What other places online do you discuss /tg/ related topics, anons? Most of the other places I remember from my pre-4chan days are now ancient message boards. Full of greybeards if they still exist at all anymore. Most of what I liked about /tg/ and 4chan back in the day was the fact that it was a hub of creativity, overflowing with unique projects and the like. Obviously that isn't much the case here anymore, but I've been sticking around anyway picking through the embers of the site this place once was. And I can't be the only one like that, so I figured it was about time to put the question to /tg/: where else is there? Do you frequent any other /tg/ related sites or forums or the like? Whats good and whats bad out there? Last year 4chan as a whole went down for a while, and while it came back that time there is no promise that it will the next time that happens.
>>97602338I don't particularly like this development either, but nowadays it's pretty much got to be discord servers. A lot of people seem to have given up in participating in discussion groups that don't require a certain buy in to signify your good faith and honestly what can you say to these walled garden people other than they're correct when you look at the state of modern teegee.
>>97602734As cancerous at it may be on the surface, has anyone made a serious attempt at a /tg/ specific discord? I think that it could work so long as whoever was operating it was an oldfag dedicated to a hands-off approach, willing to not step in every time someone's feelings are hurt but who would ban genuine troublemakers if the need arose. Make channels for the major game systems which are functionally the same as a general thread is here, and make new channels at user request if there is enough support for new ones with a specific focus. Give the server a dicebot for rolling. And so on.
>>97602338Reddit. It's become the better place to talk about ttrpgs.>>97602763A number of them. They're even more melodramatic and toxic than you imagine.
Discord or reddit.It's easier to talk there without polfaggots invading the space.I don't like discord much because your discussions are lost to constant messaging.Reddit is fine because you can search up people having the same issue as you, which is super valuable.Only downside is you get morons asking stupid questions about D&D conversions and insulting them directly is frowned upon.
>>97602338Reddit, various discord channels, got some forums I am a part of, old IRC channel I chill in.
>>97602734>walled gardenanother word for echo chamber Here you get called a retard if people don't like your opinion, in many smaller communities they'll just kick you out for wrongthink, especially on discord.>>97603159>It's easier to talk there without polfaggots invading the spaceI literally went to a discord organized game at my LGS and the guy running it couldn't stop himself from seething about ICE out of literally nowhere. Discord and reddit attract the same obnoxious political spergs 4chan does, just on the other side.
>>97603159>"I need to talk somewhere that people will ban anyone who tells me the truth"You have to go back
>>97602338As far as my demographic goes (aging millenials from original *chan culture) there's no other place. /tg/ spirals in the gutter exponentially but anywhere else will always be fucking worse, it's either here or some atomized echo chambers.
>>97604031>some atomized echo chambers.Unfortunately the loudest voices on 4chan are an echo chamber. And it's impossible to have a conversation without them shtiting it up. Reddit is trash because the notion that the most-popular comments are the ones worth reading is the exact opposite of what I'm interested in readinig. But 4chan is trash because the groupthink can't shut the fuck up without sperging out and injecting their identity politics into 4 out of every 5 posts. Small discords that congregate over a shared interest and expand from there are really the only online space left that doesn't suck ass. But I'm sure as hell not inviting anyone from 4chan to mine.
>>97604366You're basically confirmed my points. Yes, 4chan is getting shitter and shitter but i can still have nuggets of gold here because i know how to pull my hands in shit and dirt, also there's no consistent groupthink here, just external groups periodically raiding boards coming from aforementioned atomized echochambers (that includes other boards from this very site). Discords are just the epitome of what you described, the only difference is that discord mods do give some shit, but the shit they give is on the same level of a reddit mod, the only saving grace you're getting there is that discord doesn't have karmashit and votes on posts.
>>97604537Nah there are plenty of good discords. For instance, one of my favorite discords is a bookclub for a particular author I'm a fan of. It's only about 150 people. But turns out lots of us like ttrpgs and are very different in our taste in them, and we can have good, productive and positive conversations and play them with each other. It's very much not group-think-y because we didn't come together over having the same interest in them--we came together over having the same interest in an author. So lots of different viewpoints are represented. And, because we've got accounts, we're respectful of each other which is the biggest thing that 4chan lacks because of anon. Which can be a burden in large communities where people can chase clout. But in small communities it's about building relationships, rather than building clout, which is good.>there's no consistent groupthink here, just external groups periodically raiding boards coming from aforementioned atomized echochambersI wish that were true.
