D&D General Differences Between D&D Boards

[DammitVictor]

I've spent years wondering whether the better adjective to describe that place is "Orwellian" or "Kafkaesque".

Leaving the political elements aside, the moderators on RPGnet are capricious, hypocritical, and abusive and they vary between being unwilling to acknowledge the problem to being openly proud of it. The fact that they're all clustered around a very narrow band of political positions... just makes it too easy to blame their toxic behavior on their politics, which just provides other political malignancies an excuse to persecute their enemies.

I don't believe we can realistically-- morally-- separate politics from gaming entirely, but I am sick and goddamned tired of having my gaming spaces infested with people who treat gaming like it's a weapon (or a battlefield) in the Culture War.

 

[Neonchameleon]

I wish Optimization received a little bit more focus on EN World. Outside of Esker and Frog Reaver, it seems very lonely there.
Is it because EN World has older posters? Posters that do not play 5e?

GITPG seemingly has a lot more Optimization threads.

GITPG is still fundamentally a 3.5 board - and optimisation is much more fun in 3.5 and 4e alike than it is in 5e simply because each character has a lot more moving parts. In 5e it's entirely normal for a character to not get their first feat until level 12 and muticlassing is discouraged so it's nowhere near the fun game it was in 3.5 or 4e.

 

[clearstream]

There are too many variables to determine what is an optimal way of going about the game.

I know full well lots of people will disagree with me and there is no actual way to resolve who is right.

It's a perennial problem for making progress in discussions. Roughly, I think the way one resolves what is right for a game is to set the terms within which you are calibrating, and then show that for those terms your optimisation (or whatever else you are arguing) is more or less right.

For instance, I can optimise by saying that I want to do on average the most weapon damage per one fight that I can against a given cohort of enemies as a 10th level Fighter. Given those terms, one can easily show right and wrong cases.

Some terms are inherently harder to define, like fun. But if I say that fun for me means playing an elf, it is pretty easy to justify a position that playing an elf is right, and playing a gnome is wrong.

 

[clearstream]

I know my dad likes RPG Stack Exchange. Never been there myself.

In the past I have found some pretty good rules analysis on stack exchange.

 

[Coroc]

I apologize, if this is breaking a social taboo, like starting a group text with your Spouse and Lover and asking which is a better kisser.
.....

No this is hot, let them compete for it

(Of course not in a chat ....)

 

[Coroc]

The Mods over at GitP are total knobs.

The Mods here are infinitely better.

That board over there is the most over-moderated board I've ever encountered. And I moderate a few myself.

Well but order of the stick rulez. I never read in their board though I must admit, so I could not tell.

 

[Coroc]

The other forum I did read apart from ENworld was RPG stackexchange, but I gave up on that one it was the Rulius Magistarius / RAW is the fetish and RAW is above all culmination there. Also Houserule is evil, canon is law according to them.

(Examples: mounted gnomes dual wielding lances somehow justified by some obscure interpretation of RAW to be able to do two charging lance attacks on (one) impact (facepalm), monks using quarterstaff onehanded with shield and polearm mastery (munchkinism extends and leads to group facepalm)

I just got so tired on the discussions there about how to circumvent any sanity in finding weirdo loopholes in holy RAW and defending them tooth and nail to be the only valid interpretation and whatever, absolutely to be used on AL but generally on everybodies table and being nonconform to it totally unbalances the game or at least munchkin build xy versus munchkin build z and so on...

 

[S'mon]

monks using quarterstaff onehanded with shield and polearm mastery (munchkinism extends and leads to group facepalm)

I'm afraid that was always pretty clearly RAW. On the bright side they errata'd Polearm Mastery so you can now use it with a spear, which 1-handed with shield at least looks less silly than 1-handed staff & shield!

Edit: Would certainly be a fine house rule to require 2 hands on weapon for the polearm mastery bonus attack, at least.

 

[Coroc]

I'm afraid that was always pretty clearly RAW. On the bright side they errata'd Polearm Mastery so you can now use it with a spear, which 1-handed with shield at least looks less silly than 1-handed staff & shield!

Thanks for the reminder to add another house rule to my table.
How in all that is holy, shall I visualize this magic PM attack???

Poke the enemy with the spear tip, then twirling the spear around (thereby not colliding with my shield or impaling other objects and individuals close by), to give a good smack, after that back to base position?

With a halberd (or other polearms), a spear wielded two handed etc. you can do tricky maneuvers using the blunt end, but not with a spear and shield combo.

That is exactly the kind of RAW discussion I did miss (not).

Btw a house rule of mine was always, that you can use PM with a spear. But another house rule I always use is that a quarterstaff is 1d6 and two handed use only, just to reflect that you cannot improve a spear by removing the tip and crafting a quarterstaff out of it.

 

[clearstream]

The other forum I did read apart from ENworld was RPG stackexchange, but I gave up on that one it was the Rulius Magistarius / RAW is the fetish and RAW is above all culmination there. Also Houserule is evil, canon is law according to them.

(Examples: mounted gnomes dual wielding lances somehow justified by some obscure interpretation of RAW to be able to do two charging lance attacks on (one) impact (facepalm), monks using quarterstaff onehanded with shield and polearm mastery (munchkinism extends and leads to group facepalm)

I just got so tired on the discussions there about how to circumvent any sanity in finding weirdo loopholes in holy RAW and defending them tooth and nail to be the only valid interpretation and whatever, absolutely to be used on AL but generally on everybodies table and being nonconform to it totally unbalances the game or at least munchkin build xy versus munchkin build z and so on...

