MDGA

Also I forgot to say, but silliness isn't the factor of the "decline" or whatever. Everyone in all ages of Adohands history had silly gag characters and it wasn't all doom and gloom serious roleplay. It's more of the fact that silly people are not respecting the other individuals they roleplay with. Like if I introduce a guy named Super Evil John that was some cartoon villain that only steals people's left socks, I would not just start goading serious characters to fight him and then give him +1000 to hit with 300d6 damage. A lot of people here are afraid to make weaker characters or have genuine stakes that would cause characters to die, which is another issue with the powergaming of "well I'm using homebrew and that homebrew allows me to instantly kill you or turn you into cheese". That's fine and fun in scenarios that are more similar to Forum Games than an actual tavern.

I think this is a really good analysis personally and also I just love random yapping like this. I’d love to hear what you suggest doing, but I assume we can probably figure that out by looking at your post in depth. I do also know that many people here are teenagers, or have hard restrictions. Some people are just underage, so they should not be here, but then there are others where ddb is their only social media. Generally I’m not a huge fan of social media despite being addicted to it (there’s a really cool book that explains the ties between social media and mental health problems called the Anxious Generation, and as someone with some of these problems, I think they’re definitely linked, although a small warning if anyone wants to read it it has a small section that attributes being trans to social media) but back to the point. Some people have really overbearing parents that won’t let them use discord and other social media and just don’t know that ddb has a social media section and that section can be unsafe sometimes. So I think that’s why people have turned Adohands into chat threads. 

As, actually one of the people that prefers the roleplay aspect and not the combat aspect, I do agree that this is a DnD space and it should be focused on DnD. And I think chat threads could also cause some huge problems that I won’t go into because I’m currently in a phase of being addicted to ddb and I don’t want to get banned. 

No more yap for me because I can’t push out anything more, but I think there are some really strong points, and I like in your post. Ty for the input.

Quote from 50thAltOfBananer >>

I think this is a really good analysis personally and also I just love random yapping like this. I’d love to hear what you suggest doing, but I assume we can probably figure that out by looking at your post in depth. I do also know that many people here are teenagers, or have hard restrictions. Some people are just underage, so they should not be here, but then there are others where ddb is their only social media. Generally I’m not a huge fan of social media despite being addicted to it (there’s a really cool book that explains the ties between social media and mental health problems called the Anxious Generation, and as someone with some of these problems, I think they’re definitely linked, although a small warning if anyone wants to read it it has a small section that attributes being trans to social media) but back to the point. Some people have really overbearing parents that won’t let them use discord and other social media and just don’t know that ddb has a social media section and that section can be unsafe sometimes. So I think that’s why people have turned Adohands into chat threads. 

As, actually one of the people that prefers the roleplay aspect and not the combat aspect, I do agree that this is a DnD space and it should be focused on DnD. And I think chat threads could also cause some huge problems that I won’t go into because I’m currently in a phase of being addicted to ddb and I don’t want to get banned. 

No more yap for me because I can’t push out anything more, but I think there are some really strong points, and I like in your post. Ty for the input.

 I just think that dedicated chat threads should be something like how LCW is used, or just chatting OOC while interacting on the main thread. As someone who had very strict parents when I was younger and on this website, as well as some of my other friends, we never made actual chatting threads and posted our ideas on the main tavern. Also sometimes we made PMs for it instead. I think that if you really want to go back to the old tavern kind of days, everyone needs to stop spreading themselves thin on 17 different threads they're switching between to talk on. Plus, chat threads encourage bad behaviors like talking about other people, revealing personal information, and if you're wanting to talk about your homebrew or worldbuilding, back in my day (the ancient dinosaur times) we just went to the actual dedicated worldbuilding and homebrew section in the DNDBeyond forums.

The main appeal of Adohands was a "main tavern" because when new people appear, they have nowhere to go and no past posts to look at for inspiration to see how things work. Also, the idea of a cohesive story everyone can participate in was the founding principle of the taverns and is what inspired people to join. It would take a complete overhaul of everyone's behavior simultaneously to rework Adohands which I don't think is entirely feasible. You would need to completely abandon all other threads and make one "main" tavern or thread, while also trying to ease out the culture of stupidly strong characters and aversion to anything other than playground roleplay (adding skill checks, actual dnd creatures, making it a game rather than freeform imagination toys). And you'd have to have actual experienced people who can take stances other than "why don't we all just calm down" or "let's not start any conflict" watching over that. PJ is a good example of someone that isn't afraid to disagree with someone and stays logical without being goaded into an actual argument. Otherwise, you run into the walking on eggshells issue of every problem gets swept under the rug instead of being addressed.

Quote from cynophobia_ >>

Quote from 50thAltOfBananer >>

I think this is a really good analysis personally and also I just love random yapping like this. I’d love to hear what you suggest doing, but I assume we can probably figure that out by looking at your post in depth. I do also know that many people here are teenagers, or have hard restrictions. Some people are just underage, so they should not be here, but then there are others where ddb is their only social media. Generally I’m not a huge fan of social media despite being addicted to it (there’s a really cool book that explains the ties between social media and mental health problems called the Anxious Generation, and as someone with some of these problems, I think they’re definitely linked, although a small warning if anyone wants to read it it has a small section that attributes being trans to social media) but back to the point. Some people have really overbearing parents that won’t let them use discord and other social media and just don’t know that ddb has a social media section and that section can be unsafe sometimes. So I think that’s why people have turned Adohands into chat threads. 

As, actually one of the people that prefers the roleplay aspect and not the combat aspect, I do agree that this is a DnD space and it should be focused on DnD. And I think chat threads could also cause some huge problems that I won’t go into because I’m currently in a phase of being addicted to ddb and I don’t want to get banned. 

No more yap for me because I can’t push out anything more, but I think there are some really strong points, and I like in your post. Ty for the input.

 I just think that dedicated chat threads should be something like how LCW is used, or just chatting OOC while interacting on the main thread. As someone who had very strict parents when I was younger and on this website, as well as some of my other friends, we never made actual chatting threads and posted our ideas on the main tavern. Also sometimes we made PMs for it instead. I think that if you really want to go back to the old tavern kind of days, everyone needs to stop spreading themselves thin on 17 different threads they're switching between to talk on. Plus, chat threads encourage bad behaviors like talking about other people, revealing personal information, and if you're wanting to talk about your homebrew or worldbuilding, back in my day (the ancient dinosaur times) we just went to the actual dedicated worldbuilding and homebrew section in the DNDBeyond forums.

The main appeal of Adohands was a "main tavern" because when new people appear, they have nowhere to go and no past posts to look at for inspiration to see how things work. Also, the idea of a cohesive story everyone can participate in was the founding principle of the taverns and is what inspired people to join. It would take a complete overhaul of everyone's behavior simultaneously to rework Adohands which I don't think is entirely feasible. You would need to completely abandon all other threads and make one "main" tavern or thread, while also trying to ease out the culture of stupidly strong characters and aversion to anything other than playground roleplay (adding skill checks, actual dnd creatures, making it a game rather than freeform imagination toys). And you'd have to have actual experienced people who can take stances other than "why don't we all just calm down" or "let's not start any conflict" watching over that. PJ is a good example of someone that isn't afraid to disagree with someone and stays logical without being goaded into an actual argument. Otherwise, you run into the walking on eggshells issue of every problem gets swept under the rug instead of being addressed.

 Thumbs up