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My other gaming hobby has been board games from the early RPG / fantasy types like Dungeon, Magic Wood, The Dark Tower, Chill: Black Morn Manor,

Black Morn Manor is an underrated game that deserves a new edition. It's really excellent, but the original was made so cheaply compared to today's luxury boardgame production standards.
 
My other gaming hobby has been board games from the early RPG / fantasy types like Dungeon, Magic Wood, The Dark Tower, Chill: Black Morn Manor, and Talisman to War games like Advanced Squad Leader and Battle Tech to Ameritrash games like Axis & Allies and Fortress America. Again I dropped off while I was in the Army but picked back up over the last decade with everything from buying an expensive complete Warhammer Quest collection to all the new hotness like Shadows of Brimstone and Conan.
Impressive taste in games, good chap. (Especially nice to see Mystic Wood get a mention. It really should be better remembered than it is).
 
Black Morn Manor is an underrated game that deserves a new edition. It's really excellent, but the original was made so cheaply compared to today's luxury boardgame production standards.

Agreed. I doubt we’ll see a new edition due to the Chill copyright and the fact for all practical purposes Betrayal at the House on the Hill (another great game) fills Black Morn Manor’s spot in today.

I was going to make updates components and run Black Morn Manor at a convention last year but real life laughed at me and I wasn’t able to attend. It’s a shame as I was going to run sessions of it, the old I.C.E. Lonely Mountain board game (sort of a more complicated TSR Dungeon with a timer), and West End’s Escape the Death Star, an early co-op game.
 
Impressive taste in games, good chap. (Especially nice to see Mystic Wood get a mention. It really should be better remembered than it is).

It was one of the first!

There used to be someone that ran Mystic Wood with improved components at Historicon, I haven’t attended in a number of years so I don’t know if they are still doing it or not.
 
Neato to find this place. I've tooled around for a bit but wanted to say "hi"! I'm an old school AD&Der who lives in South Jersey... though my daughters have gotten me into 5e a bit. I play mainly PbP at this point in time, fits the schedule you know. :grin:

What's the history of these forums. They are well set up and well populated, and (what little I've seen) seem to be a bunch of folks interacting pleasantly... weirdness for forums these days. :smile: What's the impetus for this forum's creation? I'd love to know.

Be well all!
--Ron--
 
Neato to find this place. I've tooled around for a bit but wanted to say "hi"! I'm an old school AD&Der who lives in South Jersey... though my daughters have gotten me into 5e a bit. I play mainly PbP at this point in time, fits the schedule you know. :grin:

What's the history of these forums. They are well set up and well populated, and (what little I've seen) seem to be a bunch of folks interacting pleasantly... weirdness for forums these days. :smile: What's the impetus for this forum's creation? I'd love to know.

Be well all!
--Ron--
I wasn't here for the founding but the impetus seemed to be the ability to have polite conversation about games. To that end there is a no politics rule. That seems to be the key these days to civility.
 
No politics rule, and I think there are a couple of other subjects that are in that space. we are pretty serious about it. we try to focus on the games, playing, etc. we have a thread for personal life stuff, good and bad, where one can go and release a bit. we've had a couple of bans for people just being asshats, but other than that, nothing. we are just committed to it.
 
Welcome to the Pub, rredmond rredmond. If nobody fills in you in before I get done with work, I’ll tell you about it. Were you ever on play-by-post forums before? You look familiar.
To quote a wise man, I've been everywhere man. :grin: But yes! I've done PbP on several different forums and platforms. It's my main source of play right now, even though I'm not playing as much as I'd like - work and real life, and the wife and daughters want to eat, y'all know how it is :grin: - don't become a social worker folks! :tongue: While I mainly play on Unseen Servant (and help Moderate there), I have played on RPoL and Dragonsfoot, on a now defunct site called AliveAndOutOfPrint.com and I've looked into a couple others, but Unseen Servant is sorta like here, bunches of decent folks, very welcoming to newcomers, so I play mostly there now.

To that end there is a no politics rule. That seems to be the key these days to civility.
QFT - you ain't kidding.

Be well all,
--Ron--
 
...we've had a couple of bans for people just being asshats, but other than that, nothing. we are just committed to it.
I help Mod at Dragonsfoot, so I appreciate the zero tolerance for douchebaggery. Smart.
I look forward to hearing the history. I understand that it may not be more than, just wanted to find a good space to talk about the games we love. But I'm intrigued nonetheless.
Be well everyone and thanks so much for the welcome!
--Ron--
 
Hey, rredmond rredmond. Welcome to the Pub.

The thing the most defines this forum is that almost all the early users were just tired of the drama at other forums. With a strong base of people not interested in drama, it has a hard time getting a foothold here. There is also tolerance for a wide range of games and play styles. Everyone has their opinions and preferences, but nobody here is going to drive you out for liking the wrong edition of a game.

Users here have a pretty good sense of humor as well. If someone shows up to troll, they are more likely to be laughed at than to succeed at getting everyone wound up.

I help Mod at Dragonsfoot, so I appreciate the zero tolerance for douchebaggery. Smart.
I look forward to hearing the history. I understand that it may not be more than, just wanted to find a good space to talk about the games we love. But I'm intrigued nonetheless.
Be well everyone and thanks so much for the welcome!
--Ron--
I wouldn't say we have zero tolerance. Given that the users here aren't likely to get wound up, we usually give new users a little time to acclimate. Some people come in hot based on behavior at other forums, then mellow out once they get a feel for the place. If we had a no tolerance policy, we would have lost some people are solid members of the forum today.

