So the "Dumpshock... What happened?" thread has us thinking. What things could be done to reinvigorate Dumpshock?
Please be polite. If you disagree with someone's opinion, reply with constructive criticism.

Example: Telling us the mods are a bunch of lazy fudge sticks won't get you far. Saying you wished for more active moderation and quicker squashing of arguments (vs debates), is a constructive suggestion.

Add something that when people argue it kicks them to a private room where they can hash it out going back and forth instead of post after post in a thread:)

Let's break it up into more sections and maybe even give us a bit of an opportunity to build on it.

So maybe a New Content, Rules & Errata, Toys & Shinies, House Rules, Short Stories/Mission Diaries (telling the run from a particular characters POV).

It is still up to us as members to actually add to these, but maybe what we can do is bring back the focus on creating things in the game instead of tearing it down.
I mean, Toys & Shinies could be a great place to come up with new items for others to integrate into their own campaign. Somewhere where we can bring them to be final tweaked and statted without having someone jump down their throat because it is not from the printed books.

Hell, lets even throw in a MetaCooking Section so one can share their favorite recipe for Behemoth Gumbo or other Awakened World recipe.

Remember Ka Ge magazine and Shadowrun Supplemental? Half the fun was seeing new stuff made up by fellow gamers/writers and hey, because it was done by folk who actually played it the material followed the game, unlike where we sometimes see content coming out that seems to have been made by someone not even familiar with the setting.

To often we get bogged down in arguments over RAW vs RAI on the same piece of equipment when each and every new edition comes out, but there is little to no change in said equipment. While it is good to have a baseline, the equipment list has gotten pretty vanilla. So why not unleash that inner techie and let's see what new toys we can come up with?

Short stories/Diaries can give a spot for members to swap tales and maybe let someone stretch their writing chops a bit who might not have otherwise. Written by players for the players. We are grateful for the writers we have, but there still remains a large gap in the novel side that still looms large.

When you look at the number of members here with years if not decades of experience, there is a huge amount of potential just begging to be tapped.

I don't think more sections will help. And I don't think there really is anything the moderators can do.

I think the only thing that will help will be people actually talking about the content.

Like a new book just came out about the Metaplanes and no one is talking about it. This new untouched part of the Shadowrun world which had always been left open for GM interpretation finally has something. And no one cares to talk about it, offer their own interpretation, or whatever the hell. Instead its all about how SR5 sucks and has killed Dumpshock, while in truth Dumpshock killed Dumpshock by not moving past their vitriol.

Shadowrun.com, shadowruntabletop.com, /r/shadowrun are doing great and are more popular than ever. The truth is that Dumpshock has been left behind because its a community of grognards that won't get with the times and accept the fact that the new direction is the "right" direction for the SR line. Is SR5 perfect? Hell no, but it does fix problems that are inherent to SR4, just how SR4 fixed problems from SR3, and so on. You can disagree with those changes, and to a degree you might even be right. But shouting down any talk about the new edition doesn't help add to the community, it only drives people away. So people move on to other forums where they CAN talk about the new rules and setting.

I don't think adding more sections will help, either.

The strength Dumpshock has right now is the history. We here know more about the past of Shadowrun than anyone else, and are better at breaking down systems, and coming up with ways to fix them. We should play to that.

As part of that history: Dumpshock began as the Deep Resonance forums, a site that linked together all the top fan sites and mailing lists of the day. That's how we became so popular, we were formed by all the fans coming together. That might work again: start offering server space to a lot of fans, so they can put up their own pages. They can use the Dumpshock.com domain name, I know others used it in the past. As fans build their base here, they'll start attracting more people.

You can also bring back some of that history. The Dumpshock Archive is long gone, but I can still find copies of it via the Wayback Machine. Some of that stuff wasn't very good, but some were pure gold-- the CLUE files are absolutely hilarious, for one. They also hosted a ton of adventure suggestions, the unofficial timeline, and many other valuable resources for Shadowrun fans in every edition. Make this a fan-based place again, and the people will come.

Oh, man. I haven't though of the C.L.U.E. Files for years. That and Blackjack's page were real influences on me back in the day.

http://web.archive.org/web/20000815084411/...sers/blackjack/

http://web.archive.org/web/20011224233544/...rner/index.php3

If you ever wonder where a lot of the old GMs get their attitude from, go read Blackjack's articles.

Oh, an idea I had: RPG.net has the + or - system for thread titles. If you want to just discuss the positive aspects of something, put a [+] in the thread title. Everyone knows that's what you want, and any negative discussion is a derail. On the flip side, a [-] thread is to discuss problems, and trying to say that there aren't any is a derail for that thread. Expectations are clear, we know no bashing in the + threads, and no apologies in the - ones, and so people have a chance to voice their likes and frustrations without being attacked for it.

The reticence to bring up something like that has/had been a problem here before. We as moderators got a lot more active on stepping on the people that were the main buzz kills. It helped quite a lot at the time. The question remains as well though, will people use sub sections if we make them, or tend towards posting in the main forums area? Worth looking into though.