For me what RAW entails, and how best to play are separate concerns. Meaning I very much agree that the examples you point to are egregious, yet I like to start out by knowing what the rule qua rule literally and mechanically most consistently and under objective principles of interpretation entails. Do you see what I mean?

We can figure out exactly what is entailed by the words on the page, considered among all the other words, and then we can still make our own decisions about how to play it.

 

[dave2008]

I've spent years wondering whether the better adjective to describe that place is "Orwellian" or "Kafkaesque".

Leaving the political elements aside, the moderators on RPGnet are capricious, hypocritical, and abusive and they vary between being unwilling to acknowledge the problem to being openly proud of it. The fact that they're all clustered around a very narrow band of political positions... just makes it too easy to blame their toxic behavior on their politics, which just provides other political malignancies an excuse to persecute their enemies.

I don't believe we can realistically-- morally-- separate politics from gaming entirely, but I am sick and goddamned tired of having my gaming spaces infested with people who treat gaming like it's a weapon (or a battlefield) in the Culture War.

I'm glad I've never really wandered over there!

 

[dave2008]

GITPG is still fundamentally a 3.5 board - and optimisation is much more fun in 3.5 and 4e alike than it is in 5e simply because each character has a lot more moving parts. In 5e it's entirely normal for a character to not get their first feat until level 12 and muticlassing is discouraged so it's nowhere near the fun game it was in 3.5 or 4e.

Have you tried PF2e? My understanding is there are a lot of dials, but you can't get any advantage from choosing different ones. I imagine that would also not be fun for the optimizer, but I could be wrong, that is what I'm asking. The only optimizers I know about who are playing it are a bit frustrated because despite all of the options, they can't get ahead of the curve so to speak.

 

[Fenris-77]

ENWorld is my regular site, for whatever reason the mix of posters and topics works for me. I've tried some other sites but they just haven't clicked for me. I used to post of Dakka a lot when I was still a 40K nut, but that's a while gone these days. Now the 'other' sites in my life for RPGs tend to be game specific community sites where I can go to ask specific questions, find resources etc etc. Lately that's been the BitD site and the Burning Wheel site. I have a very low tolerance for the shenanigans on a lot of boards, so I'm quite pleased I've found a home here.

 

[Morrus]

I thought I was pretty clear we weren’t going to use this thread to attack other boards. I don’t want to have to close this down, but I’ll repeat: talk about what you like about other boards. We’re not going to be the type of place that defines itself by how it tears down others. Calling moderators on other forums names very much falls within that.

 

[jasper]

I do enworld and Rpgg mainly because they are clean sites which my firewall likes. Mods, culture, and layout determine how well I like a website. Years ago I posted in the Armour Archive (mostly medieval armour and some sca stuff) and another site. The other site DEMANDED I use my real name to make the site pure. I used my SCA handle. The archive did not care. Both forms had forums for how real your armour was. The mods on the second were a little heavy handed and mean when they had to move a topic into the correct forum. Archive wasn't.
Enworld is nice and gives you a smack on the nose first before they slap you down.

 

[dave2008]

I've made a few posts over at Dicefreaks, but there is not much activity over there anymore.

 

[Doc_Klueless]

@Morrus , just a heads up. Not a talk or discussion of the moderation (which I agree with). Just that your red text isn't very red (at least on my monitor) and doesn't stick out much. If I hadn't been reading every post, I wouldn't have noticed that you'd "moderated" the thread.

Of course, others may not be having the color issue. Just thought I'd mention it.

 

[Neonchameleon]

Have you tried PF2e? My understanding is there are a lot of dials, but you can't get any advantage from choosing different ones. I imagine that would also not be fun for the optimizer, but I could be wrong, that is what I'm asking. The only optimizers I know about who are playing it are a bit frustrated because despite all of the options, they can't get ahead of the curve so to speak.

For me it's not about getting ahead of the curve so much as building things that should fit but the designers didn't intend. This can be on the ludicrously powerful end of the spectrum (like the hulking hurler build that can shatter the planet) or it can be on the weird end (last month on one of the threads on this forum I worked out how to create a goblin on a pogo stick in 4e). Pathfinder 2e character building seems to be more fiddly than evocative and doesn't seem to give me enough to make it worth learning.

 

[BrokenTwin]

@Morrus , I have to second @Doc_Klueless. I didn't notice your redtext until my second or third pass.

To the OP, I'm mostly a lurker, across a handful of RPG boards. They each have drastically different cultures and focuses, and I get different things out of each. Some are more bearable than others. ENWORLD tends to run closest to my interpersonal preferences, so I've been here more than the others as of late.

 

[TwoSix]

First, the search feature on every single forum ever is absolutely awful. When a topic fades from being current on any board, you should assume it's gone forever. Google might help, but it probably won't. The Internet is a big black hole.

Dang, was going to make a long post, but you've pretty much echoed my experiences. Good post.

I would only quibble about r/3d6; I've actually had several decent discussion threads over the years. The CharOp knowledge there is pretty high, but without the overwhelming amount of "Must follow RAW" like StackExchange.

I'd also say if you can find a decent Discord server, you can also find some pretty good discussion. The r/UnearthedArcana Discord is solid, and several of the Patreons I back also have some excellent Discord communities.