I know because I have asked. My group knows I post because I talk about what I see online and because I have talked about playtesting in the past.
How many gamers you know post in forums?
- Thread starter Hairfoot
- Start date
Paul_Klein
Explorer
Of the 10 or so people I've gamed with in the past 10 years, I would say me and maybe one other posts in RPG forums.
Olaf the Stout
Hero
Out of my gaming group of 6, I'm the only one that posts on D&D messageboards. Conversely I think myself and 1 other player are the only ones in the group that don't play some sort of MMORPG online such as WoW or DotA.
Olaf the Stout
Olaf the Stout
I've been online in gaming forums since college. Heck, I remember TheAuldGrump from usenet on rec.games.frp.dnd
But my gaming groups, not so much.
My original group of 4 (not counting myself) that I started in 1990 is still gaming and is about 35ish. None of them do online forums, to my knowledge (though one does play DDO and has his own ventrillo server account.
My local group of 3 (not counting myself) only one seems to do some searching, because he is aware of PunPun the broken character.
Its funny, because any nerdrage thread abou WotC changes or broken rules is a topic that is completely over any of my friends' heads. They have no clue the game is broken and aren't even interested in a 4th edition.
I've only physically met 1 other person with an enworld account, he had a 3rd party publisher company and I was at some talk at AggieCon last year.
I've cross-forum met 1 other user who is on a forum site of a completely different topic (a musicians forum). We both have the same user name, and it wasn't until he posted a file to demonstrate something that I saw the site he used was his band site, which I'd seen before. Until that moment, neither of us even realized we knew each other from the other forum.
To give you a sense of how non-wired some folks are...I work at a large technology company. Large as in top section of the Fortune 100. I'm in a technical job, so are all my co-workers with x-boxes.
Last year, I talked them all into doing some online gaming. I had found that some of them had done lan-parties with the 360s. As I hunted down all 15 or so of them and got their gamertags, I found out that none of them had Friended any of the others before. In fact, most of them didn't have any friends on their 360.
The conversation with one of them was like this:
me: so you know all these guys have 360s?
cowerker: yeah
me: and you like all these guys?
cowerker: yeah
me: so how come you never friended them?
cowerker: i just hate playing online with all those annoying kids
me: if you friended all these guys, you'd play with your friends, instead of those kids
cowerker: ohhhhh.
Some people are a bit slow with what you can do with technology. That you can play your games with friends online from the comfort of your own home and NOT have to share your 52" wide screen with others...
That you can find online resources to help run your game, manage your PC, generate game material like dungeons...
People are wierd.
But my gaming groups, not so much.
My original group of 4 (not counting myself) that I started in 1990 is still gaming and is about 35ish. None of them do online forums, to my knowledge (though one does play DDO and has his own ventrillo server account.
My local group of 3 (not counting myself) only one seems to do some searching, because he is aware of PunPun the broken character.
Its funny, because any nerdrage thread abou WotC changes or broken rules is a topic that is completely over any of my friends' heads. They have no clue the game is broken and aren't even interested in a 4th edition.
I've only physically met 1 other person with an enworld account, he had a 3rd party publisher company and I was at some talk at AggieCon last year.
I've cross-forum met 1 other user who is on a forum site of a completely different topic (a musicians forum). We both have the same user name, and it wasn't until he posted a file to demonstrate something that I saw the site he used was his band site, which I'd seen before. Until that moment, neither of us even realized we knew each other from the other forum.
To give you a sense of how non-wired some folks are...I work at a large technology company. Large as in top section of the Fortune 100. I'm in a technical job, so are all my co-workers with x-boxes.
Last year, I talked them all into doing some online gaming. I had found that some of them had done lan-parties with the 360s. As I hunted down all 15 or so of them and got their gamertags, I found out that none of them had Friended any of the others before. In fact, most of them didn't have any friends on their 360.
The conversation with one of them was like this:
me: so you know all these guys have 360s?
cowerker: yeah
me: and you like all these guys?
cowerker: yeah
me: so how come you never friended them?
cowerker: i just hate playing online with all those annoying kids
me: if you friended all these guys, you'd play with your friends, instead of those kids
cowerker: ohhhhh.
Some people are a bit slow with what you can do with technology. That you can play your games with friends online from the comfort of your own home and NOT have to share your 52" wide screen with others...
That you can find online resources to help run your game, manage your PC, generate game material like dungeons...
People are wierd.
Yeah, I know two people here in the real world. One in my campaign, one a co-worker. Neither posts very often.
I've been obsessively reading and posting for 14 years now, going back to USENET and putting aside the friends I've made via forum posting, there is only one other person that I play with regularly who posts at all, and that isn't even that much compared to me.
Two others have mentioned reading some forum postings for min-maxing ideas, but beyond that all the other gamers I know say they don't really pay attention to any online forums.
I should note, this isn't just RPGs, this is anything that is part of the geek industrial complex of hobbyist fandom.
Two others have mentioned reading some forum postings for min-maxing ideas, but beyond that all the other gamers I know say they don't really pay attention to any online forums.
I should note, this isn't just RPGs, this is anything that is part of the geek industrial complex of hobbyist fandom.
Greylock
First Post
Of all the gamers I know, just me. None I currently game with even so much as lurk the forums. About four or five years ago, the game I was in had several who posted here but that had everything to do with our group having a fellow write a Story Hour. None of those people come to the forums anymore and that group had members like Alsih2o, BealeKnight, and Brutorz Bill, who had established web identities. I guess the web turned out to be more of a toy or diversion than an actual long lasting tool.
