Online D&D Communities

[bekeleven]

What are the pros and cons of each board, or do all essentially form a homogenous supercommunity?

Try to refrain from mentioning specific users, but I'd be interested in people's thoughts on minmax, wizards, enworld, paizo, and other such websites.

[Firechanter]

All of these infos are just second-hand, since I don't frequent any of these boards personally:

- Minmax is said to have a rather high amount of Theoretical Optimization -- supposedly even higher than here on GitP, and this is the board where people recommend, in all seriousness, to play an Anthropomorphic Whale.

However, Minmax also has a lot of Handbooks, very well organized and structured, and I often look these up when exploring a new character idea.

- The Gaming Den is more populated by various "Oldschool" camps with their own pickets between them.

- ENWorld seems to be less optimization-oriented; overall pretty friendly atmosphere.

- Paizo's boards are for Pathfinder, and have a reputation for being very strictly moderated with no tolerance for criticism against their design decisions. Though that might possibly change now that a certain person has left the staff.

[Inevitability]

Wizards can be pretty agressive, IMO, one of the reasons that I don't post there anymore.

NoGoblinsAllowed is quite serious, and it's still growing.

[Dusk Eclipse]

Minmax is definitely the place to get high OP advice, it was formed from the remnants of the brilliant gameologist forums (who where abandoned after some technical hiccups) which in turn was formed by people who fled the gleemax forums after it's upgrade (early on 4e's life IIRC).

The environment is a tad more... aggressive since the moderation is extremely low compared to Giantitp and it is a rather tight community, but it is a fun place to lurk.

[Captnq]

Minmax is where you go when you want to know RAW.

It's not a place to talk about your feelings. They don't care about your feelings. I had a week long argument over the specific reading of Chain Spell and Reach Spell. Eventually I was proven wrong, but that's okay, because we eventually found the one Ray Spell that had a target that proved I was wrong.

But you see, I write handbooks for fun, so I go there when I need answers.

Here? Well... it's a nice place to screw around. But you have no idea how many times I've been turned in for being "rude" or "trolling". I have a bad case of telling the truth. People don't want to be told the truth. They want to be "nice" here. So it's hard to take this place seriously.

This place is sort of like a "nerf" version of a real discussion. as for "optimization"... well... I just don't see it. Oh, from time to time there is a nugget here or there, but not very much. Oh, role-playing suggestions? They got those here. brilliant suggestions for ideas on Role-Playing. But nuts and bolts game mechanics? I see threads called "monkday" and I just want roll my eyes. Why?

Because most of the people who are commenting on "how much the monk sucks" never even did the math themselves. They never actually tried to figure out why they suck, so they don't know why a monk is broken, either. There is a whole bunch of rehashed "common knowledge" here. Everyone echos each other and they are afraid to get in an argument. So the status Quo is maintained.

That's not a BAD thing. It's nice place. Like Nerf. Safe and squishy. But honestly? This is not the place I post questions about how to have my Crystal Cat Construct Familiar do 12d6+4d8+1d4 damage and how can I throw it into a purple worm's mouth.

I've actually tested this place. I post the same post in multiple different forms just to see the different reactions. GitP is definately Nerf-World.

Every other boards? I periodically scan them for useful information to gleam into my handbooks, but for the most part it's mostly people asking for help and not offering much. The same old tired assumptions and very little new data crunching. It's sort of like panning for gold in my bathtub. At least at GitP I get some nuggets now and again.

[CyberThread]

All of the above places is where you go to talk about D&D.

Myth-Weavers, is where you go to play those D&D things that are not allowed at your local gaming table.