Also, we don't want people constantly worried that making the wrong joke or making the occasional grumpy post on a bad day is going to get them banned. Sometimes we need to lock a thread, and we have had to ban a few people, but this place really doesn't need much moderation.

I think people looking for drama have better forums to go to for that. I've seen the Pub mockingly referred to as a "retirement home for gamers" because apparently we are so dull. That's fine with me. People not looking for drama come here, and the other forums can have everyone else.

As far as the origin story, I joined this forum quite early, but I wasn't a founder. You need to get Endless Flight Endless Flight or TristramEvans TristramEvans to talk if you want the story from the beginning.
 
Alright, here’s the short version of the Pub’s beginning.

I posted infrequently and both RPGnet and theRPGSite and never found either of them to be quite what I was looking for in a home. The former is way too moderation heavy and I can’t stand their passive aggressive style of moderation. The latter is dominated by He Who Shall Not Be Named (no, not Lord Voldemort) and what he thinks about certain RPGs. A lot of his positions I do not agree with. And the politics. My God, they dominate both forums. You can go on either forum and within 15 seconds see something political. It’s not a requirement of an tabletop RPG forum to discuss real-world politics; it’s not even a good idea.

So the first time the idea popped into my mind for the Pub was April of 2015. I tossed the idea around and looked into it but decided to put it on the shelf. I waited. Two years passed and certain events happened that made me take the idea off the shelf and see if it would work. The first person i went to was TristramEvans TristramEvans, who had taken a hiatus from the Site, and was also a person who I respected although we really didn’t know each other. I asked him if he thought it was a good idea and he said he was on board. That was all it took. I launched the site that day. Within a week we had about 25 members and it just bloomed from there.

I welcomed anyone who was either tired of the crap everywhere else, wanted a fresh start because they were banned everywhere else, or they wanted to talk their favorite games but we’re scared to because of how the admins at a site reacted.

Two years later here we are and going strong.
 
Just to echo what's already been said, I'd bounced from one forum that got taken over by a political extreme, to another that was consumed by the opposite extreme, and in both cases the politics had taken over and infected any sort of gaming discussions. As stuff IRL got more and more divisive, posting on the forums became increasingly hostile. It came to a head for me when people started cheerleading political violence. I quit in disgust, and considered giving up forums altogether. I blogged about this because after nearly a decade at a forum my exit was pretty abrupt, even if I'd been thinking about it for a while. I was very surprised to find I got a lot of reactions to that post, and it was clear I wasn't the only one who felt that way.

It was then that Endless contacted me and proposed the idea for ThePub, and I was all for it. I'll admit now, I was pessimistic at the start. Most new forums I'd come across over the years died a pretty swift death. But I think ThePub came at just the right time, when people were looking for an alternative. Still, I knew if we were going to survive and attract an audience we needed to be "active", so for that first month or so I buckled down and spammed the Pub with gaming content. I think what made me realize ThePub had "made it" is when other forum heads started copying our posts.

The other vital element was of course that we managed to acquire a core group of "heavy posters" early on. Even at the beginning, when our population was in double digits, it was never boring. There was always new conversations and new replies to bring people back multiple times daily.

At the start we established the single rule "No Politics", and made it clear we were going to be moderating based on common sense, not a long list of rules that could be gamed or BSed around. Not that we do much modding here. It's a pretty sweet gig, because the thing is, everyone is on board with the no politics thing, so posters are really good at moderating themselves in that regard. Generally at most our moderating duties involve dropping in the occasional Father Ted gif or equivalent to get things back on track. Once in a blue moon a thread gets locked. And besides spammers, I think there's been maybe 3 bans since thePub's inception? And only one of those was a "regular" (who we all hated anyways :tongue:)

I think the character of ThePub was defined quickly early on and consists of -

1. Embracing tangents. We let conversations here be conversations, going where they will naturally. Which means a thread about medieval gaming can easily morph into a discussion of food to the finer points of mexican wrestling to a shared hatred of geese.

2. A sense of humour. None of the mods take themselves very seriously and more often than not Pub threads become a mix of parody, sarcasm, and memes.

3. ThePub isn't the anti-anything. Meaning despite how we came here, and the occasional good-natured ribbing on "personalities" from other forums, the Pub recognizes itself as one port of call. Most posters here also post at other forums, and ThePub doesn't pretend to exist in isolation of the internet at large.

But really, if anyone wants to understand The Pub I think this thread embodies it in total:

 
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Along with the no politics, I wanted people to try and follow the Golden Rule. Everyone here may appear to be pixels on your phone or computer screens, but there are real people behind these handles and to a lot of folks this is a way to get away from the stressful and shitty things in life. A little respect for your fellow women and men goes a long way.
 
Along with the no politics, I wanted people to try and follow the Golden Rule. Everyone here may appear to be pixels on your phone or computer screens, but there are real people behind these handles and to a lot of folks this is a way to get away from the stressful and shitty things in life. A little respect for your fellow women and men goes a long way.
Wow. How are you living with the total failure on that one?!

:tongue:
 
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