No longer enjoying the messageboards as much.

What's a TBF? though last time I checked last post was a post of mine, I guess I have to check again.

To Be Fair.

That makes sense. yeah, TBF, negligence on my part is a reason a couple of the campaigns ended.

I'm still around and I still am smarter and funnier than any other talking bag on this forum.

I'm still around and I still am smarter and funnier than any other talking bag on this forum.

Even the handy Haversack of hilarity?

It is true you are my favorite talking bag.

See, this is why people prefer the haversack.

Just saying, I'm more intelligent AND charismatic. I have the headband and everything.

Just saying, I'm more intelligent AND charismatic. I have the headband and everything.

You're not a Cpt. Yesterday's alias, so you don't count.

And Mine HA!

I don't really post as much these days. Forums just seem not so great anymore. So I just stick to Starfinder and maybe gamer life, as well as my google+ crowd.

I stopped posting a while back also...I was encountering harsher, ruder posts from people and it seemed like most threads lasted about 6-7 posts before someone was letting fly with some sort of viciousness. There is enough of that around in the real world so I didn't feel like hanging with it virtually. I drop on every couple days, look at a few posts, see if anything new is going on and very rarely post except on videogame or movie threads (they seemed the safest). Frequency has been declining again lately though.

Oh dear.

Posting just in "safe" threads isn't the answer. If positive people don't post, other voices don't get heard.

General Thoughts

One thing a community can do is self-moderate with mostly positive posts, and by gently saying, "Hey, can we go in a new, more positive direction here?" The perfect example is this thread, where a bunch of helpful responses about the nature of change in online communities and a few please "don't name individuals negatively" helped change not only the tone of this thread, but also the original poster's mind.

Gentle levity can sometimes shift a thread from negative to positive as well. Kudos to Captain Yesterday et al. for responding to a negative call-out with gentle humor and good cheer. Captain Yesterday, that was great!

Advice Forum

I do go into the Advice forum from time to time, and still occasionally enjoy it. I like to help out new people with their builds or kooky ideas. But I only do that every once in a while because the same builds come up over and over, so I need breaks between visits to the Advice Forum just so that I can do something new.

Rules

I visit Rules every so often because I need to, and when I go in, I swear that I feel like I'm suiting up in hazmat gear for a dip in the cesspool. I want to play this game, not argue rules minutiae. It is the single most most toxic place on these forums.

Pathfinder General Discussion and Campaign Setting

I've enjoyed these every time I've visited, but I hardly ever visit. Too many forums, too little time.

Off-Topic

I visit when I can but my time is limited. Love the silly creativity found in that forum, though.

PFS Boards

It is here that I spend a good portion of my time, since I'm a very active PFS organizer. Sometimes they're great and helpful. Sometimes I have to don my kevlar because they're in a sniping mood. I like to think that I'm part of the people making that section of the boards a better place for all. The more voices bringing help, humor and perspective, the better.

Play-by-Post Campaigns

Oh, you glorious time sink. I spent way too much time here. I found that Flaxseed Lodge is for general PFS discussion what the PFS forums should be. A supportive, inclusive, and generally happy community with more builders than grumblers. I also love my campaigns, both the ones that I play in and the ones that I GM. Heck, I love them so much that I've become a VL for PFS Online Play so that I can help new PBP GMs and players find their way.

Conclusion

Your voice matters. If you find a topic or forum boring, by all means bypass it. But you don't have to restrict yourself to "safe". You can also, if a thread gets too toxic, do what I do. Leave, and flag.

Hugs to all. I hope you're having a happy holiday, whatever holidays you celebrate!

Hmm

Odraude wrote:

I don't really post as much these days. Forums just seem not so great anymore. So I just stick to Starfinder and maybe gamer life, as well as my google+ crowd.

I stopped posting a while back also...I was encountering harsher, ruder posts from people and it seemed like most threads lasted about 6-7 posts before someone was letting fly with some sort of viciousness.