That's part of the problem though. The attitude that we know better or have some sort of grace just because we've been here longer doesn't exactly fly anymore. Sorry Cain not trying to rain on you, but although there is the history, I don't think that's really enough. Especially since a lot of those old fans have since gone on, either well and away because of bad blood (Ancient History .... pun intended) , or taking it a step further and started working directly on the game (Critias, Bull). We don't go hugely out of our way to make the freelances feel welcome , even though some of them like Patrick Goodman have taken a lot of time in the past to post and hang out here. We tried to make a point of not specifically toeing the line, so to speak. But then those guys ended up being the punching bags for problems that were bigger than them. It's not Patrick Goodman's fault if someone has a problem with the way a piece of tech increases a threshold. Hell, even if it happened to be, he shouldn't have to defend himself for every rule he writes. After a while, it's just not worth it for those guys to fight it out. Easier to post on the CGL boards where they can moderate more directly.

It's been a long time since I've seen some old familiar handles like mfb, Kagenenshi, Kanada Ten, Fortune, tisoz. A lot of that base has moved on, or moved elsewhere. The issue before was the climate, which has always been sort of a Dumpshock thing, and occasional source of backwards pride. But you can only hate on the game for so long without contributing without people wanting for something a little more relaxed and opened. Happened before, we fixed it. We had to cut some people out (SL James, Doc Funk, Frank Trollman for example). Even though some of them had some damn great ideas, they were frankly, pains in the ass. Personally I like Doc a lot. He's a good guy. But he was a pain on the board. It has, over the years, tended to be the attitude, not the ideas, that draws us down.


Edit: Sorry , I tend to make long posts when I have something to say. I'm going to sit back and read for a day or so, let you guys say whatever and expression your desires/complaints/whichever. We'll be here listening and debating amongst our selves. Thanks for adding your thoughts all.

I honestly don't think most of the issue is Dumpshock. It's hard to be a Shadowrun fan right now. The products that are coming out really aren't all that exciting if you don't love 5e, because the same problems that crop up in the main book (editing, loss or disregard of institutional knowledge of the setting and backstory) crop up in everything so far published for it. Add on top that the books we've seen so far have all been essentially re-released or long delayed 20A content, or reprints of main rulebooks that haven't changed substantially, and it gets even more difficult.

I'm not sure what can fix it, but I think the ball's in Catalyst's court now. We've got a lot of people here who dearly love the game, and would be rapidly engaged... if they were given something worthwhile to engage with.

Right now, the first few books spurred discussion, but as it became obvious that the same problems just kept cropping up, people quit talking about stuff, or looking forward to it. I feel really bad for the freelancers who post here, because what's getting published really doesn't make them look anything like as good as it should.

Making a clear distinction between threads that are about 4-5 or 1-3 Editions would be a good help.

Starting a thread about a 5th Edition problem is not going to help if the discussion revolves around 3rd edition rules starting at post number three.

Personally, I'm not sure if there are improvements to be made.
I am, although I like more structured forums, perfectly happy with just one big SR forum, and then the "everything else"-forums here.
I frequent all major shadowrun forums, and from my perspective, DS is no more or less caustic than other ones. The moderation here seems fair, too. Fairer even than examples I've seen elsewhere.

Finding root causes for inactivity is always difficult, so I can only speak for myself:
For me it's not something that's specific to Dumpshock. It's a general lack of interest in the new line. I don't buy the products, I don't follow the discussions, so in reverse I also don't contribute. I'm also not one for spewing opinions about products I don't own, based on hearsay or other user's reviews.

So, in essence, because of 5th edition, I've become more of a lurker in most of my forums.
The poor editing of many of the late 4th edition products followed by a very lackluster release basically killed the franchise for me.
I still play with the extensive material I own (which is, for better or worse, almost every 4th Ed. product) and bend it to my needs, but that's material for years to come, so my lack of interest doesn't hurt me.
Furthermore, I very much hope that the authors keep their passion for what they're doing.

For what it's worth, I don't think that DS is a more or less hospitable place than other forums. I'm not often on reddit, but I've met trolls and unpleasant people on all of them. People will have favorites, either due to usability or a perceived lack of hostility or even friendly atmospheres, but my experience tells me that this may be due to confirmation bias.

tl;dr: Keep on keeping it on, DS.

When I try to solve a problem like this, I ask myself some questions.

What made it popular? Why did people come here instead of all the other options?

What are the differential advantages? Think of this as what does the site do better than others? If it was in terms of countries or geographic regions, what is inexpensive and abundant here that has a demand elsewhere? What 'natural resources' can be found here and how can they be 'cheaply exploited'? Can 'new products' be developed that would 'create demand'?

I found Dumpshock the first day I got on the internet in early 2001, the same day FASA announced they were closing. I got a bit of a rude greeting, perhaps served, and looked to see what other sites had Shadowrun content. There were hundreds of sites, but Dumpshock was far and away the most active. I learned quite a bit, even though I had been playing the game for a decade and thought I knew it pretty well.

What I liked was learning about potential game breakers, discussions of rules I had overlooked or that had been played incorrectly, and the almost instantaneous responses to requests for help.

