Enttropy

Even then, “being the change you want to see” is futile if the platform itself has tons of issues and doesn’t provide incentives for people of all kinds to join and use over other platforms.

It seems like only hardcore Redditors and hip techies pass the filter to discover the Fediverse and thrive on it, which makes certain communities outright impossible to grow. Case and point; the biggest solo RPG mag on the Fediverse has been running for over a year, and 98% of the ~40 posts have been made by a single dude, most of which have zero interactions. Why? Because the Fediverse’s demographic has no interest on the topic.

And yeah, gaming stuff always make the keyboard wizards rush out of their towers. 🧙‍♂️

I don’t miss it because I keep using it. The communities I follow there are niche and they are completely dead on the Fediverse. I keep opening Kbin every other day just to find that my “new” feed still shows posts from 2 weeks ago without even scrolling.

Also, most of what I dislike from Reddit is still here.

Tons of people on the Fediverse craft their responses to fish upvotes, and circlejerking/echo-chambers are here too. Just last week I got a fresh breeze of downvotes and angry commenters because I expressed that I dislike Steam, on the PCgaming magazine, which is the same thing that would’ve happened on r/gaming, r/pcmasterrace or another similar toxic cesspool on Reddit.

OHH!!! EMOJIS! The 200K Karma Redditor inside you is surely raging!

I commented on why I think this announcement is just another corn in the steamy pile of doo-doo… dookie… manure, if you will, that Steam is for me.

I’m not expecting Steam to change for me or people in the same scenario as mine. Steam simply doesn’t fit my needs any more and I won’t support them. But then again, crucify me for my sins, daddy. I might go back to purchasing games on Steam if you do it well enough. 🍆💦

As I’ve said, I’m a bad boy doing bad-boy activities, i.e.: using old PCs with the OS they came from. 🩸🗡️😎🔥

Yeah…really. The thing is that, if you like to run older games on era-accurate hardware, Steam was already a pain in the ass to run on older machines. Probably 70% of these games, I purchased on Steam, and a lot of them are old titles.

Maybe this is ludicrous to you, but le good ole Prototype runs like a nasty turd on my main W11 machine that I use for design and 4K video editing. I’m not new to modding, troubleshooting, and I’ve even dabbled in game development, but none of the fixes online seem to help me run the game at more than 10 FPS, with dips to the 3FPS realm.

But guess what? Prototype runs like a dream on my restored Windows XP PC with a Core Quad and GTX260. Same as with Far Cry 2, S.T.A.L.K.E.R., Jade Empire, and so many others. And don’t even get me started on games from the 90s. Even if they run OK on W11 and I get past all the text rendering issues, I still want the experience of running them on W98, with a CRT monitor, metal ball mice and bone white mechanical keyboards. I paid for them, but Valve wants to dictate how I should run 'em.

If you can’t install Steam on older hardware, you can’t install your Steam games that you previously could. 🥸

This is one of the many reasons as to why I’ve avoided buying anything on Steam for the past 5 years. Steam/Valve are a steaming pile of doodoo.

Oh and tips to keep them engaged, well you need to read the room and identify which parts of the game they enjoy the most and the least, and the reason behind that.

Give them what they want and make all of them participate. With adults it also happens, but it’s way more prominent with kids: some will talk much more than the rest, and some will be ashamed or have shyness to let themselves go. You need to kindly guide the shy ones into the spotlight and reward them for participating.

Also, when you narrate the places and events, ask them to complete your idea. For example: “As the group follow the trails, a vendor interjects them and tries to sell them micro-hamburgers, but Player #4 doesn’t loose focus and realizes that just around the corner, drenched in the glow of the neon lights from the skyscrapers, is the vehicle that Mr. Jenkins gifted to the group… What does this vehicle looks like, Player #4?” Do this every now and then for places, NPC descriptions, the smells and sounds, etc. Make them have as much agency as possible in the world building, instead of just having them react to your dice checks.

Hell yeah! Your daughter is a crunchy-gamer in the making! I can relate to her in the sense of her wanting to play things with a solid structure that she can study and master, to keep her engaged. I think that she will enjoy Savage Worlds.

If 5e is rules-heavy, then SWADE is a rules-medium system. The slowest part is making a character because the system is universal and there are a ton of options, but as a DM, you can curate the options for your players. Also, there are Savage Settings and one of them is “East Texas University.” Teens will be able to relate to the school setting but “rad-idfied”. They get to role play as university students who then solve mysteries, join fraternities, hunt monsters, drive and modify badass combat cars, etc.

Also, maybe it’s time to introduce the kids to Cyberpunk RED. It’s not hard to learn or teach and the game itself is fairly lightweight.

