OH GOD THEY BROKE OUT OF THE WARSAW GHETTO ALERT THE PANZERS

It sounds like an acceptable term. I was fishing for a moment for something useful - I know (or at least hope) that the ex-QT3ers plus the people who aren't in either crowd won't mind me calling them "grognards". Even if they do I could blame Dan Lawrence, and all would be forgiven. At least for me. But I was not so sure how to term the LPers without sounding like I want to take sides.

The handy thing about the grognard panda-punching fuck whistles is that they don't really give a shit what you call them.

Unless its really creative then you'll probably get likes.

I am not an ex-QT3 member, but I am a hard, calloused shell of a man.

I have no place in this forum.

I am going to suicide.

Seriously, though - the notion that there are two discrete groups and never the twain shall meet is really silly. It's a continuum. Most of the denizens of this forum exist somewhere between those poles.

There are precious few instances of either "I refuse to play anything that doesn't have the mechanical depth of piloting a spacecraft cloaked behind an aesthetic that makes me feel masculine and virile." or "I refuse to play anything unless it's pink and frilly and gives me GOOD FEELS!!! ^_^" that actually exist, because dismissing things out of hand is stupid and most people realize that.

Exactly ! And if the problem is that one specific thing is of interest to a subset of users and creates a large volume of material, in the prcoess annoying all the others, then the issue is volume. There are ways to deal with that. Without insulting or ostracizing anyone. And by the way - I put the non-ex-QT3ers, non-LPers into the "grognard" category. You are welcome !

And except if you call them "LPers", I guess.

So uh. Let me see if I'm understanding this correctly. This is just for clarification.

You wanna split off the dating sims from the other non-dating sim LPs? Or is it that you want to make a separate place for the discussion of dating sims and all things related? Because one I understand, the other I don't.
I'm gonna be honest here. I frequent the LP subforum a lot and I've noticed that the common trend is Dating Sims. On the front page alone, there are 16 Dating Sims; and that's going by ones tagged as such or I just happen to know from reading. And by "dating sim", I mean "you pick out a character and then you spend your time trying to win their love and attention through painfully awkward decision making". I think it would be nice to be able to look at Dating Sims in one LP space and Non-Dating Sims in another. Mostly because i don't like peering at tags very much and sometimes the large amount of Dating Sim LPs make it a bother trying to find ones that aren't.

If you're talking about making a separate place for the discussion of things dating sims -- yeah, I'm going to stop using that wording -- "JAPANESE CULTURE THINGS", that'sssss a thing. As stated before, it's one of those things that alienates one group from the rest of the forum. The LP forum has already been the butt of jokes many a time; can you imagine how much worse it would be if there were a "Japanophile" forum/sub-forum? That's already the butt of a LOT of jokes (SNL anyone?), it doesn't need to happen here. Yes, there's frequently some...over-posting in the DS LPs but I mean... TO AN EXTENT, I think it's okay. Once you start hitting 3+ pages of nothing but "derailing", though, it's a bit much.

In regards to the "rape fantasy" dating sim: If Lum is speaking about the game I am thinking of, then...well. It's tricky. The story of it is good (and it's not a dating sim, nor is it Japanese; it's a module), but there's just so much badness caked on top of the story that it becomes a train wreck.

If it's not the game I am thinking of, then it's a bad thing that more games popped into my mind.

rape fantasies and dating sims.
i hate that these two things go hand in hand so well eugh.

EDIT: It suddenly occurred to me which LP Lum is talking about. Yeaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh, that's not an LP I have any intent on returning to. None whatsoever. Ugh.

A sticky wicket.

On the one hand, it seems to me that the thread that triggered Lum's threat of disproportionate use of force is a well-intentioned effort by certain folks to move beyond the LP-ghetto and to interact with the wider forum on its own terms. I'm uncomfortable with the response to that being "that's nice, here's another ghetto. Feel free not to leave it."

On the other hand, some of the folks in question do not seem to be possessed of moderating instincts, and when discussion of dating games takes over the video/PC game subforum, things might get a tad testy.


Glad it's not my decision.

Yeah, make it. It doesn't stigmatize people; I don't read the MMO forum and I don't pretend to understand the weirdos that post in the "sports" forum, but that doesn't stop them from using the rest of the site if they want to.

It's not a ghetto, it's simply that when enough people want to discuss a thing, it deserves its own forum so that it doesn't make it hard to read the other forums. That's why we already have separate forums for Let's Plays, MMOs, and brettmcd posts.