>>97604537>also there's no consistent groupthink hereThere is absolutely groupthink on 4chan, you've just been here so long you don't see it for what it is anymore. We call it "board culture" but its the same thing.
>>97604537>no groupthink here>mods give a shit (elsewhere)>groups periodically interfereNot bad points at all but if the mod enforced board culture (BBC on /gif/, puckee threads 24/7 here, severing /qst/ from /tg/ etc etc) being unveiled by the outage last year didn't teach you anything what can I say?>>97602338>where did you go last yearI visited other *chans and even looked at sharty to see if there was anything constructive outside of this place. That was a mistake. I hit 30 this year and realize how far displaced I am from the average forum goblin on here but also that very few other places even afford the same level of conversation. It's a coordinated attack on the sane by the retards and it's up to you to keep circulating the tapes as it were.
It feels like the idea social media would be some kind of website that has a reddit/discord esq section with authenticated accounts and persisted threads/discussion channels, but then also an anonymous faster moving forum area where none of your identifying info is displayed on your posts but you can still only use it if you have an account. That way topics that either are slower moving or are about persistent information can exist, or people who care about their online popularity have a platform there, but the people who would rather be anon or want to have a fast moving discussion or just have a quick question not worth keeping around forever have their space too... and the fact that it requires an account to use filters out the majority of bots and other chaff. Which also means that if you make too big of an ass of yourself or are posting CP or whatever banning you is easy and straightforward, no IP-hopping to save you. I'm sure its got flaws, but I'm struggling to come up with a better concept for a platform that would still give a 4chan-esq experience and would survive in today's online ecosystem.
>>97604576>>97604600I disagree, ultimately as things currently fare there are the following clusters on 4chan: old anons from the original zeitgeist that despite all odds remained here (very few), xitter screenshot farmers for drama (mostly jeets), discord servers or other external comunities (reddit, kiwifarm, etc...) posting en groups for various reasons (dramafarming, astroturfing, etc...) and retards banned from other platforms coming here for venting and acting retarded even more.
>>97604627You've invented 4 groups and sorted everyone else into one of them. That's about you, not the people you've neatly categorized.
>>97604616>the outage last year didn't teach you anythingIt showed me that Hiro managed to make the same shit he did on 2ch, we were even warned by jp bros that it would happen. Again not a groupthink issue, external and artificial factors managed to drag 4chan to the ground.
>>97604646It's just my anecdotal experience, free to disagree but that's what i have seen.
>>97602338Brand specific facebook pages have been helpful for discussing those games. Comes with the problem of talking on facebook but I've found that as long as you only talk about games and literally ignore everything else it works. More to the point of >/tg/ use to be creative /tg/ use to feel creative, people had more free time, were less doom oriented about politics and the economy, the tabeltop bubble was still building, the hundreds of failed projects hadn't happened yet to create widespread cynicism about enshitification of gaming space, etc. All that being said, there isn't anything stopping you from making a cool project except yourself. You just have to do the work. If you are harkening for a time when you could shout into the void and other people would magically fill in the ideas for you, its a different thing and honestly you're why it fell through.
>>97603709I'll take an echo chamber over the honest to God schizoposting, thread hijacks, pol baiting and spamming that fills the majority of this board. Very few people here are willing to creatively engage in good faith with a project too, with most preferring to post in new "Elf Slave Wat Do" thread mutations.
>>97604693Or worse, an entire thread of people shouting their answers to a prompt into a void and never reading anyone else's, so its just 100 posts with no one responding to each other.
>>97604693>>97604714>my super special project is too good to share with you well, fuck off then
>>97604693>>97604714Those are both real problems, here. Half of 4chan is just circle-jerking or boosting our egos in exactly the same way that people post for "likes" on facebook or "upvotes" on reddit. It's just that here, we farm negativity. There are good things about it, too. But that hateful and toxic part certainly exists.