Yeah that's why I stopped taking part regularly as well. Seems no matter what you say, someone is going to attack you for it. Civil disagreement is a last resort to some.

A very reasonable post

I'm putting my response behind a spoiler, as this is simply my take on the various boards, and is probably of zero interest to most...

Fake Healer wrote:

Odraude wrote:

I don't really post as much these days. Forums just seem not so great anymore. So I just stick to Starfinder and maybe gamer life, as well as my google+ crowd.

I stopped posting a while back also...I was encountering harsher, ruder posts from people and it seemed like most threads lasted about 6-7 posts before someone was letting fly with some sort of viciousness.

Yeah that's why I stopped taking part regularly as well. Seems no matter what you say, someone is going to attack you for it. Civil disagreement is a last resort to some.

I disagree! You're wrong and deserve to be attacked for your wrongness! *mildly offensive insult*

I wish I didn't need the Rules Questions board sometimes. It is a tiresome place full of people who love argument for its own sake, but sometimes the rules are confusing and I need their help. Meanwhile, Advice has elements to it that I like, despite the aggressiveness you often see there. I think it's a guilty pleasure for me, like Dear Abby.

Heh.

By the way, for those of you who don't regularly peruse the PFS boards, we do get some fun gems. Here's John Compton's Marvelous Grinch Parody!

Hmm

That parody is brilliant stuff.

If you want some fun way to kill time here you could always read a Play-by-Post Campaign sometime. I was having a good time reading a Fallout thing Greenteagamer was running with Savage Worlds. Helped acquaint me with a different system a little bit as well as sate my Fallout craving while I was playing New Vegas.

As far as the other boards, I don't really comment unless the answer to a rules question is real easy or someone wants some general strategic advice.

I frequent the Rules board but mainly because I am my groups rules guru and usual GM. I try to remember FAQs and frequently discussed rules that might need clarified to present it to the GM for rulings.

The 3PP boards can have some real cool things pop up if you are open to that stuff.

I'm a very different person today than when I first started posting nine years ago. The forums are naturally much different, as they reflect the people posting in them, and like me those people have changed.

I'm still an ornery cuss. But I'm also a venture captain now. I've had a lot of new gaming experiences. I've had a lot of new life experiences. I'm trying to curb the sarcasm and better my noise to signal ratio. I still get temperamental with people.

There isn't a magic answer to all of this. The only thing we can control is our contribution to the tone of the forums. The power to change is in your hands.

TOZ mentions something that is a great bit of wisdom I was lucky enough to learn years ago.

"You cannot control what someone will do, but you can control how you will respond."

Thanks for jogging my mind sir.

I usually respond with anger and sarcasm.

"You cannot control what someone will do, but you can control how you will respond."

Well.. a Pathfinder enchanter can. :P

I'm a very different person today than when I first started posting nine years ago. The forums are naturally much different, as they reflect the people posting in them, and like me those people have changed.

I'm still an ornery cuss. But I'm also a venture captain now. I've had a lot of new gaming experiences. I've had a lot of new life experiences. I'm trying to curb the sarcasm and better my noise to signal ratio. I still get temperamental with people.

There isn't a magic answer to all of this. The only thing we can control is our contribution to the tone of the forums. The power to change is in your hands.

Oh, the early 2000's TOZ. The spikey hair, the baggy pants, the attitude.

The long hair and billowing shirt.

Oh, that's still around.

Long time lurker, infrequent poster.

I have been on the forums for some time, actually its funny, I went and looked at my first post - May 2, 2012, 08:32 am. I cannot believe it has been so long.

I just wanted to say, even though the boards have changed, in many different directions, it is always nice to get on and see familiar faces (names :-) )

Like others have said, I enjoy seeing members like Toz, Kobold Cleaver, BNW, NH (by the way love your Silly Serpents Skull thread) and many others when I am on the boards. It gives me the feeling that, even though change is inevitable, there will always be someone/something familiar within that change. To me these members are the "iconic characters" of the boards.