I'm actually curious to what the LPers think about the rest of the forum. Do they know we exist? That we're assholes? That our games are weird and grognardy? They post so much in the neighbouring internet space and while it seems we have definite opinions about them, I have no idea what their opinions about us is.

Same here. However, isn't it mainly problematic because people think it is ? Sorry, at the moment I see 3 2 threads on the corresponding games, one of which actually is a comparison thread with a game mentioned in the gaming subforum before. I have zero interest in this kind of game, so I do not read them, which goes a long way towards not seeing this as an issue. Two possible problems - this kind of thread might swamp the place sometime in the indeterminate future. Solvable by creating subfora for different types of games. Second possibility - distasteful content. This can be regulated as always - report buttons and thread locks/stern PMs by moderators/bans when needed. Second problem solved, albeit by creating more work for Lum and Elyscape. Sorry for that.
Which leads me to a question: If I see this correctly, there are zero "LPers" in the Leper Colony. Are they just that well behaved ? If so, maybe we should take this into account and remember that many complaints are about single posts or threads. And focus on the people that made these posts/threads and not everyone in the LP subforum. You know, kind of the way this same problem is handled everywhere else ?

On a more opinionated note - seriously ? As soon as these threads appear people felt the need to waltz in there declaring "They have escaped ?" How old are you guys, five ? And you think the LPers are the problem ?

GTA4.

I like this idea. Gaming could have a seperate "Dating Sims" section as well if they do start taking over the general gaming section.

I agree with this as well. As has been said before in this thread, not everyone falls in one group or another. There's plenty of us old grognards who like reading Let's Plays, and there are plenty of LPers who make valuable contributions outside the LP Forum.

I know that I lurk more then I post, but personally I like the LPers that have ventured out of the LP forum. It's nice to have more female posters, and it's nice to get a younger perspective on things. I think we have a unique mix of people here, and that's a good thing and something that benifits the forum as a whole.

I would say, if there suddenly becomes a need for a dating sim discussion forum, then make one when it needs to happen. I don't think one or two threads is going to get cooties over the rest of the forum.

I have no problem with people from wherever, posting wherever, as long as their posts contain content, and if they don't, there's an ignore button for good reason.

That's just Adree being Adree. He hates everyone pretty much equally.

I say we leave the forum categorization, etc, to the professionals. Isn't MrsWidget a librarian?

Sure, I'd love a place to discuss things like the end of the Tokugawa shogunate and the Meiji Restoration, sounds great.

(I have no idea what's happening. I'm sure I have an opinion, I just don't know what it is yet.)

You mean like the title of the thread? The one started by Lum? The guy who runs the whole forum?

Yeah. The gall of these people.

I can take Lums title as humor. He also asked a serious question that needs to be addressed. But I just looked at a few threads, as stated above, as well as old debates on this topic. And it seems that every time this topic arose someone felt the need to barge in with the whole content being "They escaped". Which is mildly funny once or perhaps twice, but then becomes just annoying and slightly sad. Similar to all those friendly people who feel the need to barge into any thread brett posts in to vent their feelings about him, not matter the topic. In both cases they themselves are a lot worse than whatever their problem is. Hope you understand the point now. Or do you need more explanation ?

Edit: I might be wrong, it also seems that Lum satirizes the hyperbole of all the "they broke out" posts. But that might only be me.

I assumed that there was enough demand that putting them in the general games subforum wouldn't work, but I could be wrong. As I see it, there are three possible ways to facilitate niche discussions within the forum:

1. Make one catchall thread for all of the discussion. This is how we currently discuss beer, anime, and political cartoons. It works when there is a relatively small number of people who want to discuss a wide range of things within a larger category.

2. Make threads for each thing as necessary. This is how for example RPGs are discussed in the games forum; people just make a thread for a game they're interested in and it works out fine because there aren't that many. This works when there are a lot of people who want to discuss a few things.

3. Make a subforum, which is the only orderly way to handle it when a lot of people want to discuss a lot of things.

I think from the fact that we're having this discussion at all that the conditions exist to make option three the viable one, but I honestly have no idea.

Another possible advantage to making a new subforum: it could be explicitly NSFW as the LP subforum is, which is probably useful given that it would be presumably used to discuss many of the same games (and types of games) that necessitated making the LP subforum NSFW in the first place. Having some screenshots from one of those date(rap)ing sims lying around could spell disaster for someone idly browsing the games forum at the wrong time.

