... Forums

Forums. Refuge for roleplayers stuck at work, shining pillar of hope for roleplayers lost in the dark of the question whether a DL-44 weighs 1.3 or 1.4 kg. Battleground for epic conflicts between the fearless warriors of all things duel and the fanatic zealots of the holy emote. Generating enough heat from flames that, if it could be harnessed, it might almost make up for the amount of work hours lost on them by less than diligent office workers. In short, part of the core of our roleplay experience - in many cases even coming before the game itself.

That said, I am always surprised by the differences between roleplaying forums. On one side, we have SWG/Starsider roleplaying forums – often full of flames, smoldering hatred, and burning crusades (no, not of the WoW style, of the „anyone who does not play like I do is having bad wrong fun and should quit!!!“ variety). On the other hand, we have forums like EN World, about, hm... 10 to 100 times as big (at least) as the usual SWG server roleplay forums (while I am writing this, SSG has 9 people online, EN World has 1300 people online), and having about, uh... 1% of the flames and hostility.

Why is that? If I knew for sure, I’d probably be able to solve the middle east conflict as well, and get the nobel prize, if I could bottle the secret and sell it to parents of teenagers and disfunctional families I’d be a billionaire. But I can at least try to guess the reasons why a forum with so many more people has much less drama than say Starsider’s roleplaying forums.

First, the similarities. Both SWG and EN World deal with roleplaying. Both have a mixture of nostalgics and new players, SWG just has fewer editions to be nostalgic about – they got Pre-CU, which grows bigger and better every year seen through the rose-colored glasses of the veterans (who conveniently forget the flames and drama on the forums back then, and all the complaining). The CU (less fans, but less drama), and the current game version, the NGE (also known as „Biggest blunder of SOE“ in some circles, and „pretty decent“ in other circles, but mostly known as „the thing that makes me roleplay, since there’s nothing else to do“ – according to roleplay forums, that is. Someone forgot to tell the players in game that they have nothing to do, so the poor ignorant players are stuck doing nothing, and can’t even complain since they do not know they have nothing to do. Any good samaritan should talk to them, and fill them in what they are doing wrong, having fun and all, so they too can join the league of dispossessed pre-cu fans).
That sounds pretty complex, all in all, but EN World has SWG beat by a wide margin. Where people that started to play SWG 4 years ago are considered veterans (and therefore often think they have the „right“ to look down upon NGE „Noobs“), EN World dealing with a game that is over 30 years old, has grognards that started playing in the 1970s, when the first edition came out (and still play it!). 1e is actually a misnomer, there’s OD&D, red box, some may even count chainmail. Then there’s AD&D 1E, AD&D 2E, Skills & Power 2E, and then there’s 3E, 3.5E, and the recently announced 4E. Add d20, various other system based upon d20, among them the Star Wars d20 and the Star Wars Saga Edition (Hey! It has Star Wars too!), and off-shots of those and you end up with more game systems than SWG has had patches. And just about every system mentioned has fervent adherants who consider it the one true way of D&D/Roleplaying.

So, any SWG roleplayer with a smidgen of forum experience has already taken cover in a nuclear shelter, expecting EN World to explode with flames that rival a supernova daily, able to burn posters to ashes through flatscreens and fiberoptic cables - yet it doesn’t.

Why is that? Are EN World posters more mature? Can’t be! Everyone on SWG knows that SWG roleplayers are the most mature roleplayers of all!

Do EN World posters have less of an ego? Not at all, as anyone listening to the tales of character death and DM stupidity can attest to, the ego of some posters is just as big as anyone else’s. In some cases, like industry professionals, it may even be justified.

Aha! As many of our gods of roleplay can affirm, it must bet hat the posters of EN World are simply more lovable, and won’t be as nasty as disagreeing with a poster, or asking for references for cited rules, since everyone knows, discussions are flames, and disagreements will ruin roleplay!
Uh... sorry to say, but people disagree a lot on EN World. They also discuss a lot. They even use the dreaded „Quote“ function to not just quote whole posts (and spam pictures!), but to quote point after point of a post, with tailored refutes or questions in between. Yet it rarely if ever degenerates into flames. Why is that so?

Maybe EN world, dealing mostly with pen and paper roleplaying, is less anonymous, and all the thousands of posters know and respect each other, unlike on SWG, where the internet makes them scoff common courtesy? Again, wrong. Most of the posters may not have seen each other even once, ,much less played together. Compared to SWG, where many players encounter each other in game and therefore may be more courteous, that sounds like a recipe for disaster.

But hold! you say. That must be it – in SWG, posters usually know each other, therefore they are more prone to flame each other! That might be true, even i fit completely ruins the whole „we need to mingle and get to know each other oocly so we can play together“ idea many players cite as the reason for spamming their in-jokes all over the forums.

But is it true? Upon closer examination, it may play a part. When browsing EN World, one hardly if ever encounters the oh so funny „look at what stupid spam I found“ posts, the „original“ inside jokes, the emote spam chain quotes or the lovable „thread hijacking to keep it funny and flame free“ antics of vigilante wanna-be mods. The whole EN World forum feels less cliquish too. That may be the size alone, but I doubt it. It’s simply the absence of inside jokes and „special exceptions“ and „meant as a joke“ posts that require people to spend half a week just reading posts until they know who is serious when talking to whom and who is not.

I do think, after reflecting upon it, that it comes down to two reasons.

First, EN World, contrary to almost every SWG forum I saw, is first and foremost seen as a forum to exchange and discuss ideas and information about roleplaying, not a stage to draw attention to oneself, or hang out and spam each other. They also draw a sharp line between opinions and people.

Second, EN World has a team of moderators who actually moderate. They don’t cut anyone slack. They don’t let people act as vigilante moderators, they don’t let others define what goes and what goes not. They don’t evade decisions, they go and draw the line between personal attacks and rebuttals of opinions.
They are dedicated to preserve the forums as a place to exchange ideas, discuss opinions, and to get advice and help for roleplaying.

Together, EN World comes off as a place where new players feel much more accepted than any SWG Forum I ever saw, and where the signal to noise ratio is much much better as well.

Is it as handy to hang out, joke, and generally chat with your buddies and best friends? Of course not. But, it seems EN World posters usually do that at the gaming table, not in forums meant to help roleplay.

Of course, since SWG players lack that table, we’re stuck with having to turn our central rp forums into spam hubs that rival Mos Eisley Starport on dev vacation days – I mean, it’s not as if we could joke with our guildies on our private forums, in chat rooms, or in special threads in a special forum, we have to spam all over the place, right? I mean, that would be intolerable! An outrage! Free Speech violated! We do have to let everyone read how cool and chummy we are, the better to show them they are not part of our clique!

And we could not complain about those very forums going down the pits due to flames and spam. But it’s not our fault, no sir! It’s uh... the fault of those who don’t laugh at our jokes, who don’t ask for permission to discuss stuff, who actually come to a forum to discuss roleplay, not read about panda spam. Don’t those outsiders know that just because we joke and spam that it does not mean they are allowed to „break the rules“ and post stuff we do not agree with?

Who let them on the forums anyway? What? Us, cliquish? Who said that? We are friendly, mature and welcoming, helpful, paragons of humanity! Anyone who disagrees is a troublemaker! Ban that heathen!