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Post by evileeyore on Jun 29, 2021 16:24:57 GMT
Hello. I was around for a long time then gone for a long time and now I'm just saying hello. Again. Good to see you again. Most of everyone else has departed for parts unknown, there's only maybe 5-10 of us here now. This is a sad version of the heights of glory NKL/NTL, Sedes, and the old Circvs got up to.
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Post by scutisorex on Jun 29, 2021 17:22:56 GMT
Hello. I was around for a long time then gone for a long time and now I'm just saying hello. Again. Good to see you again. Most of everyone else has departed for parts unknown, there's only maybe 5-10 of us here now. This is a sad version of the heights of glory NKL/NTL, Sedes, and the old Circvs got up to. Hey good to see you too. It's surprising to me that something else didn't really pop up and take hold. I mean, you still can't touch a lot of these topics on EN World. Did CM just flame out or did they get tired of running it or what?
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Post by evileeyore on Jun 29, 2021 18:00:17 GMT
Hey good to see you too. It's surprising to me that something else didn't really pop up and take hold. I mean, you still can't touch a lot of these topics on EN World. Did CM just flame out or did they get tired of running it or what? Well, CM was run by Morrus (officially even if he did mostly leave it to JC and a few others), but when he upgraded to the new software and servers, CM was pretty much on it's last legs already*. We were down to maybe 50 solid posters. The switch over to here where Morrus did nothing to improve the look, feel, or usability of the base platform† pretty much killed interest of the remaining holdouts. The problem as I see it, those of us that were left were the folks either too busy, not skilled enough, or just not interested in running a board. I've thought about it a few times, but I haven't the time to even learn what I'd need to do to set something up let alone the time to do so. Maintaining a board is a lot less immediately time intensive... but there is no one here even doing that. * For a lot of reasons. Mostly I think the "Age of Message Boards" had passed for a lot posters, Facebook filled that 'void' for them (not for me or others obviously‡), but in a lot of cases there was always a vast cultural divide between the oldsters from NKL and the newer crowd that sprang up on CM. As time went on the new crowd migrated to Facebook. And it didn't help when Mo threaten to shut everything down, when he ultimately decided not to, he basically walked away from the 'day-to-day' management and things began to slowly fall apart at CM, but that 'threat' further splintered the two crowds, and some left and never returned. So that's where we were come, what March/April, of 2019. CM was tired and worn out feeling, we'd fallen to a fraction of what CM's glory days were (I think we still had a solid 100+ posters though) and the move here triggered a lot of "I'll come back when this place is finished" and... well... I mean I couldn't even get Mo to properly implement Moderator powers for me in the moderated sub-board I ran for a year. Thankfully no one acted up. I didn't even have a mod-stick to beat people with, I was doin my best James Garner impression in there (ala Support Your Local Sheriff). † We had a few posters whose logins were borked server side and they couldn't get Mo to fix whatever was wrong and eventually gave up posting as Guests. ‡ Unlike others, I don't think message boards will ever completely die. They serve a fairly valuable function in the discourse of hobbies, so I think they'll remain in those communities. But generalist boards like NKL/Sedes/CM? Those are basically gone. The only (popular) "generalist" boards I can even think of are more "general category" hobby boards, like ENW, RPGNet, ResetEra... and those are hellsites of political purity bullshit. If I had the time (and the money) I'd start a new board (or purchase this one off of Mo who clearly doesn't want to run it but seems to feel it has a value or at least he feels minimally indebted to it's existence).
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Post by scutisorex on Jun 29, 2021 18:54:01 GMT
Thanks for the catch-up. I had popped in to CM a few times over the last 14 years or so just to see what was up and it looked pretty much the same... but I had not been over there since probably 2016 or so. I'm used to boards coming and going but I guess I just assumed that some place like that would always exist, as an outlet for less-moderated conversation among gamers if nothing else. I stopped hanging around due to a couple of things. I got generally burned out on message boards after SSR. I got tired of trolling. I got tired of the persona I had developed. Not long after that, my politics started to change. I went to Facebook and Twitter and didn't do much with RPGs. But my daughter convinced me to get back into it a couple years ago and now I'm playing again and having fun. A post from Lisa N on Facebook about this Ernie Gygax stuff led me back to see what all the fuss was about, and I noticed CM's link no longer worked. Well, we've got memories. Until we get too fucking old.
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Belen
New Member
Posts: 5
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Post by Belen on Oct 14, 2021 21:11:52 GMT
Thanks for the catch-up. I had popped in to CM a few times over the last 14 years or so just to see what was up and it looked pretty much the same... but I had not been over there since probably 2016 or so. I'm used to boards coming and going but I guess I just assumed that some place like that would always exist, as an outlet for less-moderated conversation among gamers if nothing else. I stopped hanging around due to a couple of things. I got generally burned out on message boards after SSR. I got tired of trolling. I got tired of the persona I had developed. Not long after that, my politics started to change. I went to Facebook and Twitter and didn't do much with RPGs. But my daughter convinced me to get back into it a couple years ago and now I'm playing again and having fun. A post from Lisa N on Facebook about this Ernie Gygax stuff led me back to see what all the fuss was about, and I noticed CM's link no longer worked. Well, we've got memories. Until we get too fucking old. CM is just an illusion.
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Post by mistwell on Nov 29, 2021 14:38:27 GMT
evileeyore's description rings true to me. I was one of the 100 remaining active posters for the most part before the shut down and revamp and I just have not been able to find my way back here since it seems so dead and so untended. Like a place which used to be a garden but is now a lot of weeds and broken fences. I do still post at message boards though. TheRPGSite (despite their annoying political bent which makes me a token liberal if you can believe it), ENWorld, a sports message board or two. I gotta say I miss the old (active) CM and Facebook does not fill that void very well.
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Post by evileeyore on Nov 30, 2021 17:47:20 GMT
I gotta say I miss the old (active) CM and Facebook does not fill that void very well. Twitter and Facebook take up my 'trolling' needs (I don't really troll, but I do like to make sincere posts that are close to being "over-the-line" and hit those buttons in other people, and I'm occasionally not very polite at all). But yeah, I don't have a message I really do much in anymore, a few niche interest boards (webcomics to banter with other specific webcomic fans - but even that is losing ground to the Discus nonsense, most webcomics use that instead of running a message board these days). The younger crowd seems much less interested in long running, deeply interconnected, lasting conversations, and they are the ones driving the bus now.
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Post by kirinke on Dec 1, 2021 23:34:06 GMT
Well, I had a good Thanksgiving vacation. We went to SC to spread some of my mother's ashes at her favorite beach (Folly Beach) and spent a week there, visiting some of the relatives on my mom's side. We did some fun stuff, saw the Legends Christmas show (Which were Reba, Aretha, Elvis and the Blue's Brothers impersonators) and went to the Aquarium there. For Christmas dinner, we had home-cooked steak, mashed potatoes, gravy and fresh green beans.
It was a nice, if at times bittersweet vacation. I do recommend the Legends show if you can swing it. It's fun.
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