Hey Thomas,

This is a good idea, definitely. I do think we need to be careful of replicating the actual "hotness" (under the collar) of twitter discourse - theory discussions are great until someone makes a declarative statement, like "dice are good/bad" or "playtesting is necessary if you're a real designer" or "systems matter/don't matter" and so on, and people start feeling like others are invalidating their personal design practice or playstyle, but that should be pretty easily avoided by simply remembering to frame things in terms of personal preference as opposed to absolute truth. So falling into the twitter anger trap is probably not going to be as much of an issue with the extra space and time a forum affords, as well as the code of conduct. Hopefully just something keep mindful of, just in case.

When it comes to more topical/news stuff, specifically in relation to bad actors in the industry, I don't want to stifle discussion of that sort of thing so long as it is in keeping with said code of conduct, but would likely leave that up to individual members to start up their threads on. I am personally not one to espouse the "positivity at all costs" mindset, and sometimes the unpleasant things are best exposed to the light, but I'd definitely want to strive to cultivate less of a "hell-site" vibe on here.

That said, what would you say is the hot design/play topic this week (or last, since I agree that keeping too current is not necessary)? I've been a bit out of the loop in terms of the disk horse lately (I am aware of the most recent kickstarter fracas, of course, but that's more in the breaking news/bad actor category).

Hmm, might also be a good idea to have a thread for people to promote their most recent ZineQuest projects? 

A great idea. Would definitely require a group of actively involved/engaged members, but there is definitely space for that here. If you already know some folks who'd be interested, please feel free to get this going and let me know if I can help in any specific way. I would be happy to make each week's RPG Book Club thread sticky for that week, though I guess you'd probably want to gauged interest and get some "club members" on board first.

I'd definitely be into participating in something like this myself, at least on occasion (time and money permitting). 

This sounds great! Here is an idea: what about we choose free or PWYW games in here? I think it would have several advantages:

• People participating wouldn't have to spend money to participate.
• We would bring attention to creators that are probably struggling to be noticed at all, and maybe we could leave some comments on the page (those are gold for indie creators).
• They would tend to be much, much shorter than your typical published RPG, so it would be a lot easier to participate and we could have shorter, more frequent discussions.

I'm biased because I'm such a creator, but I'd be happy to ban my own creations from the book club 😄