Forum Space to Discuss New Gaming Ruleset?

[Palanan]

The tabletop gaming landscape is undergoing a seismic upheaval, and one of the better-known players has just announced a major new initiative. Part of that involves development of a new fantasy ruleset, which will involve extensive playtesting and community input.

This is part of a generational event in the RPG industry; it has already affected tens of thousands of lives, if not hundreds of thousands, and will continue to have impacts for years to come. It’s already impacting me personally, and there are many others besides myself who are deeply invested in this.

Given this, and with specific reference to the new ruleset in development, I would like to ask if there will be a space available in the forums to discuss the game-related details once they become available. Not legal; we understand that; but strictly the mechanics and tabletop aspects of the new approach. This will be a topic of intense interest to many of our members here in the Playground, and a space to explore its ramifications—strictly within the bounds of forum rules—would be welcome and deeply appreciated.

[Roland St. Jude]

Sheriff: This seems like a fair request and is thoughtfully worded, so thank you.

To the extent that there is a "new ruleset," one can discuss the mechanics of it here. "Tabletop aspects" is somewhat less precise, and so harder to judge. But my sense is that that is not where we actually are at this stage. There isn't a new ruleset involved unless you mean the contractual, legal, and social "ruleset" of the RPG industry/community as a whole, in which case it's a clever metaphor but it doesn't resolve any of the problems inherent in such a discussion., but when there is you can definitely talk about it here.

If people want to talk about the new game systems being designed by companies other than WotC, they can do that here, if they can do so without raising the whole OGL issue (and that includes without linking to places that do so).

Might we open a more specifically identifies space to discuss the OGL when it's actually published or to discuss the state of D&D/RPGs under the new OGL? Maybe, but to accomplish a space that follows our Forum Rules and still allows for a meaningful discussion of the ramifications of whatever the new landscape is would be difficult to construct and challenging to monitor and maintain.

We might do that. Or not. There are plenty of important topics relevant to gaming that just can't be discussed here given the Forum Rules. A classic one is the "moral panic" and religious objections to gaming. Government regulation and censoring of RPGs is another. Fields that intersect publishing as an industry (copyright law, contract law, labor law, etc.) also fall within that politics and professional advice realm.

Are we missing out on being a forum to discuss what might be a generational shift in gaming? Maybe. Are we creating a space free of a lot of the drama currently unfolding? Maybe. But we have broad subject matter bans, an guiding principle of creating a comics/gaming/discussion space free of such topics, and a limited (if excellent) mod team.

We'll continue to monitor the situation and discuss it amongst ourselves.