D&D General Differences Between D&D Boards

[Bravesteel25]

EN World has been my home for 11 years (Started a new account when I had to change e-mails) and I have never really found a need to go anywhere else. I'm a D&D guy through and through, and even when the WotC boards were still around I liked EN World much better. The moderators here do a great job at enforcing rules and decorum without slapping everyone with the ban hammer all the time.

I follow pretty much all the D&D subreddits, but it is mainly there for browsing material when I am bored but otherwise engaged. It isn't very good for long-form discussions like those that occur here.

EN World forever!

 

[MichaelSomething]

Let's not forget the Imgur now. It's not the deepest conversation you can find but it's good for a laugh.

 

[Sadras]

I find I do not have the time to traverse many forums.
I used to lurk at Dragonsfoot, now I'm lucky if I pop in once a year. Occasionally I check out the The Piazza (for Mystara). And I have tried rpg.net but I keep on forgetting usernames and p/words so I just give up due to laziness. One site is more than enough for me. I do though pop in at Enworld's sister site, Circvs Maximvs, where all the awful goodies that can get your banned for here are allowed there - ofcourse you need to be immune to bludgeoning, piercing and slashing weapons. Only monsters and monster hunters allowed.

 

[amethal]

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

RPG net is a great place for discussing games other than D&D (it's fine for D&D as well) and if you have an idea for a type of game you want to play and ask for suggestions as to which system to use then you'll get loads of suggestions. Albeit many of them RPGs you've probably never heard of.

I'm tempted to post a thread asking for suggestions on a system to play a "high fantasy, class/level-based combat-heavy campaign with lots of character options" and see what they come up with. Or rather, see how long it is before anybody thinks to suggest D&D.

That said, it is (I think) the only place I have ever received a warning from a moderator. I mentioned ACKS in response to a post, which turned out to be a banned topic. It had never occurred to me to check the posting rules on an RPG board to see which RPGs we weren't allowed to mention.

 

[Tonguez]

I think I enjoy Enworld because you’re all a bunch of refined gentleman who enjoy discussing the vagaries of Gygaxian estorica whilst sipping mead, not like those young whippersnappers on other boards who just want to fiddle with the latest gadgets.

I do miss the old 3e discussions though and thus have occasionally wandered off upon paths less travelled and the more disquieting neighbourhoods

 

[Zardnaar]

RPG net is a great place for discussing games other than D&D (it's fine for D&D as well) and if you have an idea for a type of game you want to play and ask for suggestions as to which system to use then you'll get loads of suggestions. Albeit many of them RPGs you've probably never heard of.

I'm tempted to post a thread asking for suggestions on a system to play a "high fantasy, class/level-based combat-heavy campaign with lots of character options" and see what they come up with. Or rather, see how long it is before anybody thinks to suggest D&D.

That said, it is (I think) the only place I have ever received a warning from a moderator. I mentioned ACKS in response to a post, which turned out to be a banned topic. It had never occurred to me to check the posting rules on an RPG board to see which RPGs we weren't allowed to mention.

ACKs is banned?

 

[amethal]

ACKs is banned?

Yeah, you can't mention ACKS at RPG.net. I've got no complaints with the way they moderated me - I broke the rules in ignorance, they deleted my post, told me why they had done it, and we all got on with our lives.

Their reasoning is:

The rpg game ACKS and the game company Autarch, as the designer of the game and owner of the company, Alexander Macris, has threatened the board with legal actions multiple times.

Mr Macris's interpretation of the events that led up to his game and company being banned is somewhat different and can be found on the Autarch website. (In a nutshell, "asking someone to stop making defamatory comments does not amount to threatening legal action".)

 

[Bohandas]

I like this site better than GitP, even though I use GitP more due to it's larger size and greater frequency of responses.

I don't like the way GitP handles its rules on politics and religion, which falls clearly into the category of Lawful Stupid. A lot of topics that are more-or-less required reading for fantasy rpgs is suppressed there - You can't discuss ancient mythology because it counts as "religion" and you can't discuss feudalism or medieval england or the roman empire or ancient/medieval warfare because those all count as "politics".

And the no mythology thing is kind of hypocritical too given that the Norse pantheon are semi-major supporting characters in Rich Burlew*'s webcomic Order of the Stick and that the Babylonian pantheon makes minor appearances as well.

That said, it's a pretty decent board due to its sheer size, provided that you remember not to mention any of the blacklisted topics.

*the owner and operator of GitP

 

[Ruin Explorer]

I find that the type and tone of conversation here and on GitP is rather different. I wanted to have elaborate and nuanced discussion about exactly what the merits of or RAW of a particular spell was or to get into extremely detailed discussions on RAW in general, I would definitely go to GitP. Equally though, if I want to discuss how 5E is actually played, and what rules makes sense at the actual table and so on (even if those very much aren't RAW), I would always prefer ENWorld. I feel like the posters he tend to be more seasoned in terms of actual play, more likely to be playing with non-AL groups, and more open to discussing stuff which is outside RAW. I've seen too many potentially interesting discussions bog down at GitP because everyone wants to argue minor points re: RAW, even when the RAW is obviously ridiculous. Equally though, I do often see very interesting threads on GitP about rules-related topics, so both boards have great value.

I find the 5E subreddit to be a bit superficial in just about every way, and sometimes someone will manage to get an outright wrong interpretation of the rules upvoted, which is sad, but I do check it regularly because people often link interesting D&D stuff there. The D&D subreddit is basically wall-to-wall things people built, war stories and pictures of people's characters. That's cool but er... not much use to me.

Those are about the only 5E-related boards I look at.

 

[Ashrym]

I find I don't have time for too many forums so stick with what's generally working for me. I don't use RPGnet or Reddit any more for D&D other than the odd time. GitP gets me a bit more because I'll glance at the boards after checking for a new OOTS if other sites are slower.

No one mentioned DDB but I find the atmosphere there tends to be helpful for the most part so I use that as well, but Enworld is generally where I go.