What I see as a huge problem came with the introduction of 4th Ed. Prior to 4th, I believe most people ran 2nd or 3rd with probably the majority playing 3rd. I know some still played 1st Ed but there were not the thread stopping edition wars when a first edition player offered their 2 and the newer edition players did not deride them for staying with 1st. Since 4th Ed, it HAS been a problem and frankly, I get tired of reading it. Perhaps it is time to divide the editions on the forums. I think 3rd Ed threads usually get marked as such, but invariably, someone will post (not always unwelcome) having not noticed it regarded 3rd Ed. I rarely take time to read threads that are not marked 3rd Ed so don't know if this is an issue for those topics. It got to be such that when life kept me away for some time, I really did not miss my Dumpshock fix as it had become 'unfun'. I am going to guess that the other forums that get mentioned are mainly devoted to compatible editions.

Will this resolve another of the major problems of thread hijacking? I realize topics evolving has always occurred and threads getting hijacked has happened often enough, but perhaps it is time for the admins to step in and move hijacked threads. This is especially true if the forums do not get split and the hijacking keeps devolving to edition wars.

Having sections in itself was not really the point I was trying to bring up, though I should have worded it better.

I just wanted some way to kick start more conversations about new things/adaptations/ideas/SR humor/ etc..., but this can be done with threads perfectly well without sectioning the forum itself. But if we do get ideas popping then things can get buried sometimes so I had suggested sections so folk could look for things they want/need help with easier. I do like the search feature here better than at the official one for finding particular items among the older threads.

And it doesn't always have to be uber serious where it is just a RAW vs RAI discussion, but again maybe things to fill the sandbox with like the old Blackjack pages did to inspire us to think outside of just what was printed on the pages of the core books.

I am going to try to sit down and think of what kind of threads we can kick off along these lines.

I have really liked BRodda's linked posts to some of his creations. The Tow Truck one had me asking why didn't someone else already come up with this? The tactics for low level NPCs had some excellent ideas before getting derailed. Like the majority of the Redneck Runs. I'm sure that those who have been around more recently know some more examples.

These are the sort of topics that Dumpshockers can be great at posting.

I may even run another fiction contest. I like to think I got Critias started even if I didn't, lol. Maybe he can let me know how deluded I am in that belief.

I'm not particularly active simply because my group isn't playing at the moment. So I still pop on from time to time and toss up some science/tech article I think might interest people but don't really have a lot game wise to discuss.

I recognise that it was a hell of a lot of work (and sadly I'm in no way volunteering) but the Dumpshock DataHaven stuff was great...is there a way of getting more contributors via the boards? I don't think there's anything else like it on ShadowGrid (the only other SR place I frequent personally)??! Shorter but more frequent issues?

Also pulling together a decent timeline resource would be wonderful! I used to refer to the one here all the time until it lost steam. The one in 6WA picked up some but by no means all items and it doesn't look as though Catalyst is going to come back to it as an information format...? Anyone have the link to the original by the way? Mine seems to have disappeared into the mists of time...

If the board does get broken into more sections there would need to be some sort of 'recently unread posts' system or something like on SG I'd suggest, that only becomes a problem if things get more active here of course

Well perhaps a section where its 1-3rd ed then 4-5th. That way it stops the bickering over systems. I think 1-3rd got along simply because the game was fairly the same attribute wise and other fluff reasons. 4th-5th is different stat wise bla say bla. So then just make sure if someone hates old or new and they start a edition war stop that and reprimand them if they are in the wrong section just causing havoc. Other then that I think things will work out old players will do there own thing creating what they like while the new players can do the same.

Can a "Like" feature be added? There are several posts I see and think exactly. Posting such doesn't really add anything to the conversation, though I can think of at least one person that seems to do so.

I haven't been active because I haven't really played much since 4th hit. Got a few games in 4th in, but I and my players hated it. Combined with the fact that we all graduated college that year, our group kind of fell apart. I was barely aware of the advent of 5th, but from what I've seen none of the stuff about 4th I disliked was addressed and even more issues were introduced. I’ve only just started browsing the board again because a few people I know got interested in the world that I described for them, so I’m going to be running my first game of 3rd in a long, long time.

But even with that, I don’t find much to post about because most everyone is just discussing the difference between 3rd and 4th, or 4th and 5th, or what have you. Most of my contributions to those is relating what I liked about 3rd and disliked about 4th. I’d love to post something more positive, but with no new 3rd ed content to discuss, there’s not much else.
Essentially, it’s like enjoying Reeses Peeces since you were a teenager, and then suddenly a new owner buys out the company and replaces the peanut butter with caramel. Some people love the change, but it leaves you cold and wondering why the hell they couldn’t have just made their own damn brand from scratch.

In short, I don’t think there’s much the mods can do. The current situation is due to the state of the game and the genre, and the only way to even pretend that everything is hunky-dory is to just ban anyone who’s not content with the current situation.

Some people probably remember I used to post a lot.

