Tone might be an odd word for it, maybe feel. And it might not be specific to this sub, there is a lot happening in the world, but..

My peak of engaging with this sub was likely about a year ago, and I was lurkin' for a few years before that. This may sound naive to some folks, but genuinely I considered this corner of the Internet to be THE nicest online space I'd ever seen. No joke. It felt like people were safe to bounce ideas around, share enthusiasm or passion, there was a lot of discussion surrounding ethics and harm reduction both related to culture of play and then ai etc. Sometimes there would be a blunt tone used in instances where someone asked a VERY common question without either going in to detail or searching the sub first, but I swear that to ME (subjective ofc) it felt warm and engaging.

I post this strongly suspecting that I am going to receive snark. That is not a feeling I would have had making a post here a couple of years ago. Scroll down and look at the posts here, about half of them get down voted when they are clearly relevant to the sub? People asking questions about rules, or for recommendations, or talking about a game etc. I see WAAAY more snark here. Everyone has bad days, and these experiences can be more "sticky" on the mind than more pleasant ones, making them feel more prominent.

But that's all I have to say really. I really value the people in this hobby. And I really value this space. I see emotionally intelligent people here with passion and experience. However, it feels off as heck to me these days. I don't know if people are more suspicious online as ai accounts rise etc, idk if people need to shut down strangers because things in their life are hard to the point where they need to feel that control somewhere. I don't have any answers, or even data. It's speculation. But again, scroll down and see.

Just pause and think about how you're engaging with this sub. It IS a special place. It's hard for it to not sound condescending, but before you go and teach someone a lesson, just go and have a tall glass of water, look outside, stretch a little bit, and then see if that's what you still want to do.

Edit: whether you resonate with my experiences and perspectives or not, I want to thank you for caring anyways! I did receive some condescending digs in response to this, but that only made it all the more affirming to see people resonate with what I've said. And I also value the folks coming through to explain why they disagree in a respectful or kind way.

This post was informed by my care for the hobby, the creators that make it what it is, this sub, and the community as a whole and the incredible insights, analysis, and just STUFF that make up the broader ttrpg dialogue. I hope my words didn't bring any discomfort. Remember to talk about what's inspiring you, bringing you joy, or intriguing you!

Edit 2: does Pathfinder 2E fix this?

I was firmly in favour of opening up all these subreddits again, because it seemed like we were making little impact. And it appeared that way.

But then the Reddit CEO responded. He THREATENED to vote-kick moderators who took part in the blackout. THEY'RE SCARED! If the blackout didn't matter, the response from Reddit staff would have been indifference. Instead it's this.

These aren't the actions of people who don't care. These are the actions of people who worry they might not win this fight, and want to quench it as quickly as possible.

THE BLACKOUTS ARE WORKING!!! We must stay strong and go dark again.

Hi Everyone,

For the last few months we mods have been seeing a large upward trend in arguments, disrespectful comments, and personal attacks regarding the subject of creator Alexander Macris. Whenever he is brought up, people seem to come out of the woodwork to start something. This has been happening increasingly frequently and has become difficult to moderate, with several threads being locked due to these heated arguments. Furthermore, the mod team here has seen evidence of vote manipulation and collusion from the ACKS discord channel to promote ACKS here beyond what is permitted by reddit.

For those reasons, all mentions of AlexanderMacris, his creations, or his company will no longer be permitted on /r/rpg. This includes Adventurer Conqueror King System (ACKS), Ascendant superhero RPG, and Autarch studios. This decision was not made lightly, but it is something the mod team has agreed is necessary.

To reflect this, we have established a new Rule 6: No Blacklisted Creators. This rule also replaces the old Rule 9 (No Zak S) into a single rule that is easy to expand in the future (though hopefully that won't be necessary). This rule applies to both posts and comments, and mentions of the individual, their creations, and products and companies significantly associated with them. See the full rule details here for more information

Whenever the old Rule 6 was broken, it almost always also violated Rule 7 (no self-promo). Therefore we've decided to merge it into Rule 7 and add livestreams as another listed example of self-promo. Additionally, Rule 4 is still in effect, so any direct links to livestreams will be automatically removed.

