The State of ENWorld (too important to go to Meta)

[Tonguez]

Two things i've noticed is that the threads being posted in general aren't as interesting as they use to be. Perhaps its because all the interesting discussions have already been had and as people have gained a fuller grasp of the D20 system the need to ask those questions has diminished or been moved out to more specific forums.

The other problem is that general forum in general is still a cluttered mess ...

 

[Desdichado]

I think it's also a natural evolution. 3e, and now it's successor, aren't new anymore. d20 products aren't new anymore. When a new product comes out, it's unlikely that's it's "boldly going where no one's gone before", it's likely just doing it in a slightly different way.

It's only natural that the nature of the discussions also change.

And the publisher announcements that I most want to hear I can't find anyway. Where the heck are the Privateer Press chumps?

And my buying habits are probably also fairly typical for board members; I used to buy just about anything I was remotely interested in; now I really look for stuff that caters to a specific need or desire or "hey, that's cool!" nerve.

 

[Rel]

Now that I don't agree with. ENWorld is one of the friendlier places on the 'net, and I can always count on a good, stimulating and interesting discussion on something near and dear to my heart over here, as long as d20 and gaming in general stay near and dear to my heart. It's extremely rare for a discussion to turn into a bitter, or argumentative type of discussion here, especially compared to other places.

I couldn't agree with you more, Joshua (see, here I go dogpiling on poor marlaxle ). The large majority of threads I see around here are civil and intelligent discussions of the topic at hand. When things do occasionally get heated, a moderator frequently pops in with a friendly reminder to keep things, well, friendly.

I may be in a minority, but I am far less "product driven" and far more "idea driven" when it comes to why I come to ENWorld and what threads I look at while I'm here. I don't buy a new gaming book more often than about every other month or so. The trick is that most of our campaigns run for 6-9 months of real time and we try not to introduce new materials in mid-campaign. So we accumulate various books over the course of the campaign and will use some of this new material at the start of the next one.

As a result, I very rarely participate in (or even read) many of the threads about the latest, greatest product coming down the d20 pike.

I used to read the Rules Forum as much as anything and I found in my early days of playing 3E that it was a rare day that I did not discover that we were misinterpreting a rule or gaining a better understanding of the nuances of some spell or other. This gradually decreased as some of the more obvious rules issues were hammered out and the lines being drawn in some of the debates became increasingly fine. My use of Rules dropped off considerably when 3.5 came out and our group did not convert. Suddenly the vast majority of the Rules threads were focused on the 3.0-3.5 changes and these did not concern me.

That shifted my interest in the boards more to General and this is where I spend the large majority of my time here now. But what I've noticed in General is that our database of past threads has possibly contributed to a decline in the number of posts in some of the newer threads. I often see somebody ask a question and among the first few posts, somebody (who is no doubt doing their best to be helpful) will post something like, "A lengthy thread on this topic was discussed earlier. You can find it here [Link]."

On the face of it, this is a Good Thing. But it can sometimes be a threadkiller because (I'm guessing) people will click the link, note that the previous thread was 8 pages long, begin to read it and get their answer. Not much need for further discussion after that.

Regardless of all that, I still find enough compelling topics on most days to keep me interested for a little while and it is probably best that there aren't more topics that I can't help but read since I need to get some work done too.

 

[Piratecat]

...the culture around here seems to foster being argumentative rather than holding civil, intelligent conversations.

Lord knows we're not perfect, but that's not what we try to encourage. As moderators, we try to reinforce the type of conversations that we like to have ourselves: interesting and polite ones, amongst friends. I try to run the type of board that I would like to hang out at. That's not for everyone, but I think we do pretty well. Please let us know any ways in which we can improve by posting in this thread or over in Meta.

 

[Greatwyrm]

Strange, I've only ever noticed one instance of things getting really ugly in a thread. But then, I don't read everything.

Anyway, I think the apparent loss of interest can be attributed to a number of things. The division of the boards into more manageable chunks certainly gives the appearance of fewer topics when you're browsing, but when I search for new posts I seem to get about the same as always.

The combination of the "newness" of d20 wearing off and other outlets for game news may also contribute. It used to be this was just about the only place to get tips and scoops on gaming news. Now, many publishers are doing a decent job keeping up on their own websites.

Something else is what I would consider a kind of cyclical nature to gaming. I noticed this when I was in the gaming club in college. At the beginning of the semester, we'd have tons of people at the meetings. As the semester went on, people would find games to get into and stop showing up for meetings. Could be the same sort of thing here. People probably come by for character ideas, campaign building advice, and other front-end issues. Once the game is going, they don't stop by so much. No real proof on this, just a thought.

 

[Conaill]

I have to agree with RW that EN World just doesn't seem as vibrant as it used to. But I don't think this is just an issue with the *publishers*. It's just that the community has become much more fragmented as it has grown.

Morrus points out some important statistics: We have many more separate forums, and at the same time registration, new posts and new threads are all increasing. However, I'd love to see some stats on the *length* of the average (or perhaps better the median) thread, which I think may very well be decreasing. Sure, you get some massive threads with hundreds of posts, but a large number of threads seem to get 4-5 posts and then drop off the front page.