Personally, since I know jack about 4th edition onwards, I found it was harder to participate in conversations since I had no idea what people were talking about rules wise. If someone were to talk about 3rd edition I'd be better able to participate, although by now I haven't played in years so I have started to forget some details. So, if we were to have different forums, maybe having forums by edition?


Also, maybe have an archive of the old material like others have said. Well known articles and so on. A lot of that stuff is what built my interest in the game in the first place back when I was a kid. That and some of the 80s-sensibility early SR novels as well....

I only feel like Dumpshock had any decline at all because an official forum was launched. Ever since that point, its been just easier to go there for all the info and opinions that bloomed into discussions and treatise that appeared here.

Plus, people are going to follow the game devs wherever theyre posting, trying to get official answers in regards to their rules questions, or to help divine the rules-as-intended if the rules-as-written are off. 'They ain't postin' here.'

On the topic of splitting up into edition-based subforums, I just want to point out they've got that -- pretty much exactly that -- over on the Shadowrun Universe forums. I hate their layout so I don't post over there or keep up with it as often as I could/should, but even at a glance, the subforum activity numbers are pretty jarring; "previous Shadowrun editions" has about 600 total comments (with about a half-dozen threads that have seen any activity in all of 2014), "Shadowrun 4th Edition" has about 4,000 (with exactly two posts made any time this calendar year), and "Shadowrun 5th Edition" has going on 17,000.

Just some post count stuff to keep in mind, which might be relevant to the discussion. Maybe it says something about gamers in general, maybe it says something about Dumpshock's attention span for older editions compared to other forums (and what that implies about demographics, I guess), maybe it says something about the divisiveness of new RPG editions in general, maybe it only says something about the forum layout and interface of the Shadowrun Universe forums...I dunno. But since it's a topic of discussion, I figured I'd share that completely anecdotal data point, about edition-based sub-forum activity.

As to the Datahaven, there's been work on and off to keep that going. Redjack did it a few years back but it lost steam. It's a lot of work, and frankly there was too much going on in RL.

Same on the Timeline. I know I loved the hell out of that thing and would look it up all the time. I even started doing a sort of "Shadowrun Prequel" , running a game based in 2012-2014, which it was incredibly helpful for. But updating it is a whole different issue, simply because of the amount of reading and input that would have to be done on it.Not that I don't love the idea of an updated timeline, but the task is pretty Herculean.

As for sub-forums and all things functionality around here, I defer to RJ on that. He's out organizational guru.
(Ever have one of those moments when you say "I am soooo glad we hired that guy? ) He's pretty awesome, but like the rest of us he has the demands of every day life as well.

Please keep thoughts coming, pros/cons, this might work, this might not, whatever.

Found a post of mine talking about this exact issue...in 2008.



Damn I feel old.



I think most of the people who still prefer 3rd stick to DS, when they post at all. I'm not sure that divided forums is really the answer though, for the same reasons given above.

Personally I wouldn't recommend splitting up the forum any further. 1) The traffic volume isn't really big enough to support it IMO, and 2) Unless you have significant traffic and posts, I find that this layout is just annoying.

As for what Dumpshock can do, in order to get the traffic back up again? I have to be honest and say that I don't really know, because from my perspective the place just seemed to kind of "die down" gradually after the introduction of 5th ed. We can argue that people who liked 5th ed got run off by the negativity of the people who disliked the changes in the new editions, but I'm not sure that I really buy that as the main reason. Sure, some probably migrated to another forum, but to that big a degree? In my mind, the main problem with the forum atm, is really a lack of new posts on topics that can be debated. To my eyes, the place seems almost deserted. New posts have become something of a rarety in my perspective, and a dead forum isn't really an attractive one to visit on a regular basis, which cuts down the activity further.

So what's the solution? Frankly, we need to get people posting more new threads, so that the forum becomes alive again. To my eyes, it really doesn't matter what the threads are about, as long as they are SR relevant and as long as they are there. More threads mean more chances that people will find something to debate/talk about, and that's really what we need. Who's running campaigns they want to tell about? Who needs some fresh ideas for a run or story arch? Anyone interesting in looking at build proposals or perceived game-mechanical issues? Personally I don't really have anything to contribute in terms of new threads for the time being, seeing as my gaming group for SR is currently put out to pasture. RL happened. Also, knowing nothing about 3rd ed., and not having bought 5th ed., I'm currently a littled hampered in the contribution department.

As for the tone of the debate here on DS, I have to admit that I don't really see much of a problem with it in general. That being said, however, there are people amongst us, who could frankly use a knock on the head once in a while, when it comes to how we elect to express our disagreements with someone. There is nothing wrong with disagreeing on things and debating them, but arguments should not involve personal attacks, and there are no reason to directly or indirectly insult another forum member, especially deliberately. Regardless how much you disagree with them on something. That is perhaps one thing that the moderators could look into. Pls. note that I'm not advocating thread closing, member banning or anything similar, but perhaps put on the mod. voice a little more often, and tell people to put away the insults/personal attacks. But that of course only work if people actually listen and "take the hint".