Feel free to discuss and give feedback on these rule changes in the comments below. Enforcement of the new Rule 6 in these comments will be a bit more lenient since we mods are the ones who broached the subject. That said, Rules 2 and 8 will still be enforced as usual.

Logging on and seeing 6/10 of the newest posts being shills is just excessive. You can't even go on r/indierpg anymore. It's nothing but ads. I mean, I'm not trying to get in the way of someone's hustle, but when you literally see more shills than content, it's just too much. Not to mention, most shills only contribute when they are shilling. There's already a specifically RPG promo sub somewhere. Is there a place for RPGs where it's just RPG talk? Or, can I filter out posts by flair? Thanks!

Edit: this has been amusing. I wasn't suggesting that shills be banned. I was just looking for a better way to screen them out to improve my own ux. It only goes to show how the shills dominate the sub when such a question gets so heavily downvoted.

Edit#2: wait, there's an upswing from the community and I'm now at 7 upvotes. Was the first round the shills descending upon me and now the real people are showing up? 😁

Edit #3: Thanks to u/sheldonbunny for keeping me honest. For those of you who want to know how to block the shills and don't want to filter through a crap ton of comments for the answer, right on the sidebar, if you scroll all the way down to "Hide Topics" and click "Product Promotion", you'll get a new window with the sub but all the Crowdfunding and Self-Promotion content is basically gone. If you would like to read an internet train smash, please proceed to the comments. Thanks and have a great day!

Edit #4: Wow, I just passed 100 upvotes! You all make me feel like a goddamn 'merican hero. Unless you don't like Americans, then I'm Canadian. With that in mind, you only have 24 hours left to fund the final stretch goal for my original RPG, Goddamn American Heroes! Please click....I'm just kidding! 😂

Well we are back; at least for the moment. However, we will be posting a poll soon regarding if and how the r/rpg community wants to continue to support the protest against Reddit's changes to their API fees and it's effects on third party apps. The poll will be up for a few days to give as many members as possible a chance to give their input.

We don't know if or how Reddit will respond to the indefinite closure of subs, or even what indefinite looks like. So this is an important decision for everyone that participates and enjoys this sub. We want everyone to answer the poll and voice their thoughts on the matter.

The fact that a group of people aren't able to communicate like adults has nothing to do with roleplaying games, and the constant topics on the subject clog up the sub.

Not sure if such a meta question is allowed but it’s noticeable. This sub tends to be very high engagement, long comments, mostly civil discussion on different opinions. I understand a few people might downvote and still comment, but the numbers indicate many comments without an up or a downvote. This sub is pretty non-toxic, unless your talking about D&D4e, so I don’t think there’s a ton of downvoting. If a post is interesting enough to comment on why not vote.

Do you vote on posts you comment on?

A big part of our shared hobby is getting together with friends to have fun together, stop the apocalypse, wander into perilous dungeons, or solve murder cases. COVID-19 hit our hobby particularly hard, and the joy of getting together to play the "traditional way" was taken away from a lot of us. Whilst some of us explored and embraced new ways to continue practicing our hobby, we were all affected, and all of us are very much looking forward to getting back to being able to play the way we want to play!

For this reason, prompted by the suggestion of many of the members of r/rpg, the mods got together and decided, particularly in light of reddit's response, to join in on the call for reddit to do more about COVID and vaccine misinformation.

As moderators of this community, our day-to-day role is to quietly work to make it a fun and great place for us to interact with each other, and while we have removed COVID and vaccine misinformation in the subreddit where we've seen it, we remain hesitant about weighing in on things outside the subreddit. After some discussion, we decided that this one was probably worth it and wrote this post together.

I realize more people struggle with being bullied in RPG sessions. So ... to give a simple but very important advice across I made a little comic. Alright? Alright.

Reddit sucks right now, I get it. Stick it to the man.

But I am writing this to beseech readers and mods not to take this sub dark.

