I started following TTRPGs closely around the time that Itch and Twitter really started becoming major community institutions, so they’re my major reference point for what ttrpg communities “typically” look like. Twitter is… very much not doing very well. I get the sense that RPG communities have become more fractured, or at least more hidden, retreating to unsearchable “grey web” spaces like Discord. I’m worried that a lot of accumulated knowledge will be lost as public-facing community spaces start emptying. On the other hand, OSR/NSR spaces have a strong blog culture that’s lasted for years and years, providing a way to resist this dispersal/drainage.
Are my concerns totally off-base here? What are the rising community spaces worth keeping an eye on?
I’m right there with you! When I originally launched this server, it was because there was SO MUCH good stuff on the NSR Discord that I figured would one day be lost to time, enshittification, etc. I’d like to start “rebuilding” a culture of forums for OSR/NSR/Indie games, starting here. The blog culture will continue to exist it seems, which is a good thing. Let’s try to promote blogs discussions here, perhaps?
In terms of rising spaces… I don’t really know. Lots of discords, patreons, etc but they are hard to find or closed off.
I had some expectation that bluesky would take twitter’s place, but it sounds like things haven’t been going so well over there either (and was basically always going to be vulnerable to a lot of twitter’s same weaknesses anyway)
oh hey the Bloggies are a big current blog event thing. Where would a thread for discussing those go?
The internet was better before community spaces were owned by people who don’t care. But the advantage of a large platform is that it is easier to create the necessary mass of people who can participate in discussion. If nobody’s on a forum, then no discussion can be had.
I think the question to ask is how do we start building a critical mass of people over here?
I’ve tested the waters with the Itch tabletop forum recently. Thousands of users who could have contributed, but nobody using the forum. I guess a big part of building momentum is just, consistent posting?
Having witnessed Blaseball and Cohost, I have to tell you that the key to building “online community” is to foster engagement by both posting and being pro-active with meaningfully engaging with posts.
Also ignoring what you imagine someone’s clout to be when talking to them.
While I agree that it’s sad that some content will be forgotten because it’s only posted on Discord, active communities like r/rpg, r/osr and r/nsrrpg on Reddit do exist and I don’t see them going downhill. People seem to be engaging more on the various Discord servers, though. Maybe Reddit is just too impersonal and anonymous.
Interesting things happen on Discord, but everything is instantaneous. Even though I’ve been here for a while now, I’m just starting to use it with interest. I’ve been reading past conversations and it’s great to see what’s been written. Forums and blogs give you the advantage that future readers can go back to those posts and follow the current conversation, like I do. On Discord or even microblogging platforms this is impossible - what’s being discussed at the moment is what’s in the conversation. Reddit still seems functional to me.
I think Discord is amazing for small communities of 10-20. I love it as a group chat to share stuff and my gaming tables mostly use Discord. Get beyond that and I find things get overwhelming. I love the slower speeds of a forum, but I’ve been a forum user since 2000
Some people put out articles from discord discussions to web pages. I think there’s no capilarity effect for information within the TTRPG community because the tubes are too small . Like, the industry has preempted the larger community, and I really don’t identify with it, but rather with many scenes and small groups. And basic restrictions no bigots, no nazis (it’s sad to have to add this mention).
I’m wonderig what syndication would look like for the swarm of small scenes I see. There are already connections between US, UK and Scandinavia, and bridges with LatAM and SEA.
It’s an analogy. Capillary action - Wikipedia
It starts with “tubes” for information channels going from the small group discussions to a wider audience.
Editing and publishing an article is an effort, not a natural product of discussion, so goes “against gravity”.
With the analogy, I suggest a kind of low tech low effort solution.
You’re definitely not alone. Concern about the state of the scene (which is, I think, sometimes a better way to describe it) is what motivated me to write the agenda on my blog.
There are spaces that are better structured for nurturing the scene as more that just a resource for generating techbro profits. This forum is one of them, and it’s really great to see it getting so much activity lately. We can give if more juice by treating it as a venue of first-resort — ie. posting ideas, questions.l, self-promotion, etc. here, before we take them to the semi-enclosed, corporate platforms. That doesn’t mean we have to give up on those platforms, but it helps to ensure that we’re not relying on them to the exclusion of grassroots resources that have a greater incentive to nurture the scene because they’re maintained by people who card about the scene.
However, it doesn’t worry me too much. The desire of a large community all sharing stuff together breaks up really quick as a community grows. It inevitably breaks down into small splinters. I’m not too interested in holding all the splinters together, I’m much more interested in finding one or two splinters that fit with me and to nurture them.
“Macro-communities” like on Twitter and Bluesky are false communities. That’s why there’s so much infighting, arguing. A whole lot of people that don’t really fit together or have incredibly opposing perspectives that get wrapped under one banner.
Discord comes with its share of small annoyances, but it still offers lots of smaller servers (communities) that are genuinely fun to hang out in. These really give me IRC vibes and are great for making friends. However, any important work or thoughts really need to be extracted from its channels and properly blogged!
The last part is also true for Bluesky really. Yeah you can bookmark skeets but it’s really annoying to read a good blog post in 20 tiny parts.
Anyway, let’s hope forums can make a comeback. It would be a good addition to complement other spaces.
I also think a community-run wiki might be a good way to build an archive. Not just for the commonly asked-about jargon, but also for GM strategies and player advice.