I was thinking about this this morning after having read this thread the night before. I really did feel like 4th edition was very divisive because there were so many people who'd poured so much into developing, expanding, and tweaking 3rd edition. Somehow the design choice was not to optimize the popular 3rd edition based on the extensive analysis out there, but rather to change the ruleset to something different. So in retrospect, it seems inevitable that the forum would become less active when so much of the energy before had been centered around 3rd edition.

Maybe I'm not remembering so clearly anymore, but was there a time when an SR3 revision project had gotten kicked off this forum in order to support people taking up 4th edition or something like that? Again, I don't really remember, but I feel like I might have a vague memory about this.

So, I guess that the way to revitalize the forum is to invent a time machine, go back and change SR4 such that it's a revision and statistical improvement of SR3 (after all, that's what new editions are for, right? Bugfixes and improvement of the game engine?), and then that would be minimally disruptive to this forum.

If it's too difficult or expensive to go back in time and change history, maybe now that the 4th and 5th edition cats are out of the bag, have some kind of archive here of SR3 analysis, house rules, statistical studies, and so on? Let this place be like the SR3 archive for people who want to play a very statistically considered game that maintains the look and feel of 80s retrofuturism?

EDIT: I mean, if someone wanted to design a really, really good campaign that was really thought out statistically and they knew exactly what everything was doing, you'd think they'd be better able to do that with SR3 than with any other system.

I've used the SR3 ruleset for non SR settings in the past...it can work great for present-day type adventures. It was always better than say, D20 modern if you wanted the game to be a little more realistic. It was also faster and easier to run than say Phoenix Command which seemed like a paper and pencil powered attempt at implementing Rainbow Six 3.

If there were some kind of SR3 wiki attached to this site, I feel like that would let people come back and post their campaigns they want to share, ideas for house rules, and all this kind of thing.

I find it bitterly ironic that several people have suggested the way to improve dumpshock is to fix SR5.

:sigh:

As I pointed out in the other thread, other forums are doing well and are healthy.

I know I personally have been gunshy about posting a new topic because I anticipated my argument or topic would get derailed. I totally get the lassiez faire moderation (I mean that literally). But you can't have your cake and eat it too. As the shadowrun board with the least strict moderation, users (and I am not calling anyone out specially here) who are abrasive or adversarial well tend to drift towards here to post their abrasive opinions. Reddit is able to avoid this because the community can self moderate to some degree by downvoting. The official boards lock threads or ban people. I think some more active level of moderation would help here. My guess is that 10% of users post 50% of the content and cause 90% of the problem.

Maybe PM warnings? "Cool it", followed by "last warning", followed by a one week ban, followed by a permaban?

Honestly, the moderation team needs to decide what they want. DS can continue like this for a while. But there are people who aren't coming back. How many people's last post was in a thread where they were arguing with one of the problem posters?

TL;DR I don't think it's the editions. That's an easy straw man to blame while ignoring that Shadowrun is popular elsewhere. There is an issue with the forum itself that needs to be addressed, if retaining users is a goal. I am not claiming I know what precisely is wrong, but I've proposed some theories.

PS after my long, critical post I have a practical suggestion. I tend to use the "view new posts" button a lot, so dividing the board into more discrete categories wouldn't really effect me much.

Eh I don't get all this talk about problem posters or "the atmosphere". The arguments were one of the hilarious/entertaining aspects of the forum for me. Who can ever forget the hilarity of Creepwoodrun and the zingers that followed? I personally giggle if I see someone going totally apoplectic over interpretation of rules because it's so silly. I find it highly entertaining.

I think I remember some mod scolded me or something for posting too much, or posting about Roulette in General Gaming onetime or something like that. DSF doesn't strike me as a particularly lightly moderated place. Clearly, there is some moderation activity.

I mean, you wouldn't want to post somewhere that the moment someone says something critical they get censured or something. That would be totally boring.

I've posted in or read probably between 20 and 50 forums over the years. DS is either very lightly moderated, or it's so unobtrusive that I'm missing it entirely. If you want an example of a crazy heavily moderated forum check out "warthunder". They lock threads like crazy over there, from mild criticism to any speculation about releases. I'm not referring to pulling spam or stuff like that, that's an admin issue that isn't really under discussion (although thanks to the mods for keeping that under control).

First - Shev, I know what you mean about this seeming familiar. Seems like we had a very similar conversation and debate around the time of SR 4. Not to say that SR 5 is inherently the problem, but edition changes tend to stir the pot, and a lot of people tend to get angry. Sometimes they just don't come back.

I personally am not looking at this as a Save DS from Time and Degradation. We knew for example that when CGL opens their board that there would eventually be a down tick here. No biggie, we're not closing doors or anything. But like the arguments that spurred the last time we had this discussion, it's a good idea to clear the air a little and address problems, real, perceived, or possibly deluded.

I doubt that we're likely to subdivide the forums by edition. Don't quote me because I'm not the only mod, just the one posting right now. Dividing a little by topics or style might be a possibility, but that goes back to Kyrel said about the amount of threads in general. I've been seeing that myself the past few months. My primary concern is that Dr. Z is right and that there's a lack of threads because of the perception of what posters might run into. That is a problem to mem and something worth stepping on some of the more aggressive posts for.