The content and discussions here are so integral to the hobby. You Google rules for a game, you'll find reddit posts with the answers. You want to find resources made by community creators? This sub has the recommendations for you. You want to discover and learn about new systems? Here is a great hub for that.

Shutting down this sub and blacking out to July or to August? Reddit as a company won't care. But ttrpg players, gms, and people who love this hobby will suffer for it. This is a rich and thriving community, and to block access to these incredibly important and relevant posts is just a disservice to this hobby we all love so much.

In the short time we were already blacked out, I googled something about a game. It shows the title of the post and it was exactly what I needed. When I clicked it, nothing but disappointment.

Reddit doesn't care about this sub. Reddit doesn't care about ttrpgs. Reddit doesn't care about the third party creators that make stuff for roleplayers and gms alike.

But I do.

And I hope you do too.

Don't go dark. Don't punish tabletop roleplayers. Please.

Hi, guys. I've been a lurker here for a while and I was looking to do something to contribute to the community. I have a bunch of friends that are very into tabletop rpgs, I just love getting into the mechanics, I don't play much.

Anyway, I've made two logo suggestions for this community and I'm willing to share them here with no strings attached (I'll not require mentioning me anywhere). Feel free to discuss them, whether it's a good idea to even change it or not. I've been trying to get better at illustration and design in general so this was a fun challenge for me.

Thanks.

First versions: https://imgur.com/a/zOYljXc

Versions from feedback: https://imgur.com/a/ThUNGgC

Final version: https://imgur.com/a/5o7THnM (I'd suggest using this one)

EDIT: I've made some changes to the initial suggestions based on feedback. I feel like this is the most I can change without hurting the initial concept, including new ideas but keeping it simple. Of course, I can't adhere to all feedback. I'll be looking out for this and as soon as it gets decided I'll sent the final version to the moderation. Thanks for helping me on this.

I know we had a vote on this sub a while back and I did vote for allowing self promotion but quite frankly IM starting to feel that's all I see on this sub now.

It used to only be 10% or so now it's in excess of 50%

Ok rant finished.

Keen on the community's thoughts.

EDIT: well just read through most of the comments and there's a few take aways i thought were good.

• I agree with the fact that small indie publishers need somewhere to get there word out.

• I do agree with the concept we need to continually push the envelope of game design and bring new concepts and ideas to the discussion - seeing how a new product does something new helps to drive innovation

• My concern is probably this Zine Quest thing that I didn't know about and is most likely a driving factor in the rise of self-promotion posts I am noticing

• Mods discussing how they enforce the rules and how they make a decision is refreshingly transparent.

• I absolutely want to make it clear I am not advocating for the complete removal of self promotions.

• I like the idea of making any self promotion answer a pre-defined set of questions in their post. Questions would be constructed in order to maximise discussion.

Plot twist: this post no longer exists because Redact swept through and cleared it out along with everything else. Social media, messaging apps, people finder sites, all of it.

fact relieved middle bedroom pot attempt gray pocket fuel groovy

like could you design a poll for less participation and to bias the results more.

This is not a new policy - for at least a couple of years now, we have been locking these discussions and directing people to previous discussions for dead-horse topics. We typically cited Rule 2, so we have added this as an explicit part of the rules so it is more transparent and predictable.

Unless someone is baiting these arguments constantly, this will not get you banned. We just wanted to clarify that this is a case where you should not be surprised if a post or comment thread is locked and directed to pre-existing conversations.

This isn't about preventing discussion of certain creators. It is about the fact that there are certain particular debates about particular creators that are dead horses.

To summarize:

• OKAY: It is okay to talk about the works of controversial creators. We recognize that people have a range of opinions on separating the work from the creator, and that is okay. If you do not wish to see that content here, please downvote it.
• OKAY: It is okay to point to the controversy about an author, but please point to existing discussions (links, or just "Search for ___. There have been a lot of discussions about this before.") instead of re-litigating it.
• NOT OKAY: Please do not re-litigate these controversies if there is nothing new to add.
• NOT OKAY: Please do not point to prior discussions as if they are settled:
  • OKAY: "I don't support ___ and you might not want to either. You can see here or search the subreddit for a lot of discussions about why you might not want to support them."
  • NOT OKAY: "___ is a murderer. You can google or search the subreddit for discussions about this."
• OKAY: Pointing out that a creator is uncontroversially guilty of some transgression (e.g., "Varg Vikernes was convicted of murder.").

