I have no issues with mixing up the moderation team, what would you do?
Honestly, for now I'd just start with weeding out off topic spam threads and trying to find uses for this forum with feedback on twitter from the ttrpg design community. Maybe gamify it a bit, do some play by post, see if They will come back. I think people wanted this to be a replacement for Google Plus, but most of us weren't even around for those halcyon days of community and exchange, and now the indie tabletop scene is much bigger and more active, so it's probably unrealistic to expect a new, centralized mecca to emerge in a decentralized time. So, baby steps, I guess.
Yeah ... in 2019 I published like 14 ttrpg projects of varying sizes, but in 2020 and 2021 (so far) I've published 1, and only because I started it in 2019, so I imagine a lot of people are probably feeling like they aren't "active" as designers right now and don't have much to share from their own work.
But as for theory and discussion, maybe something a bit more structured could help? Like, a new topic or prompt every Thursday ... something like that.
On a side note, I am not sure how I feel about outright "debates" in this scene/industry/field, just based on my experience witnessing "discourse" on twitter. I personally never want to engage in discussion where any one person or group is prescribing any one "correct" practice or methodology for design (I think there is definitely space to discuss more effective and objectively more ethical business and labor practices, but that's a different area entirely). In the end, stuff like "do systems matter" or "is playtesting necessary" ends up in the same broad territory as "what is art" and suchlike, except it's less abstract, even less interesting to push in any one direction, and much more likely to alienate and gatekeep designers ... unless it's DnD bashing, because DnD is objectively bad and everyone knows it, obviously, though I do think that horse has been beaten deep underground by now. So when it comes to theoretical discussions it'd be good to emphasize the subjective and highly individual nature of these practices instead of focusing on intentionally provocative "are dice bad, actually" prompts. Like, instead of "are dice bad, actually" we can ask "what is your experience (if any) designing for diceless play, and what challenges and advantages have you encountered in the process?" I dunno. Just rambling now. But I guess this is one of the reasons I would be keen to move some of the "discourse" away from twitter and back towards a medium without a strict character limit.
Alright, I’ve added you as moderator, you can accept it here: https://itch.io/category/385327/moderators
Few things:
- Try not to delete things outright, as they disappear forever, instead you can use the “Archive” option to hide & lock topics. This can help if an admin needs to review things later if necessary.
- If you see something that truly is spam (like Viagra ads), then please use the report link at the bottom and choose spam, that will go into our admin spam review queue to train our spam detector.
- If there’s anything you want to do that you don’t have permission to do, like rename boards or move things around, then please ask me. You can DM me on discord or twitter if that’s eaiser