But it would not be the same as sitting around a physical table and looking each other into the eyes as you roll the dice.
That is something I would not want to change.

As for “DND prefer pen and paper”, how does that make us “behind”. DND is a social game far more than several other gaming types. It’s not really the “pen and paper” we prefer, it’s the social interaction. I’ve played DND over maptool (www.maptool.net) the game was just as good as the “pen and paper”, but the social interaction was weakened.

Also Andreas has a point. We have some females in our gaming group. (Yes I said SOME, not just one.) However, even they are more comfortable with message boards than forums. While several of the females I know who don’t game are much the opposite in their preference of web media.

Second of all, roleplaying is a communal event, something a number of people do, together. This means that no single individual feels they have a true grasp on it for writing articles (which blog posts are), but a lot of people tend to ask questions at forums because of this insecurity. This is also the reason that more DM-oriented blogs do better – DMs are the singular people with the “best” grasp/control of the game and are thus more confident in writing articles.

Atleast that is how I view it.

Andreas Rönnqvists last blog post..Untapped Potential Again Available In Print

So the “fad” of the moment is WoW than guess what their next major release going to look like?

The problem is that RPG in the beginning was not about following a trend, it was about innovating and starting a trend in itself.

That is what we need today, more innovation, more people with great ideas that are so sure of them that they are not afraid to take them to the next level.

Coles last blog post..Meeting the slaver

Blogs are good at generating permanent material. It is easy to get people reacting to your forum posts, but untrivial to have the same happen to blog posts.

Forums are also better at play-by-post. Generic chatter about new games, which is a large portion of rpg.net, happens when someone reads about an unfamiliar game and asks questions about it. And forums are better for that.

I’d say that a lot of what roleplayers discuss simply works better in forums.

That said, there is a lot of material on forums that would be better served by blogs as a platform. For example, homebrewed whatever, including D&D monsters, don’t lose their value as quickly as they are forgotten in forums.

Tommis last blog post..A small idea: Scope of effect

@Nevyn – I don’t know. I tend to get tired of message boards. They are so much less personal, for the most part. And people can be real dicks. Not saying every board is that way, but it happens. In other games, like Magic: The Gathering, article-based websites that are the thoughts of a single or a few authors tend to come to the fore, rather than boards or blogs.

@ Tommi – I get what you’re saying, but here’s the thing: some estimates put upwards of a million D&D players on the planet. It’s a big enough niche to support all of those boards, yes?

@ Sue – That’s cool. My group is pretty computer literate, but they don’t bring that literacy to the gaming table.

@ Maikl – See my reply to Tommy. If it were a mere numbers game, then it would stand to reason that freelance writing message boards would be busy in the same way that RPG boards are – but they aren’t. I know of one blogger, for example, with 26,000+ blog subscribers – and 800 forum members. For whatever reason, and maybe it’s what Nevyn says above, RPGers don’t like blogs the way they like boards.

Thanks for your thoughts, all! Keep ‘em coming!

The DMs last blog post..Dungeons and Dragons Sunday Link Smashup for May 17, 2008

Maikls last blog post..Fight Club – A duel and a slaughter

I have to agree with Tommi’s assessment that roleplayers are a bit rare.

Sue Londons last blog post..Oh, How I Have Suffered…