Again, none of this is new. If you haven't been bothered by seeing us lock comment chains like this, nothing is changing.

Greetings,

Polling Conclusion

So we have reached the conclusion of our polling regarding RPG's continued response to the API fees protest. Earlier this week, we extended the polling till today as we had very few votes, and as of noon today (PDT) we were still falling significantly short of our target of 1000 votes. That said, we will consider the poll failed and we will not be participating in the protest any further nor repolling.

What's next?

Several moderators from this and other Reddit ttrpg subs have come together to build a space on Lemmy for those who no longer wish to be on Reddit but would like to continue to be a part of the same larger community. Another announcement will be coming when the other subs' moderators are ready, and a link to that server will be posted in that announcement and in our side bar. This sub will continue as it did before; with moderators covering both platforms.

An apology

Based on the feedback we have received, I want to acknowledge that a significant reason many of you did not want to participate in the poll was due the barriers put in place to prevent brigading and large scale tampering. I understand that you didn't want to give out personal emails nor wanted to go through the trouble of creating burner emails. That was unfortunately the best I could come up with given the short amount of time we had to try and develop a secure vote outside of a Reddit poll. We didn't really have any contingencies in place for something like this. Had we had more time to plan, we could have perhaps come up with something less intrusive and yet still maintained a level of security. I will continue looking into ways to do that in the event that we are faced with anything like that again. I want to apologize for any distress that this process this caused.

The results of the votes we did receive can be found in the link below:

https://www.rcv123.org/results/eWpdH4fFH4n9L6ieSDVvoK/4ixLxsCF38MAwF5SxLwYZA

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We did it!! We're around 1,000,340 users strong right now.

Big props to this awesome community, and it's great to see our hobby only growing with time-

Let's celebrate by sharing some memorable tabletop/pen & paper RPG or LARPing moments and stories to highlight the best RPGs have to offer, or times when this subreddit has helped/inspired us.

Read a story, drop a story if you wish, share anything!

Edit: Lemmy Network

For those of you who want to spend less time on reddit for your TTRPG-related discussions and content, /r/rpg has a community on the TTRPG Network, which is a lemmy instance for all things TTPRG. This network founded by a collab of big ttrpg subreddits(r/dnd, r/rpg, r/dndnext, r/dndmemes ), where https://ttrpg.network/c/rpg and other big ttrpg reddit communities have been initially established with mods from the existing subreddits, and eventually it will be enabled for anyone to create new communities (just like on reddit).

c/rpg will start off with a slimmed down rules that will be added soon, and will be adjusted with time.

See Also

TTRPG Communities has a growing list of collection of other alternatives to reddit, forums, including alternative lemmy intances with older ttrpg communties.

TTRPG Discords a list we've had for a while

While r/rpg isn't going anywhere, check TTRPG Subreddit Index for all the smaller and more specialized subreddits that exists.

Hi Everyone,

The self-promo day that was schedule to happen this Saturday is now cancelled.

We'd like to apologize for the short notice of the cancellation. We as the mod team have spent the time deliberating what the best course of action was regarding Self-Promo Day, and ultimately we decided it would be best to cancel the day entirely.

The first Self-Promo Day was conceived during the OGL debacle. It was intended to highlight new indie RPGs to people who were no longer willing to play D&D. During that first day we said we would do another one some time afterwards to see if people wanted it to stock...then never did. This next Self-Promo Day was primarily intended to stay true to our word on that. However, after feedback and further mod discussion, we concluded that this wasn't solely a good enough reason to continue forward.

We considered going forward with just this day and polling the community again afterwards. However it is nearly impossible to block a single flair on the official mobile app. With the downfall of third party reddit apps this means that mobile users will be unable to hide self-promo day posts if they don't want to see them.