As to our style of moderation, over the years we've looked at it a number of ways on how to handle it. As most of you know when there's an inflammatory post, we almost always leave it where it is, and send the poster a PM Warning. It's rarely public. When it requires something more direct we post in the thread. Looking through our out right quarantined threads we have hidden away, the most recent was in regards to an account deletion, followed by a thread over the same old arguments about CGL. That was in 2010. Everything else has been phishing and spam. So yeah we tend to try and be as hands off as possible.

The last time that changed was the last time we stepped up our work to bring things back down from "caustic" to "fairly civil". We posted Warnings in threads more , and Warned more often. There's some posters that aren't here anymore. I've been on DS since '05 and a mod for most of that time. I can count off the top of my head four people in all that time we've actually banned. One literally asked to be banned, and we let him back in later.
.... Then banned him again when he started acting the ass hat. *shrug*

So , step it back up time? We can do that.

I will retract my proposal to split editions for most of the reasons others stated.

Maybe it will take a bit more attention on posters' part to tag threads as 5th Ed, or on everyone elses part to accept that 5th Ed is the default. It also takes just a second to remember what edition a thread is tagged and not offer a solution based on the rules of a different edition. This includes complaining that 'X' edition is broken and 'A' edition works better.

You would think so, but unfortunately the world is filled with people who apparently think that the fact that something has been a certain way for a while means it MUST change. This happens in everything from soft drinks (New Coke), to MMOs (Star Wars Galaxies NGE) to yes, our beloved RPGs. Hell, I can name three other exaamples besides Shadowrun just off the top of my head:

1. Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay. It was never a huge title, but it's been around almost as long as the wargame (the late 80s). The first edition lasted some twenty odd years, until 2006. When second edition came out, it was a refinement and improvement on the setting and system, and well-received. Then 3rd edition hit, and it got turned into a board game. For people used to playing on the Internet, playing without physical tokens and fiddly bits, or just playing with their own dice it was not a fun expansion. Add in the fact that the whole box cost some $130 at release and you got a pretty polarizing edition. It's effectively killed the product: FFG stopped producing product for the line roundabout 3 years ago, and only admitted that no more were coming in the last year. The community just wasn't big enough to survive being split like that.

2. World of Darkness. I don't know nearly as much about this one because I don't play any in that setting. What I gather is that oWoD just got too filled up with metaplot and was far too difficult for a beginner to get into, so they did this whole "end of the World" thing and came out with nWoD. I've heard mixed reviews, but it does seem like WW's star has long faded since the days of oWoD.

3. DnD. The Big One. Just as we have endured our own 3 vs. 4th split, the DnD crowd had theirs. And BOY was it nasty. Like our third edition, DnD's 3rd had ruled the roost for a very long time. A lot of time and effort had gone into developing the system and the myriad settings that sprang from it. When 4th came around and basically changed EVERYTHING, a lot of people were upset, to put it mildly. However, DnD 3rd had one thing going for it that, sadly, Shadowrun 3rd did not: the Open Gaming License. Imagine if all of our freelancers had been able to pool together and keep on releasing rules and setting for 3rd under a different brand name? That's basically what Pathfinder is, and for quite a while it actually replaced DnD as the top-selling RPG out there. Fans spoke with their wallet, and they were heard. DnD 5th edition is basically "Apology Edition," and looks like it might actually reunite the fractured DnD fandom.


Writing that last bit, I wonder if the intent behind SR 5th was the same. I can see in some cases where they tried to bring back elements of 3rd (deckers, namely), but I think part of the problem they faced is that SR is not just a system, but a setting. In any case, I still wonder if a hypothetical 6th edition could unite us. It would have to be, as someone suggested, a complete reboot. They'd have to accept that Shadowrun is not our alternate future, but an alternate timeline: it's becoming our alternate present, and one day our alternate past.




That's an excellent suggestion. There can't be an SR Pathfinder without the OGL, but there's nothing stopping us from creating free fan content to keep things going. The sooner we accept that "official" Shadowrun likely isn't getting better anytime soon, the sooner we can start reviving and creating resources.

nWOD has been really, really hit or miss. It essentially murdered Werewolf as a game, and Vampire just changed the labels on the tins, but it did end up in a very playable and interesting Changeling game. Regardless, though, it killed the company. None of the new stuff held a candle to the oWoD as far as popularity goes. Hence after the CCP buyout and following economic failure, White Wolf is no longer in the RPG business, and essentially only exists to be a rightsholder so they can license out the World of Darkness properties.

The way you mention the D&D split is interesting, given that it spawned Pathfinder, a massively successful game in its own right which only came about because a group of fans and writers capitalized on the fanbase not wanting what WotC was selling in 4e. I rather wish we'd been in the position to do the same, unfortunately Shadowrun is a very distinctive setting that can't really be turned into generic cyberpunk to dodge copyright without losing much of what makes it a good game.

