To Forum Or Not To Forum

[Onix]

I don't have any way of effecting this site or it's mission. I don't have a direct point of contact to OGB. So I'll put down a thought here and then let it go.

The mission of 1KM1KT is and has been free RPGs. I don't know what the downloads from the site have been lately but I imagine most of the new free RPGs (or PWYW) have migrated to DriveThru RPG. So maybe the purpose of this site and it's forum have run it's course.

Only if we were going to adapt to the current landscape, this site could find an adjacent purpose again. Not what we've done, but what we could do.

Even when the forums here were busy, we were less a troupe of monkeys and more a herd of cats. We all wanted something that the rest of us weren't really interested in being. We all wanted an audience and all we had were people that also were looking to grab that audience.

What we had, and didn't realize it, was a potential support group. I don't think any of us were sophisticated enough to fully articulate that at the time. I know Rob was very supportive and I tried to follow his lead. What we weren't, was systematic. No one knew what to ask for or how to provide support when asked. There was no I'll intention here, just a lack of understanding of what was available.

Maybe this site would never reach a critical mass again where this would work but let me describe one path forward. Instead of strictly focusing on free RPGs, focus on networking designers. Don't look at the games the designers are discussing per se. Look at the designer themselves and what skills they need to bring their typewriter mashing effort to fruition.

How do you do that? I've been working on a framework that I'll call the Cassandra model that I think a lot of us were falling into. When you look at another person's work through this rubric it allows you to explain what's going wrong with another person's game that they can't see. It also works for writing fiction too, which is another point of possible expansion.

If any of that sounds interesting, I can elaborate, but I'll leave it there for now.