>>97603731Thank you for proving my point that you can only exist under the rocks of society, and normal people despise you.
>>97604782>boosting egosFor what? Anonymous posting? You're not making sense. Trolling i can get, having and argument for the sake of the argument is another, but inflating one's ego here of all places is demential.>>97604786Nta but nigger, why are you even here?
>>97604537There are good discord servers, but I'm obviously not inviting any of you lot there.
>>97603709Consider this:You can disconnect entirely from this guy you don't like on discord or reddit. On here, I have to keep seeing retarded threads about session 0s or freakshit or whatever idiotic topic the poltard wants to cry about with no chance of filtering them out.>>97604537At a point you need to get real about how much shit you're willing to put your hands into for these nuggets of gold.The discord and reddit experiences are superior to finding gold among turds.On here, you can have some troglodytes pretend to speak authoritatively on something and it will take you maybe a couple of posts to figure out if they're fucking with you or not Whereas on reddit you can just check their post history, find out they like fart bbc furry porn and just ignore their opinion on anything. It makes life much easier.
>>97604829That poses the question for you as well: why are you still here? My guess is for drama and/or astroturfing as i previously stated.
>>97604820PDF thread It's awesome
>>97604624Reminds me of how the lore in Shadowrun is presented as articles and anecdotes/convos between runners on the internet, with the first three editions taking place on Shadowland BBS which then split into Shadowsea and Jackpoint as a public bbs and more exclusive p2p vpn. Just that level of stratification and how that new form of self-isolation from the general community by the “elite” or memorable runner npcs changed the general mood of what a runner is from being potentially anyone willing to pick up a gun to a kind of elite group of professionals for hire.Likewise, I see the rise of Discord and the like over Internet forums as something similar, a great way to find like minded individuals to talk about the games you like but also an implicit way to separate the outsiders from the insiders, the fresh from the grogs, which has its merits but also its downsides.
>>97604953>which has its merits but also its downsides.I think the biggest downside to the loss of an open forum like what 4chan is is that you don't get the crossover that you didn't know you wanted. There's no opportunity to see someone talking about something you've never heard of and check it out and get interested in something if you are on the 40k discord and all they talk about is 40k. So all you will ever heard about is 40k 40k 40k, and never stumble onto a more niche product that you've never heard of but which might turn out to be your absolute jam like Kingdom Death. You can't "do your own research" and go looking for something that you don't know exists in the first place.
>>97604993True enough. Most of the internet really only treats D&D, Pathfinders, MTG, and 40k like they’re the only worthwhile things to talk about in the realm of ttrpgs.
>>97604839The generals of the games I play right now or played recently (Paizo, 40krpg, CPRED, Genesys) are still readable. I used to frequent MtG generals as well, but I gave up on that game.Sometimes I yoink a nice picture from character/scenery threads.
>>97602734Speaking as someone who actually uses Discord for this, the problem with Discord servers is that they meet a similar fate to many of the big Generals here, i.e. mostly people just treat it as a hangout and the actual topic eventually becomes almost secondary in some cases. I've made plenty of e-friends that way, but if you're just looking to actually discuss a topic, it's hard to think of anywhere online anymore where you can guarantee that.
>>97605108Regarding /tg/i think we pretty much align so i take back my previous guess. Yes, generals are still pretty much safe to have conversations, save some exception (see osrg having to deal with fishfag), outside of them i aggressively filter when i'm looking for genuine posts (helps that most of the shit follows the same keywords and patterns) and straight go into the wild when i want to look for something i may have potentially missed due to filters.
