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Saxon said:
The manual is great! It saves me a ton of time and most of the answers I need are there. I think it was a good move to publish it. One thing strikes me though. The forums tend to be quieter. I think that most of us suspect that the answers to the questions are usually in the manual, so we hesitate before posting. The discussions tend to be short “The manual says…” and there is a lot less mystery. It reminds me of the original Dungeon Masters Guide, which was fun to read, but an organizational disaster, while the new edtion rules, which are very organized, don’t have as much spark. Perhaps I am just getting older and nostalgic for the “good old days” but I am curious if others have felt the forums have a different feel to them now
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Everything has its pros and cons. Even things you think are great. Actually you are seeing something that there are psychiatry papers on. Some of the best were back in the days of MUDding (early multiplayer online gaming).
Some of my favorites were about classifieing different player types and laying out different ways to get more of the types you want to visit your game. One that I remember was the effect of detailed help files. The "social" player liked to help newbies, form adventuring groups, expain how things worked. The problem was that they tended to create large help files that they made available to everyone, and then disappeared from the public channels because they didnt like how the player base changed. Detailed help files cut down their satisfaction and led to more of types such as the more solo "explorer" and more verbal challenges from the "player killer" type. To get more social players in the public channels it was recommended to leave large holes in the help files.
Fun reading but almost impossible to actually do since it involved basic human nature.