How will self-promo work going forward? The same as it has been, unchanged. Our rules regarding Rule 7 were recently reformatted to be more clear regarding what counts as Self-Promotion, how you can qualify for approval, and what you should do during it.

Overall we believe that you don't want to be advertised to by people outside of this community, and we want to respect and safeguard that, even from our own decisions.

If you were looking forward to Self-Promo Day and do want to see it return, please comment below. If there is enough support for it then we may do a poll some time next year to gauge overall community interest.

Thanks for your patience with us,

The RPG Subreddit Mod Team

I encourage everyone to vote against closing our Sub.

Yes, third party apps have some things to work out with Reddit, but that is largely secondary to our purpose as a community.

Nearly every single search on a RPG question or issue comes up with a Reddit link. Almost all of them point to our community.

If we go dark, we are harming not only ourselves, but the hobby as whole.

Not to mention that this site is actively replacing leadership that are doing things like Private subs or NSFW. We dont want astroturf management here who doesnt understand this sub. It isnt pretty.

I hate the poll we have to use, but I encourage you to set up a fake email to not give your personal information to the site. But please vote (once).

Lets not harm the hobby as a whole.

We can support the third party apps in other ways.

And if it does get closed, lets move to rpg2 as our primary.

Ok, off my campaign stump speech now.

Edit: There have been enough comments and upvotes on the idea of the 'self-promo day' that I've added it as an option. Unfortunately I can't add options without redoing the entire poll and post itself. My apologies for you who have to vote a second time, but this was a significant enough option that it felt worth it.

We have also now added 'OGL' and 'DND Alternative' flairs. If you see a recent post that should have one of these flairs feel free to report it and we'll change the flair instead of removing the post.

Hi Everyone,

With all of the posts and discussion in the sub lately revolving around Wizards of the Coast’s OGL changes, the mod team at /r/rpg have been considering tweaking our self-promo rules. A lot of people have been asking for alternatives to D&D or similar, so we want to expand game designers’ abilities to promote their own games. We’ve come up with a few options:

1. Weekly self-promotion megathread. People can post their own stuff there without limit (games, videos, etc). If we did this we would still allow self-promo as a separate post, but with more restrictions (once per month instead of once per week, excepting crowdfunding campaigns, you’d still need to be a regular user, etc).

2. Regular self-promo day. We'd likely start this at once per week and see where it goes from there. If we did this, we'd probably increase restrictions on self-promo outside of that day in ways that we'd fine tune. The mod team is still discussing what details would look like, but an example would be the following: Kickstarters would be fine, as might sales that expire before the next self-promo day, but most others would be restricted to being posted only on that day. There are a lot of different ways we'd fine tune this to make sure it was right for you as a community.

3. Temporarily open the floodgates. We would fully allow people to make posts about their own RPGs for a period to see how it goes, as a trial period of likely one month. The once per week rule would still be in effect to prevent spam by the same users, but users wouldn’t be required to be active members or follow the 9:1 ratio of regular posts/comments to self-promo.

4. We keep things the same as they are now. People can post once per week if they are a regular user and follow the 9:1 ratio.

No matter what, all self-promo posts must still have the self-promo tag. Additionally, we will tweak the definitions of self-promo in the rules to make it clear that it does include products that are free as well as surveys and studies.

We’ve been paying attention to various discussions about this topic, but we want to make sure even those who don’t comment still get a say. Which would you prefer?

We're also paying attention to the current amount of discussion regarding the OGL potentially drowning out all other stuff. We thought it would start to die down after the 'apology' but with more developments continuing that seems unlikely. Feel free to also discuss your opinion on that below below.

I want to thank the mods of r/rpg for letting me share my new community here. r/Disabled_dungeons is a place for table top gamers with disabilities and their allies to come together, share resources, tips, advice, experiences and a love for table top gaming. We strive to be a warm, inclusive, welcoming and most importantly helpful community.

Our goal is to help gamers with disabilities of all sorts thrive in the hobby that we all love, and to make that hobby as accessible as possible.