But as we continue to move forward look to meet new members and watch for these new members to become "iconic" in their own right.

Thank you to all of the members on these boards for their continued love of gaming, no matter what medium, and keeping life entertaining for those of us who lurk more than post. :-) Maybe one day Paizo will make a list of Iconic posters... ;-)

Oh, Gods! I've become "iconic". All because I kill children!

What would the Dead Kennedys say?

I didn't realize that some posters were being banned from posting. I don't follow the messageboards closely enough to note the absence of some of the more "confrontational" posters. I have noticed the absence of a certain "Mr. Betts" over the last few months, which struck me as odd, given the political happenings in the USA. Has he run afoul with the powers that be, or just found other things to occupy his time?

Nope! If you can see the profile, they aren't banned.

They fixed that glitch. You can now no longer tell when someone is banned.

Oh, interesting. They did fix the glitch (which is nice, since I might want to access someone's posts from time to time), but they didn't make it impossible to tell.

You cannot PM someone who has been banned. Scott Betts is still fine. :)

By the way, we're skirting a line here. Remember not to actually bring up the banning of specific posters. I think it's enough to just establish how to tell whether someone is banned or MIA.

Fair enough.

Christopher Dudley wrote:

Fake Healer wrote:

Odraude wrote:

I don't really post as much these days. Forums just seem not so great anymore. So I just stick to Starfinder and maybe gamer life, as well as my google+ crowd.

I stopped posting a while back also...I was encountering harsher, ruder posts from people and it seemed like most threads lasted about 6-7 posts before someone was letting fly with some sort of viciousness.

Yeah that's why I stopped taking part regularly as well. Seems no matter what you say, someone is going to attack you for it. Civil disagreement is a last resort to some.

I disagree! You're wrong and deserve to be attacked for your wrongness! *mildly offensive insult*

HEY! We have a thread for that sort of post!

I've noticed the changes and shifts. People who used to post and I would always look them up are posting less or not at all (really miss you, Mikaze!).

This I believe has more to do with changes in people's lives and priorities. Some have felt themselves bullied off the boards (DeathQuaker is someone I always liked and respected; that one hurt), others have just moved on, some have been banned. The shift in what is acceptable and not can also be seen in the changing threads.

Life is change. One of the things I still love about these boards is the general upbeat and good natured feel. Most messageboards out there feel somewhat like a cesspool; never Paizo. It can be heated and bad stuff occasionally gets posted, but it never lasts.

Do I miss how it was? Of course. Lately I've been finding myself longing for how D&D felt when I started back when I was 13. But we grow and change. I also remember some pretty horrible times I went through at 13 and am glad to be free of all that. The boards will continue to change, develop and grow in ways we can't even predict. But so long as there are some to carry over from one group to the next, there will at least be a continuity of principles which I think the boards here have never lost.

That's why I'm sticking around. :)

If you want some fun way to kill time here you could always read a Play-by-Post Campaign sometime. I was having a good time reading a Fallout thing Greenteagamer was running with Savage Worlds. Helped acquaint me with a different system a little bit as well as sate my Fallout craving while I was playing New Vegas.

God that was a fun game. I think GTG bit off more than he could chew when he combined the tables, is a big reason why he had a harder time finding inspiration to run the game.

We went from being a party of mostly Brotherhood affiliates and general do-gooders to a mix of that and more morally grey characters that just did not mesh.

I just don't have the time any more to be on the boards all the time - it's been a long while since I had a job where I could slack a third of the time and still get my work done!

I have found, however, that when I read the boards I tend to read some people's posts and skim the majority of them. But that's probably just a "you kids get off my lawn!" thing :)

Sometimes a poster takes a break because their house burned down and they need time to put their life back together. Stuff happens.

*offers hugs*

Dude, I wouldn't accept those offered hugs if I were you . . . I've seen evidence of the shattered and burnt out husks of those that have scattered all about these boards and elsewhere. These are dangerous times, my friend. Dangerous times!