As an example, I started up an Awakened Animal thread over in General Monster Talk. However that forum serves a much smaller subcommunity, so many people who may be interested may not even have noticed the thread. And if it wasn't for me trying to keep the topic alive (we're working out Level Adjustments for some sample animals right now), the thread would have long sunk into oblivion.

Anyway... so what could we do to bring EN World back to it's former vibrant self, without having General turn into a complete mess? Well, for one I think there are simply too many threads. Ideally, we would want the *number* of threads and *size* of threads to grow at the same rate, and I don't believe we're seeing that right now. One possible solution would be to restrict creation of new threads to community supporters. Obviously we'd need some thread set aside specifically for newbies to ask questions, but that's probably a good idea anyway.

Morrus... could you give us some more concrete statistics? In particular, how does the number of posts per thread scale, and what fraction of posts and new threads come from community supporters vs non-supporters compared to, say, a year ago?

We may also want to merge some of the smallest forums back in. For example, do we really need a separate Homebrews forum, if we already have a General Monster Talk and a House Rules forum? Especially since the presence of that forum creates a whole extra level of hierarchy (Homebrews and General Monster Talk are the only two subforums under "Creature Catalog Forums")

 

[Simplicity]

Well, I think it's actually reflecting a bit of the problems that d20 is
having in general. d20 has been tremendously successful, and lots
of publishers have bought on to the brand. But now there is just
an enormous glut of sourcebooks on the shelves.

In the 2nd edition days, you would bide your time with a few adventures,
and wait to see what each setting would produce. Now, it's like we're
getting a Complete Book of Every Possible Race, Class, Magic Item, Creature, Villains, Good guys. And that's all we're getting from every publisher.

There's probably 10 times more sourcebooks then there are adventures!
And the recipe for every sourcebook is the same: 10 new monsters! 15 new prestige classes! 25 new magical items... Blah blah...

There are some major exceptions here:
1) D&D miniatures have been exploding. It's nice to actually have a good set of (if not inexpensive, then at least apparently so) minis.
2) Malhavoc Press is putting out some really interesting stuff off that main track. AU, and the event books are really interesting material. The Banewarrens was a good, well-timed mega-adventure.
3) Eberron looks like it may provide an opportunity for new ideas. I hope it is a success...
4) Midnight. A good setting that is getting a lot of support from the community.

At some point, the DMs are just going to say: "I've got 5 sourcebooks for campaigns I never get to play. Why do I need another? Especially when
the sourcebook is probably going to be the end of the line."

Two ideas for making things better:

A) A group of publishing companies getting together to support
a setting. A multi-company authoring of sourcebook/adventure sets. With enough companies supporting it, you could throw advertising money at it. You could attract gamers to that particular world, and the gamers could have the confidence that the world is going to be supported.

B) Notice I said adventure sets above. TSR has already shown that selling adventures is a very difficult way to make money. So, my advice is to take a page from Dungeon magazine. Don't sell single adventures. Sell adventures in a set. The set could be related adventures or they could be totally unrelated. You can charge more money for the set of adventures. People will buy the set for the adventure they want, and keep the other adventures as "spares."

 

[Crothian]

I think we DO need publishers to pimp their own stuff. Sure they are biased, but they are informed! The idea of specific publisher forums could be a bad one, however. For instance, I beleive that EN publishing product discussions get LOST in their own forum with no anchor to the publishing forum. They should just be discussed and announced there like any other publisher.

Talk of their books and they will come. I've never had a thread about a book that the author did not come by and post something. Okay, half the time if I start a thread on a book I'll e-mail the auther and point him to the thread, but he still comes by and posts.

 

[Brown Jenkin]

I too have personaly slowed down on ENWorld for two general reasons.

First was that I am not happy with the new 3.5 edition. This has dropped my interest in the game greatly. With most people willing to give up on 3.0 there is less for me to talk about with regards to the game. I hope others are having fun, but to me 3.5 is like 2E too me and I ended up spending 10 years out of the game until 3E revived my interest. I will occasionaly (likle this) bring up this point but in general I have refrained since I don't want to start flame wars and I am tired of being shouted down for darring to disagree with 3.5.

Secondly is the division of Off-Topic from General. I enjoyed the blend of gaming threads and other threads of wierdness that poped up. Without the Off-Topic threads to keep me coming back I was less interested in showing up. Despite various attempts I have not found much of a reason to make Off-Topic a home either. As with General too much of one thing, in this case threads I don't care about at all for the most part, has kept me out.

The one reason I still show up for the most part is the Movies, Books, and TV forum which still seems to me a fun and interesting place.

 

[MEG Hal]

My take...
The d20 publishers do have their own forums, and we have to focus on getting books out now because it is so competitive out there, we have real lives, we have personal projects we are working on, we missed a thread etc...

It is getting harder to keep up and when I miss a thread there a few of you who PM or e-mail me and I hop right over, but I have been working a lot on Fall of Man (actually doing some writing-woo hoo), which lead me to my own personal project which is taking up some head space, so it happens that I am lurking more and I also am doing more posting on the TV/Movie forum as well.

So it is a combo of things, this is still my favorite place to hang out on the internet but I am spending less time hanging and more time working .

The others may feel the same, they may not...who knows but this is one publisher and his reasons!

Buzz me if ya need me.