Any other decent boards to discuss crawl?

[dowan]

For various reasons, I'd love to know if there's somewhere else to discuss crawl. One big reason is that it would be nice to be able to discuss the game without the people most invested in the current state of the game also policing the conversations, while taking part in them(Hopefully saying the devs are invested in crawl's current state isn't banworthy). Does anyone know of any other forums where crawl has some decent representation?

[byrel]

/r/dcss is somewhat active, but mostly newbies.

[dowan]

Yeah, that's the main problem. In the other couple of places I see crawl discussed, it's pretty uninformed and outdated discussion, and it's generally just one topic in an "other games" section.

[Arrhythmia]

lol that you think this board is decent

[Arrhythmia]

serious post come hang out in tileschat there's basically zero moderation

[byrel]

I'll be honest, Arrythmia has a point about the tavern. I enjoy hanging out here, don't get me wrong, but there's a lot of toxic behaviors and hostility here which make it less-than-productive most of the time. I mean, chei turns into a circus every time he's mentioned. There's also a general lack of respect for differing opinoins. Almost everyone here is quite sincere, but we come from a dozen countries, backgrounds and cultures (and even 2 races if we count the sexy-elf minmay) which gives us radically different perspectives. Unfortunately, a lot of people have difficulty being social in highly multi-cultural environments. And a lot of people who are good at games tend to have that problem.

[n1000]

yeah there are tons but no way I'm telling any of you lol

[daggaz]

You could come over to my house and talk crawl, and play with the model train set like if you wanna stomp around and pretend you are godzilla and stuff, just dont hurt the trains they are my sons. And we can mess around and stuff but nothing serious im not gay. Also I have a ton of imitation crab in the freezer, its perfectly good we just have too much so you can take some home if you like.

[dowan]

Eh, thanks for the invite Daggaz, but I have a freezer full of corned beef at the moment... it was on sale...

[Zooty]

I just got a water board. It's designed for people who don't want to discuss though.

[dowan]

I think those were ruled indecent anyway. But, after some thought the answer became obvious: We should be discussing this game solely on Gamefaqs, because of what a great site it is.

[wheals]

I think those were ruled indecent anyway. But, after some thought the answer became obvious: We should be discussing this game solely on 4chan, because of what a great site it is.

FTFY

[dpeg]

There is always SomethingAwful. Warning: this forum is not free from dev infestation either! Even dpeg can post there!!

It has gotten much better over the years, though. SAists tend to dislike the Tavern, too, so that should help.

[dowan]

It's not a matter of devs being able to post there, it'd be stupid to discuss crawl and lock the devs out of the conversation. It's a matter of devs not being able to censor people who say things they don't like, because it's a very clear and obvious conflict of interests.

I'd love a place with mostly the same social sensibilities as the tavern, but with less rabid moderation for disagreeing with the devs. Also, it'd be nice to see the devs get slapped by mods when they insult people, instead of the person responding to the insult being punished.

You don't find many places as... socially pleasant as the tavern on the internet. I think dev-mod actions have made this place a lot less friendly in the last year or so, but still, it's generally a nice place. But since we can't get you, lasty, and gfunk to stop spamming topics they don't like until they decide to lock them or start banning people, there's not much point in trying to have a serious discussion here. Your shameless celebration of someone you don't like being banned is also pretty ugly... And your insults aren't as veiled as you seem to think they are, and neither are Lasty's toward Berder.

Oh well, as this thread points out, regardless of it's shortcomings, the tavern is still the best place to talk about crawl in a semi-intelligent way. And it offers some very interesting insights into social dynamics.

[archaeo]

FWIW, I second Arrhy's recommendation, come to CSZO tileschat and hang out. Historically speaking, getting banned from tileschat requires being a serious asshole, though god willing gamma will one day finally implement features like /ignore and /mute.

It's a matter of devs not being able to censor people who say things they don't like, because it's a very clear and obvious conflict of interests.

I'd love a place with mostly the same social sensibilities as the tavern, but with less rabid moderation for disagreeing with the devs. Also, it'd be nice to see the devs get slapped by mods when they insult people, instead of the person responding to the insult being punished.

I've literally been called a "kiss ass" with respect to the devs, so I guess take what I say with a grain of salt, but I don't think this characterizes what's going on at all. It's totally possible to disagree with the devs, even vociferously, without getting banned. Several of the game's best players, including duvessa, crate, tabstorm, and mikee, have expressed pretty forceful disagreement with Crawl's direction over the years, and here they are, continuing to argue with devs unbanned and uncowed.