I've never been a big poster here and it's gotten way less over the years. I found myself feeling not welcome and generally like I wasn't even playing the same game, since apparently the style I tend to play is much more relaxed than many others here. There are plenty of forums I tend to not go into because of the exact kind of posting behavior others have described. I mostly just read a few things and move on.

I've never felt super welcome on the forums and just less so over the years.

I dunno. I find that if you listen to the people who actually matter and ignore the background noise, the forums are a wonderful place to hang out and chat with like-minded folk.

Just gotta have that thick skin allowing you to ignore the noise :)

I find that if you listen to the people who actually matter and ignore the background noise

Don't want to put words in your mouth, so just a question: Who are those people who actually matter?

Because I think that this is a very dangerous train of thought that can easily be misunderstood as: There are important and there are second class forum citizens. Which is the very first step in making people feeling unwelcome here.

I found myself feeling not welcome and generally like I wasn't even playing the same game, since apparently the style I tend to play is much more relaxed than many others here.

I can relate to that as my style seems to be much more casual than other peoples' style and quite often, I land in discussions with people who I feel have a totally different style of play than I do. Still I feel that it's a shame if you found yourself being not welcome here because of that. Because most of the time, the boards here are a very welcoming place and what I talked about with gbonehead seems to be much more prevalent in nearly every other forum I've been so far.

gbonehead wrote:

I find that if you listen to the people who actually matter and ignore the background noise

Don't want to put words in your mouth, so just a question: Who are those people who actually matter?

Because I think that this is a very dangerous train of thought that can easily be misunderstood as: There are important and there are second class forum citizens. Which is the very first step in making people feeling unwelcome here.

Dhampir984 wrote:

I found myself feeling not welcome and generally like I wasn't even playing the same game, since apparently the style I tend to play is much more relaxed than many others here.

I can relate to that as my style seems to be much more casual than other peoples' style and quite often, I land in discussions with people who I feel have a totally different style of play than I do. Still I feel that it's a shame if you found yourself being not welcome here because of that. Because most of the time, the boards here are a very welcoming place and what I talked about with gbonehead seems to be much more prevalent in nearly every other forum I've been so far.

"The people who acually matter" is a personal decision, just like favorite RPG, class, programming language or brace style.

For me, it's people who tend to have interesting, thoughtful posts that actually say something, as opposed to being argumentative, rules-lawyery, or simply appear to be posts for the sake of saying something.

But yeah, I will 100% say there are first-class and second-class posters, but not for the reasons you seem to be implying - I'd say that each individual is in charge of their own destiny rather than it being some elite clique they have to prove they're worthy of.

Who are the people who matter?

Short Term Answer

Each and every person I interact with, especially the first few times that I interact with them. Until they prove otherwise through repeated obnoxiousness, I give them the benefit of a doubt and assume that they might be having a rough day even if their posts are initially brusque or harsh. Usually, they were in fact having a bad day, and the crankiness melts away with a bit of courtesy and care. There are exceptions, and those exceptions go on my personal ignore list after a while.

Long Term Answer

The people who matter most to me are those who go out of their way to help others, or who can defuse an obnoxious thread with a bit of well-timed humor, or who just treat others with courtesy.

If they treat you right, they're the voices that matter to you. Don't let the crankypants posters ruin your day. Just smile, keep going, and interact with those who offer you help and fellowship.

Hmm

I've been a semi-lurker for a good while on these boards, but I've honestly been so buried in the PBP forums I was largely unaware of a lot of the drama being discussed. :-/

Add me to the chorus of "really, really miss Mikaze".

I've always wondered—Orannis, is your username referencing what I think it is?

Who are the people who matter?

Short Term Answer

Each and every person I interact with, especially the first few times that I interact with them. Until they prove otherwise through repeated obnoxiousness, I give them the benefit of a doubt...

Wait a minute, why do you continue to interact with me?

I've always wondered—Orannis, is your username referencing what I think it is?

If you're thinking of something "bright and shiny" but not at all nice, then yes.:D