not, and you shouldn't act like that.

Plus, if it's not worth it for you, then that's only you. Each must make their own choice about it. The original poster shouldn't have asked the question in the first damn place.

 

[Banshee16]

Going back to the actual subject at hand -- there are two big differences between WotC's messageboards and EN World's:

1) Size - WotC's boards are enormous, and so a lot more is going on at any given time. This has two effects. First, you get a much wider demographic, so there will be more good posters as well as more "bad" posters. One of the unfortunate things in life is that the "bad" seems to stand out more, while the good chugs away happily in the background. Second, the job of moderation becomes much, much harder -- the WizO's have to keep track of a lot more than the mods here at EN World do. Having a strict set of rules makes that job easier, while we at EN World can get away with a more flexible approach.

2) Ownership -- WotC's messagaboards are owned by a corporation, whilst EN World is owned by an individual. This naturally makes for different environments. One of the most obvious differences is that WotC's boards reflect WotC's own product lines, whereas the forums here are generally broader in scope. That's not a bad thing (as WotC's enormous membership shows), but it probably attracts different types of people -- notably those who are after support for official D&D products, as opposed to those who are into d20 gaming in general.

I don't spend much time at WotC's boards because I don't have the time, and if I'm going to be spending time on any messageboard on the internet, it's going to be my own! My general impression, from the few times I have glanced over those boards, is that the demographic appears to be a bit younger than it is here (I think the average age here is in the late twenties).

In all honesty, one limitation I find very frustrating with the EN World boards is that I can't do a search of the boards....I've tried to search for old posts before, with a keyword search, but get a message that the function is disabled.....hence, I've posted to threads, or read interesting things in threads before, but lose them after a while, because of new posts etc.

With the WotC boards, I can find old posts easily, or posts about interesting topics.

I suspect it's due to the license version of the software being used or something, so I can understand why it's happening, but it's a useful tool over at WotC that unfortunately isn't here.

Of course, the EN World forums are still pretty useful This wasn't a complaint so much as an observation.

Banshee

 

[EricNoah]

In the interest of trying to end this on as positive a note as possible, I'm gonna shut this one down. To all who participated positively, I thank you.