It turns out all you have to do is avoid needlessly personalizing things! Talk about the arguments and the ideas, not the people. It's really, really, really easy.

But since we can't get you, lasty, and gfunk to stop spamming topics they don't like until they decide to lock them or start banning people, there's not much point in trying to have a serious discussion here. Your shameless celebration of someone you don't like being banned is also pretty ugly... And your insults aren't as veiled as you seem to think they are, and neither are Lasty's toward Berder.

Come for the Crawl discussion, stay for the pointless Internet drama mongering, I guess! Given their reputation, it's incredible gfunk and Lasty have any time for developing Crawl when they're so busy being the Tavern Gestapo.

[daggaz]

Also keep it PC american-style.. You make one off-hand historical joke about genocide and BAM! Banhammer. Even my room mate laughed at it and he's from that country.

[byrel]

I actually 100% agree. As pretty much everyone here knows, I disagree with some things the devs have said. To the point that dpeg was annoyed at me in that thread for complaining about his tone. And I've never gotten a warning for it. All you've got to do is respect them. Not for being right, but for being reasonable people to have a discussion with. And really, if they aren't that, why bother discussing with them in the first place?

The moderation standards here are loose. Really. We don't have profanity censorship. We do have 'hate' word censorship, and insult censorship, and generally being aggressively hostile censorship. There's almost no moderation outside GDD for low-content posts, and what there is is mostly just moving stuff to the right forum. Your average subreddit has higher standards than the tavern in most areas. The exception is really the mysogony, etc. group-based moderation which is stronger than most. And that's a little overboard IMHO, but it's not even what people are complaining about.

If the worst I have to worry about from the mods is making me call people turnips instead of pussies, I'm happy.

In the case of Sandman, he was out of line. He said his behavior was 'bad'. I called him out on it and discussed it with him (I didn't report him, because he was willing to talk about it and admit he was wrong; I'd have left that as hopefully a learning experience.) What he did was make the conversation personal by speculating about people's ulterior motives for doing things. And he didn't just suggest possible motives, he attributed them to the devs. That's inherently offensive. Avoid that sort of toxic behavior, and you can feel free to disagree as much as you want.

I do not think my ideas are in any way censored here. I think the notion of hiding numbers from users because mechanics are complicated is silly. I think gammafunk tends to be rude. I think dpeg's sense of humour can be a bit toxic. I think Lasty has an irrational grudge against dowan. Are there any more devs I need to disagree with to get banned?

[duvessa]

I've literally been called a "kiss ass" with respect to the devs, so I guess take what I say with a grain of salt, but I don't think this characterizes what's going on at all. It's totally possible to disagree with the devs, even vociferously, without getting banned. Several of the game's best players, including duvessa, crate, tabstorm, and mikee, have expressed pretty forceful disagreement with Crawl's direction over the years, and here they are, continuing to argue with devs unbanned and uncowed.

Well, I can't speak for crate, tabstorm, and mikee, but at least one dev has directly asked for me to be banned. So please don't try to make people think I agree with you.

[archaeo]

I'm not sure how you could make that sentence into a statement that says, "Obviously duvessa agrees with me, because I'm using his name," but whatever, dude.

[duvessa]

you said uncowed but a dev totally tried to cow me. that is why i take issue with your statement

[Siegurt]

you said uncowed but a dev totally tried to cow me. that is why i take issue with your statement

Then it sounds like that statement was bull.
*badumpbump*

[tabstorm]

I think the development direction is mostly good though...

Well, sometimes I think it dosen't go far enough with respect to removals (Remove food), and I don't like some new annoying monster "features" (Why would you re-add wellsprings to the game?). But it's mostly fine. At least item destruction was removed and I can get my weapon blessed at 6* via the ability menu.

[Baldu3]

The places to chat crawl with experienced players have pretty much been mentioned, tavern, somethingawful (not same atmosphere or as organized as here, check on a free day or google archive before paying for subscription there to make sure you like it), webtiles chat (might wanna check the host has chat logs disabled before posting, also it's hard to deal with jerks and spammers if/when they happen).

There's also the main IRC if it's a format you don't mind. As far as I know for english language experienced crawl chat that's pretty much your options. If you speak other languages check the main page for other country webtiles and ask in those webtile chats, there's a lots of veeeeryyyyyy good crawl players that don't speak (much) english.

ps: in case you're wondering, webtiles CSZO = Crawl.S-Z.Org