I used to come daily to read (and often comment on) the rules discussions. For whatever that is worth I do not care about 5e (reasons withheld for reasons). Topics like "how to run a run" are still present, but after a decade or so you learn to do that, or you won´t. So what do I still need an SR forum for?

- I like to help people along with their game. Edition-centric I can´t handle 5e due to lack of familiarity, and we don´t seem to get many of the new SR players. This might be because we discuss the current rules less. A possible solution would be to write more about runs and campaigns without talking rules. The idea to make runs into novels might be a start.

- The powers-that-be are no longer as present as they used to be - or at all. Those who remain are here "privately". Laying claim to the past is fruitless regarding new input.



What can be done by organization? Don´t split the main forum (current traffic is manageable), maybe reintroduce an off-topic forum to create a community of SR players outside the game (politics IS an interesting topic if you read the news at all). Stop negativity regarding the current set of rules cold. We need fresh blood, and we need to keep the old.

Not exactly sure where you got this information from. Both cWOD and nWOD are going like gangbusters. Yes, White Wolf, itself, is no longer an entity, but Onyx Path is holding the licenses and is producing content for both iterations of the game world. They are extremely popular and both contain very strong game lines. nWOD is even getting 2nd Editions for all their game lines and they are simply amazing.

Maybe it's that Dumpshock is experiencing a shrinking market share of a shrinking market. Reddit is a juggernaut, and "official" things may have an innate advantage at attracting new people unfamiliar with what's out there. The thing to do is to use our collective expertise and plan runs against competing forums.

• The Shadowrun reddit has a nice list of online resources. We could link to them, and see how many we can persuade to link back to us. That might give us more google juice so that searches for "shadowrun forum" have DS at the top rather than other places. Also, users might come here for just such a list.
• Could we get tools to play online here? Chat, dice, char sheets, maps, etc.
• If we see a question in other forums that has been well-discussed here, post a link there to the thread here.

I'm trying to think of what would constitute "Bad Things" in terms of creating fan content. The main big no-no is, of course, charging for it. On the heels of that you have "Masquerading as an official product", which I think could be gotten around by something as simple as "unofficial" in the title: "The Unofficial Guide to Vehicular Combat," "The Unofficial Guide to San Francisco," etc.

I think we could do it, the question is if we have the energy and gumption from enough of us to create said content. Maybe a list of the things about 3rd that need to be improved. I'm also sure we have old stuff can can be dusted off, I'm pretty sure at least Cain has alternate vehicular combat rules.

A fanmade 3.5 project would go a long way to holding my attention back on DS.

I'm not convinced on the "Shrinking Market" argument, mostly because I've been hearing it for years. I've seen things flow and change but they don't seem to be getting smaller in the UK. Tabletop gaming of a lot of varieties is a growing industry (mostly through the high quality boxed games out there now) with things like Game of Thrones and WoW still feeding things too. Geek culture is slipping more into the limelight and while there is an issue of Online vs FLGS sales etc the industry doesn't look like its going away.

As for theDumpshock improvements? I think done of the other threads hold the key with Hosted Fan Content being a thing (I used to dig through the Magespace stories from the Harlequin series campaign on Winterhawks Magespace all the time). If I knew more how to do it I'd be posting my house rule adjustments to 5th along with other things on a website. Also there seems to have been a recent surge in activity in attempt to address this very thing.

Hey, like it or not, I'm just giving my own personal reasons for why I've been absent, and I doubt I'm alone. I never posted on the other forums, and have an unused account on Reddit. We do not have the exposure Reddit does, nor are we the mouthpiece for a company who uses their own forums as a way to get the yes men all pumped up.

We are, I believe, a more distinguished group, possibly a little elitist at times. We tear into the rules to weed out weaknesses and measure strengths. We are hard on the setting because we know what it's been in the past and want it to be better. So after several years of really bad management, of having Catalyst pretty much shit all over the IP, you're damn straight you can expect some membership attenutation.

Without Reddit's volume or Catalyst's willingness to appease folks who just don't know any better, we're always going to be a fraction of a fraction. The things that made this community prosper were that we were the only game in town (before the official boards) and that the game was beautiful and high quality. Both of those things have been taken from us.

The sad fact is I doubt Catalyst is going to start making a better game just to make Dumpshock a vibrant community again.

Wow.

You don't believe predating the official forums (and at one point essentially being the official forum) lends any distinguishment? I mean, a lot of it is faded glory since a lot of the old veterans and freelancers don't frequent the place anymore, but we still have quite a few old-timers around.

And I'm assuming you're definitely on-board with the elitism bit

I recall reading Frank Trollman tried to make a "new" Shadowrun. No idea if the project ever got off the ground.

But the not-Shadowrun game closest to Shadowrun is Eclipse Phase. And while not a bad game by any means it hasn't caught on nearly as much as Shadowrun.

Anyway, not to discourage people from trying, because it would be really cool to see new fantasy/cyberpunk world that could compete with Shadowrun. But I highly question if the dumpshock community can out write the current crop of freelancers. But in truth, nothing helps build humility like walking a mile in another man's shoes. See, if you guys can out Jason Hardy, Jason Hardy. I have a suspicious feeling that it's probably a lot harder than you people think.

