Forums.

[edg]

SJ Games has announced their new, free web fora. I'm one of the moderators of the "other SJ Games RPGs" forum. Hopefully this will incline me to actually populate the forum, because in general, I hate web fora. Hate hate hate.

Mailing lists? Fine. NNTP discussion groups? Fine. Web boards? Hate 'em.

I'm not 100% sure why this is. I kind of wish I were, because then I'd be able to feel like this was a rational dislike. I think at least part of it is that MLs and newsgroups are so automatic; I can tell the email or news client to download everything new from all the groups I'm subscribed to, walk away, and come back later and read them. With web boards I have to ferret out the new posts, and it bugs me.

There are probably options I can change in the boards that'll make that easier. I haven't bothered to find out, because I'm on dial-up, and having to wait until the damn page loads before I can change anything, and then having to wait until that page loads to find out what it really changed: this pisses me off.

So here's hoping that mandatory long-term exposure changes my mind, because at the moment I'm looking at the forums and thinking "these aren't newsgroups why?".

Comments

[demiurgent.livejournal.com]

Eh. The moment I discovered that In Nomine was shoved into the Professor and Mary Ann section along with the beer and pretzels RPGs, but Transhuman Space and WWII got their own boards, I decided the new Web Fora wasn't worth my time.

[edg.livejournal.com]

Strictly from a sales standpoint, I suspect that this is because THS and WWII are bigger sellers than the entire IN line (although I may be mistaken).

On the other hand, I've seen at least two people say that they weren't going to be using the fora specifically because IN didn't have its own forum. I'm not sure what's going on in management's heads, and I'm going to make it a priority to find out.

[demiurgent.livejournal.com]

*shrug* I can accept we're second class citizens. I can accept it's because we don't make SJGames money. But I don't have to hang around in the neighborhoods where it's rubbed in my face.

If it had actually cost so much as a cent to put an In Nomine forum on, I suppose that'd be one thing. But nothing screams "we don't consider this game very important" like being dumped in Miscallaneous. And if the game I play isn't important there, I'll stick to the INML, where it is.

[fadethecat.livejournal.com]

Considering the total number of posts the In Nomine boards over on Pyramid get in an average month... At least if they're in with other games there's a chance of other people ever seeing the threads. Honestly, I'd prefer far more consolidated forums overall. What's the point of having a separate forum for each individual game? You end up with three posts a month each in forums most people won't look at in the first place because they don't already own That Game.

At least with In Nomine in with some other games, there's chance of people occasionally posting about it, and other people seeing those posts and responding.

[archangelbeth]

I suspect that a goodly chunk of the reason the Pyraboards don't have IN stuff on them is... We have the mailing list. The mailing list is free, and most of the people on the Pyraboards who like IN are also on the mailing list.

That said, I was a bit peeved at no IN board, too, but if enough threads have IN in them, I have faith it'll come along.

That, and I know forums have a nice little SEARCH option, which I've used to good effect on rpg.net a few times.

[demiurgent.livejournal.com]

You'll note I gave in, finally. Goobing about IN trumps grumping about the ghetto address.

Besides, if we take over the place, they'll either give us our own forum out of recognition of our rabidness, or because the Munchkin RPG player complains.

Why yes, I meant that singular.

[cpip.livejournal.com]

Y'know, now I'm wondering which one's Gilligan, and which is The Skipper.