Otherwise, for the smaller, Index Card RPG or EZD6 can work. Both are super streamlined and they retain that D&D feeling. Also, games using the LUMEN system can give the kids a nice dopamine rush. The creator basically states that his system is meant to make players feel like Overwatch or Diablo characters. In contrast with 5e, in which players often hoard spells and powers for the “right event”, LUMEN makes everyone use their spells and special skills all the time in fast paced combat that resolves super quick. Check out ”Nova" and “Light”.

And personally I don’t like them, but you can also show them the FATE and Ironsworn/Starforged systems to broaden their horizons and make them experience a different perspective which they might love.

The notifications are flooding you because you turned them on or were on by default. If you go to your Kbin’s settings at the bottom of the page there are two checkboxes for subscribed magazines’ notifications. Just turn those off.

Also, make sure you set your homepage to your subscribed magazines and you’ll be good to go.

And about the other stuff, it’s not just about having a desire to be taken care of without having to lift a finger. I don’t care about having to learn how all of this fediverse stuff works because it’s fun for me, but that isn’t the case for the overwhelming majority of internet users that genuinely have zero problems with the platforms they use, and barely use. For example, my 70 year old parents barely know how to use YouTube and that’s the place they use to consume and discuss the topics they care about. I tried to teach them about Reddit and other forums, but it’s simply unnecessary when the reliable and easier thing already exists.

Same thing when you expect someone who uses their computer because of 2 or 3 applications, to ditch MacOS and all their neatly integrated hardware, to then spend hours and months on end to craft themselves an OS with Linux in which none of their specialized hardware works anymore.

Also, a ton of teenager to middle aged people will think the same about the Fediverse, when Reddit, Twitter, Instagram, Tumblr and other websites already provide them the platforms they need to express themselves and are “too casual” on those, to genuinely not have an issue with the platform itself. All of those users have valuable inputs and content to offer to the platform, and we’re not going to have them here, just because of how complex this platform is not only on paper, but in infrastructure ie: search engines are going to have a terrible time indexing the Fediverse, the content is mirrored in some instances but not EVERY piece of content is, and not amongst all instances, etc.

If cats grew thumbs, we would be fucked, lemme tell ya.

Nope. This website has a very specific demographic and a ton of more “casual”, non-tech/internet topics see zero activity in here, for the simple reason that there’s virtually no interest or demand for them amongst the Fediverse users.

Deleting my Reddit account made me look for already stablished forums on certain topics tho.

Also, what some people here don’t understand (@OpenStars did), is that the Fediverse is not this huge global revolution that they assume it is. At this point, the Fediverse caters to a VERY specific demographic, and trying to make a “Mezcal” or “Trip Hop” community on the Fediverse is just like trying to create a Board Game Design community on Subaru’s Post-sales forum.

Case and point: soloRPG on the Fediverse has existed for over a year, and amongst all the Fediverse instances, the interest and demand for this community is so small, that 99% of its contents have been posted by a single dude.

And regarding shitposting and cringe circlejerking, I don’t know about other instances, but since the latest update, the default landing page of Kbin is whatever you set as “homepage” in your profile’s settings. Also, blocking magazines and users is pretty easy and does wonders to stay away from shit you don’t want to see.

Thanks! Yeah, I’ve already blocked a bunch of topics and users, and I’m still playing whack-a-mole with loose ends on my start page.

And you’re completely right. The Fediverse is still very much a niche thing and, by nature, not the best place to expect living communities for certain topics when it’s already hard to find them in much more popular, casual, and easy to find websites.

Yeah, that’s exemplary and very inspirational, but we’re on completely different pages. I never complained, nor I’m expecting any change or have content being fed to me.

The reality is that the demographic of this site (a tiny niche of Reddit, which on itself is already a niche) + the terrible time search engines are having, and will have to index the Fediverse, just makes communities for non tech-savvy / internet culture people, virtually impossible to grow.

Like, good luck forming a Fediverse community about Paella, Bubble Tea, Mezcal, or your neighbourhood, in which John and Jane Doe who barely ever use the internet, join. Communities of a ton of topics are already incredibly small in first-place search result sites such as Twitter or Reddit, and are going to be impossible to have on the Fediverse, until the day you can ask the corner shop grandma about the Fediverse magazines she’s subscribed to, and you get an answer other than “What the hell are you talking about?”

“Such good content”? I see zero content for what I like.

I never saw a single shitpost on the subs I followed, and their equivalents on the Fediverse are either completely empty, or having it’s own moderator post every single thread on the magazine with zero engagement from the 20 or so subscribers.

I don’t think that’s going to be the case.

The fediverse instances are just lacking a few things here and there to be Twitter/Reddit clones.

Most open source software sans few exceptions like Blender are like 15 years behind the curve in terms of features, workflows, and design.

Edgy

I adored the original XBOX but when 360 and PS3 dropped, one was a literal toy with everything stripped down and sold as proprietary extras, and the other was an amazingly powerful and open entertainment system with state of the art tech from out of the box.

Then yeah, the exclusives sealed the deal for me.