Yeah, definitely takes some moxie to take a paycheck for the level of quality the line he's in charge of is laying out.

That said, I feel bad for the freelancers just now. SR5 gets a lot of shit, very deservedly given the issues, but the glaring ones aren't the fault of the writers. I'd love to hear more about the logistics and design discussions that go into producing the game, but that's all likely covered under various NDAs.

It's really hard to say. IIRC, Onyx Path has gone to all-electronic distribution: PDF and POD only. So, they completely skip all the usual booksellers-- no FLGS, no Amazon, and no reporting of sales figures to market watchers. So, if you look at the traditional channels, it seems like they've completely died. Figuring out where they actually sit is hard.


All these are good ideas. Online play is becoming more and more popular, and everyone says they're working on it. How hard would it be to implement a dice roller program here?

I went and found Frank's not-Shadowrun Fantasy Cyberpunk game post, since this topic reminded me it even existed. No idea if its good or not, since I've only read the intro to it.

Yeah, I mostly base my view on it on the vast majority of the people I know who used to run WoD games having given up on it and switched to Pathfinder or something else like Edge of the Empire because they didn't like where the games were going. Not to mention all the controversy over Exalted 3rd Edition, which is somehow looking to be even more creepily rapey than the previous versions.

Are you talking about Play By Post? Because trying to compete with Roll20 would be tough, to say the least. In fact, I'd rather see resources compiled specific for use in Roll20 campaigns.

I noticed that too.
Many of the old Vampire players are completely turned off by the new book ditching the 'Punk'-part of Gothic-Punk (similar to how many Shadowrun-fans feel about the new editions),
and by the lack of a meta-plot. The old meta-plot was extensive, but pretty awesome in my opinion.
Werewolf players pretty much got a game where they do exactly the opposite of what they were doing in Werewolf - The Apocalypse, but I for one like the new setting.

I notice too though, that the nWoD draws a lot of new players.
The lack of a meta-plot makes it easy to just make stuff up as you go along,
without anyone who knows the setting better than the GM heckling him,
when something does not conform to the setting books.
Also the books are beautiful, and well-written, the short-stories are a blast to read.

The only thing that rubs me the wrong way in nWoD is that 5x5 system prevalent in almost any book.
(5 Vampire Clans x 5 Coteries; 5 Werewolf 'Clans' x 5 'Moon-phases'; 5 Mage Clans x 5 Organisations; 5 Promethean types x 5 promethean metallurgy references; etc.)
This is purely a meta thing though, because I ask myself if the people in that world notice this 'rule of five'.
It also, paradoxically, leads to the groups (f.e. the Vampire Clans) being less distinguishable from each other, than the ones from oWoD.



Eclipse Phase is pure awesome, setting-wise. The mechanics look good to me as well, though I have sadly not played it yet.
It also is pretty much the GitS-like setting from fourth and fifth edition Shadowrun brought to the max,
but minus the magic. Though the Pandora Gates leave much up to the GM, in that respect.
Uplifts are similar to meta-humans as well.

On the writing topic:
I was just interested if the Pathfinder path was a possibility at all.
We were talking about ways to expand, unite and re-activate the community after all, and that kind of project would be one way I guess.
Many are still playing pre-4th-Edition after all, and may be interested in a clean write-out of usable rules.

I am working on that kind of rewrite anyway at the moment, and I will consult your guys's opinion in the future.

Commenting on the idea of 3.5 as in how Pathfinder did it, you know if is quite possible to build a better system that bridges the gap between WoD dice system and old rules from 1st-3rd edition. Granted I am in the camp I don't like Wi-Fi because of access to people who know a thing or two about Wi-Fi and its flaws and real capability's due to there jobs as tech support for major companies. Again I am not trying to do the whole Wi-Fi fight here.

Anyways if one builds a better system that truly bridges the gap couldn't Catalyst just step in and say yank we are going to use all this/ most of this?
Pros of doing such a thing: Better game, possibly better community, and people could actually get along (miles may vary like always)

Cons of doing such a thing: Stuff gets yanked, thrown into Catalyst taking all credit/ sharing credit but no $, and no job or a job but a arrested development in creative development (you'd be surprised to see, actual royalty rights in the music world and I am pretty sure in the writing world too) We would still have bad editing, bad writing, and probably a heavy handed redacted marker due to "a stronger demographic audience" (translation: Frag if its good solid product we need more people, people = $$$) Speaking from my own hypothesis looking at the facts. It seems Catalyst is just milking the IP to generate capital. So just looking at the cons I'd account it to having a hole in the boat and drilling another hole to drain the water out. AKA zero sum gain.

My questions were only about third edition, timeframe and all.

If I were to start thinking about a Shadowrun of the 2070s and 2080s, I would start by fundamentally raising the power level of technology and Magic.
With technology it always irked me that there has been pretty much the same tech for 25 years now. Wired Reflexes really have not gotten any better for example.
At least the Essence Costs or Nuyen Costs should have dropped.

That is neither here nor there though with respect to the thread topic.