>>97602338Discord, generals, and occasionally forums.For Discords, as >>97605116 said, big discords are basically useless, they are filled with secondaries who don't actually play the game and just bitch about things on discord all day. Smaller discords, like the one I'm in, can be built around a group of friends and therefore encourage meaningful creativity without having to enforce draconian social rules, but this is by its nature a walled garden and you do have to be somebody's friend to get in and stay in. We've made some good GCS files, though, and run a lot of games.Specific generals on /tg/ are still good, depending on your taste. I'm a GURPSfag, and GURPSgen is an incredibly good resource, people generally talk about the actual game and its mechanics, unlike 90% of /tg/ where people talk about what they've heard about the game from secondary media.Forums can still be a useful source, but are usually draconian hellpits. I think specifically of the GURPS forums, which I don't post on but often provides templates I can use when I check them. I don't regularly read those, though.I think the general problem here is that /tg/ is a very broad topic, and is one dominated by some really shitty culture war bullshit and tired retreading of the same points, because the majority of posters have never played a ttrpg and only vaguely know the rules of one. Ditto for wargames, the majority of posters have never played a game of 40k and only know how to bitch about (x), and barely know about other, better systems. Its impossible to have nuanced conversation about game systems when you are talking to somebody with no knowledge of them but an axe to grind about the idea of them in their head.
>>97602763>As cancerous at it may be on the surface, has anyone made a serious attempt at a /tg/ specific discord?There's Game Finder Chat but they're a bunch of cliquish faggots who will just be a cunt to anyone new until they leave.
>>97602763I've been in three (public) servers and have my own private one.The first two public ones both went down the drain for two reasons:1. Power tripping cliques. If you went against public consensus they'd quickly ban you. At one point early in their lifespans this was fine and there was just constant discussion and arguing over everything with some creativity and actual games thrown in, same as old /tg/. But eventually arguments and outside opinions weren't entertained and you had to kiss ass if you wanted to stay in.2. Bad moderation. The cliques had shares in the mod team and eventually managed to take over and throw out the opposition, and were then able to enforce the power tripping with more power tripping.The third public one is still around, but it's also gone down the drain because Discord repeatedly banned it for allowing the nigger word. Somehow it managed to avoid any cliques forming and now it's mostly just gone quiet because everything /tg/ related has been talked about to death, and the bans have kept them from getting new blood for fear of being mass reported. It's a shame, because they were one of the few discords where I could troll people without getting banned.Maybe if discord shoots its own head off in march that'll change though.My personal one, obviously you can take my opinion with a great of salt when I say it's my favorite server. It's small but I haven't banned anyone despite sharing the server with some people I heavily dislike, and it's also referral only, which has kept me from needing to give other people moderation powers.I guess like with most things in life you kind of just have to go out there and start trying to find what you want, or make it.
>>97606857>I stopped talking about games and instead trolled peopleIt's no wonder the "cliques" banned you.
>>97606886Well no anon, if you read my post I only trolled in one server because it WOULDN'T ban me for it. I never got banned from any of those servers eitherway, since I do my trolling on alts and mostly act polite on my main account and use it for finding games.
>>97604537Has anyone ever explained to sunk cost fallacy to you?
>>97602338I don't. 4chan is the only place.I think I posted twice on Giant in the Playground and that's it.Unless talking with my friends over messaging apps count.
"Discord is terrible" is a psyop started by bot farms to keep your eyes where they can control the narrative. I believed it at first because I didn't know what Discord was. In my desperation to find games I signed up with local game Discords and discovered its just an app for bulletin boards. It isn't any different in practice from IRC channels. IRC and bulletin boards both predate image boards by a long stretch, but normies flock to easy access apps that corporations/governments use to farm data and push agendas, and 4chan has been a normie website for a long time (the endless summer.)
>>97608581It's more accurate to say Discord is a mixed bag. Any given server will be good/bad largely based on the way it's moderated. In that respect it's just like old forums/IRC.Finding good discords, like finding good IRCs/forums, is still a pain in the ass.
>>97608590I started with game shop discords, then moved to private discords for the specific game groups in the area. I think that joining a group dedicated to actually playing the game is key to my success with discord. My main server has a core group of players that meets regularly for pick up games and campaign games. The discord has some non-game talk, but like 95% is game related.
>>97608284If you mean that i have invested too much in 4chan to leave you're wrong, i do take and have taken part to other communities, and my thought is that the anonymous imageboard model was, and stil is despite the miserable current state, the best for online discussions. The fact i can still find good stuff here despite its state, which would have killed long ago any other places using different models, is a testament to his underlying resilience.
