A Long Held Pause

It's about a month since G-Plus shutdown and, at least from my perspective, the online tabletop RPG community still hasn't recovered.

Most of the OSR has emigrated to MeWe, which sadly has bolstered the worst elements in that community, and disinclined more moderate voices from participating. At the same time, The OSR blogosphere took a blow with the sudden passing of James A. Smith Jr., whose OSR News on his Dreams of Mythic Fantasy blog had been a valiant service keeping fans informed.

Elsewhere, small gatherings have taken to Pluspora, dice.camp, tabletop.social, lasanga.social and various other instances on Mastodon and Diaspora. In conglomeration I can find most of the people I followed on Plus by searching through those places, but the fracturing doesn't permit the widely interlinked conversations of old, and unsurprisingly that means people are steadily defaulting to mere blog announcements and vanity posts.

Speaking of blogs, I've finally set up an RSS reader (Feedbro) to keep abreast, but frustratingly it has no mobile counterpart, so catching up on blogs needs to be a deliberate choice of desktop time. I'm definitely looking for a more integrated reader, but until then I've fallen quite behind. Even if I get the perfect reader up and running, blogs still have the same dispersion problem of the multiple independent networks (moreso really).

It's all had a chilling effect on my motivation to participate online, this blog included. Posting in any one place reaches a few dozen eyes at most, trying to get over that by posting the same thing multiple places is a chore and frankly feels like it comes off as obnoxious. And though it may be a vain thing to admit, I crave the satisfaction of knowing what I put time into writing is read by someone.

None of the above is meant to say the situation is hopeless. This community has always been damn good at finding the tools it needs to build itself up, and eventually we'll find what we need to get pat this. But I really hope it happens soon.