OLG Forum

[Monte At Home]

Refering to this latest, moved thread:
http://www.enworld.org/forums/showthread.php?t=107320

I'm sure I'm not alone in thinking that it's completely backward that Arcana Unearthed cannot be discussed in the main forum along with all the D&D material (which it's completely compatible with), but games completely unrelated to D&D like GURPS, Vampire and HARP can.

 

[Olgar Shiverstone]

OLG?

Olgar no get ...

Edit: Ugh, OGL. Olgar feel stupid.

The original poster's question was pretty rules-specific. If it were a D&D thread phrased in a similar way, it probably would have been moved to Rules, so OGL may be right. Dunno, IANAM (I am not a moderator)

 

[Piratecat]

I'm the person who moved it, Monte. It was a toss-up between Rules and the d20 forum, and with threads for a specific OGL game we lean more towards the latter. General Discussion was certainly the wrong place for it.

We actually had a long discussion about where AU threads belong back before your game first came out a year and a half ago. Whether or not AU is compatible with D&D (and it clearly is - I was just borrowing an AU class yesterday for my game), the hard line we draw for where a particular game's threads belong is how that game describes itself. Is it a product for D&D? If so, General Discussion. Is it a d20 game (Grim Tales) or OGL game (Monte Cook's Arcana Unearthed)? Then it goes in the d20/OGL forum. This gives us a consistent, clear and easy division. We're certainly not trying to hide it; AU is the first example game listed on the forum's description.

If non-d20 games had more traffic here, we'd probably have a separate forum for them as well, but a lot of that traffic ends up at rpg.net.

So you're not alone in thinking it's odd that a game as close to D&D belongs in the OGL forum. Since the game is specifically OGL, though, that's where it goes. I suppose that's an accidental tradeoff for the benefits of getting to include character generation rules.

I'm not trying to be a jerk about this, but I do want to be clear about why we have the categories set up this way. If you have any questions, let me know.

- Kevin

 

[Dinkeldog]

As an additional comment, if I were to see a thread about an AU campaign, but they wanted to discuss some random thing about DMing methods or how to inject, say, political intrigue, into the campaign, I'd leave it in General. That would be something that would be more of a specific example of general interest.

In the meantime, having the OGL forum means that people who are specifically interested in games like AU are more likely to find threads on the front page, rather than having them lost in the maelstrom that General Discussion can become.

 

[DaveMage]

I think Monte is also complaining about a perception that other non-D&D systems are being discussed in General and not being moved (and hence a double-standard).

I haven't noticed this myself, but that doesn't mean it isn't happening since I would completely ignore any non-D&D game system thread.

 

[Piratecat]

As I said, Dave, non-d20 games have always been discussed in General Discussion. They don't have enough traffic to warrant their own forum (it would be a lonely and low-volume forum indeed!), so that's where they belong.

 

[Plane Sailing]

Once upon a time there was only one forum - I think most forums started in order to accomodate "themes" which were generating a sufficient amount of traffic to sustain their own forum.

It sometimes goes the other way as well - d20Modern initially had its own forum but the discussion became less fulsome a while after its launch and d20Modern was rolled in with the other d20/OGL games.

One side-benefit of being in the lower traffic forums is that items stay on the front "page" of results for much longer, and are more likely to get seen. In General discussion you can miss things if you don't look at the boards at the right time of day!

Cheers

 

[diaglo]

they have an OLG/OGL forum???

never been there myself.

does it have anything worth reading in it?

 

[DaveMage]

As I said, Dave, non-d20 games have always been discussed in General Discussion. They don't have enough traffic to warrant their own forum (it would be a lonely and low-volume forum indeed!), so that's where they belong.

Oh, ok - my bad.

Thanks.

 

[BSF]

Diaglo,
There is nothing regarding OD&D, the one true game, so nothing for you to see there.

In general relevance to the thread, I can see where it would seem counter-intuitive to leave threads pertaining to other game systems in General, yet relegate D20/OGL systems to their own forum. But I view it much the same as Olgar does. D&D Rules has a specific forum . Stuff specific to other D20/OGL books goes into a specific forum as well.

I like it since it does make it easier to find subject matter specific to those games. The biggest drawback is that the D20/OGL forum does seem to have less traffic. That might be a lack of interest, or a lack of exposure, I am not sure.