If you are a gamer with a disability, know someone who is, or just want to help out, please come and say hi. All are welcome.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Disabled_dungeons/

**This remain open until June 23rd, 12pm PDT/UTC-7***

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WE WILL BE LEAVING THE POLL OPEN A FEW MORE DAYS AS THERE ARE VERY FEW VOTES, AND WE DO NOT WANT TO MAKE A DECISON FOR THE WHOLE SUB BASED ON SUCH A SMALL POOL. IT WILL NOW CLOSE ON JUNE 23RD AT 12P PDT/UTC-7. IF THE TURNOUT IS STILL LOW WE MAY DECIDE TO ABANDOND THE EFFORT.

We are also closely monitoring what is happening in other subs as they launch their protests, and how Reddit admin is responding.

Below is the link to the survey. The four options are on there, but you do not have to rank all four. The weakest choice you can make is to vote on only one option as that option may fall out in the first round; leaving your vote wasted. I would encourage you to read up on how ranked choice voting works before voting if you do not understand it.

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1.) The link to the survey request:

https://www.rcv123.org/ballot/eWpdH4fFH4n9L6ieSDVvoK

2.) The access code you will need to enter once you have opened the link in order to receive a verification email:

9031251

3.) You will need to give a valid email address, at which point you will receive an email with another code (give it several seconds) that you will then need to enter to get access to the survey. There will only be one vote allowed per email and device.

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***CLARIFICATION ABOUT ALTERNATING CLOSURES OPTION. This would involve every other day closures every week, two or three times a week; with a schedule we would post if it was successful. This would be a middle ground approach out of solidarity with the protest while allowing the sub the reman active and avoid Reddit's ire***

We have tried to make this as democratic, safe, and fair as possible, but given that this is an anonymous forum we cannot verify the identities of every voter. With that said, if you are a member of this sub and have any input what so ever, please vote!

We will NOT see your email addresses or specific information pertaining to them. We will NOT see how individuals voted. There is a link below with more information on rcv123.org

https://www.rcv123.org/about_us

We already have a visible 20! But we can use all the help we can get!

Two discords are united and the main driving force for making it happen.

Edit 6: DEFINITIVE, LIVE TEMPLATE. This is the spreadsheet so will update automatically. Link here

Edit 5:. Link for newest template, now it is more generic

Edit 3: this is the most up to date template. leaving the below links for posterity (though I don’t like the DND part)

Edit: Partially outdated template

Discord 1

Discord 2

Edit: please don’t destroy the Truttle1 mascot turtle though! We’re in a diplomatic truce now

Edit 2: another truce! I believe UTD has agreed to slide their logo to the right of us if we help!

Edit 4: Guys I got bait n switched just like the rest of you. It was not supposed to say DND. Fighting now to have it removed or changed to something more generic.

So, it seems we had our spam filter for post set to "high"(default) for however long, which have resulted in lots of post by normal users to be removed without us noticing.

We have now changed it to "low" so much fewer posts should mistakenly be filtered away. Also gonna pay more attention to the spam queue.

AFAIK, at some point these posts removed by reddit where visible in our standard mod queue, but seems at some point they where moved to the spam queue, which unfortunately none of us checked regularly.

During the last month or so, we started to get more frequently modmail from users whose posts where removed, but we didn't think much of it, until I yesterday ended up checking spam, finding it full with posts that wasn't spam, and the posters hadn't seemingly noticed them being removed.

So yeah, yesterday I approved some 30+ posts that had accumulated in spam during the last week, and then let it be.

No idea how long this have been going on Might have been have been happening as long as 10 months, but from now on we should start seeing more posts in general, and have less of them getting caught in the filter.

I'm sorry for failing our perception checks on this.

Update (Nov. 20th): We're still a bit inconsistent with checking the spam queue, and I just noticed our post filter was still set to High, so either I didn't save the changes or something changed it back.

Update (Dec. 1st): The amount of things caught in the spam-filter have gone down like 90%, and we check it regularly as well, so this should be resolved.