Given the amount of ongoing dating game LPs and taking the "if you build it, they will come" mentality a separate sub-forum for discussing all things Japanese may be useful. On the other hand, it seems people are generally satisfied atm with just having spontaneous derails/small talk in the individual LP threads, so idk if many of them will actually come to such sub-forum instead, if one's made.

One way to find out, i guess.

Yea, but he isn't saying that in earnest so much as mocking non-LPers who whip out the term whenever someone from the LP forum makes a splash somewhere else on the board. My understanding is that he feels this way about the term and its usage:

Lum's post was in response to a flurry of posts by myself and others that started somewhere around here. Since this time the pedophilia stuff has been addressed in the LP forum, with specific new guidelines put in place and a new moderator put in charge to deal with that stuff (plus signatures have been disabled all together, which helps keep it out of the rest of the forum), and what we appear to be left with at this point are non-LP folks still coming to terms with LPers integrating and making use of the other sub-forums.

This thread has put the Vapors song in my head, and I will now go to Youtube to listen to it. I'm turning Japanese I think I'm turning Japanese I really think so...

Ok, fine, I'll finish my Rise of Flight diary RIGHT NOW:

I got shot down by a German and died. The End.

it's a complicated issue. Difficult to articulate, and as has been proven before, touchy. Just trying to stream-of-consciousness my attempt to make sense of it:


Calling people "LPers" is a whole hell of a misnomer. I'm an LPer, there's two with my name on it. Angie's an LPer (hell, *the* LPer) even though noone would call her that, nevermind that she's the person most responsible for the whole thing, and has done quite a few of them. so what do people mean by that? "Japanophile"? maybe, but there are plenty of those outside what people would consider that group: Matt Bowyer, Angie, Not One Of Us, etc. Hell, me. But I suspect most people outside the group just use it as a replacement for "weeaboo". So, eh, not useful.

also not helpful is the description of non-LPers as unfeeling bearded automatons. That wasn't the case on qt3 and it isn't the case here. stop that. Also, it made my cry. :(

But what's undeniable is that no matter whether the term is accurate or not, whether it's used pejoratively or not by others, it describes a particular sub-community in this forum. One that is way more insular, larger, and demographically different from the "norm" for a gaming forum than any other subcommunity in BF. A lot of the insularity though, is self inflicted. I don't know why, ask them. The few examples of people who came out of the LP forum and started posting elsewhere have been mostly success stories. Yes, the cultural differences tend to cause a bit of friction (say, the reactions to soli-chan's old posting style) and people will like or dislike each other like any normal human interaction, but a good metric for how well they've integrated is that not one of them has been banned, even temporarily AFAIK. People have gotten along, even helped each other in threads like the depression or weight loss one.

The main reason for the insularity that I can think of is just inertia. Just doing things the same way over and over. They came in for the pigeon thread, discussed it for 2000 posts, and then did the same for every other LP that followed. While I guess some of them probably *do* feel like the other forums are uninviting and hostile, I honestly don't see a reason for that. The only place people have been even slightly hostile to them is here in the Llama forum, where we discuss how the forum should be run.

So let's talk about that for a moment. The LP forum right at the beginning was created as a place to put amusing tales of trying to play games and describe them to other people. Here's the list of games in the first page of LPs if you sort by oldest date:

Code (text):

1. Crusader Kings x6
2. Fall from Heaven II x3
3. Solium Infernum x2
4. Blood Bowl x2
5. Master Of Orion 2 x2
6. MoteMote x2
7. Rig N Roll
8. Matches & Matrimony
9. Rise of Flight
10. Sims 3
11. Heian Love
12. COD:MW3
13. Elona
14. Shira Oka
15. Heavy Rain
16. Hearts Of Iron 2
17. Kaleidoscope 2
18. ADOM
19. Conquest of Elysium III
20. X-COM
21. LoTR:LCG
22. Dwarf Fortress
23. Gearhead
24. Hatoful Boyfriend
25. Shogun 2
26. Hakuoki
27. Pokémon Emerald
28. Twilight Imperium
29. Konkatsu for Marriage

That's 40 games, of which if I'm counting correctly 9 are dating sims, with the rest being predominantly strategy. Hell, even Call of Duty is there (do more of these jerri blank!!!)

This is not even close to the state of affairs now, no matter how many people come in to say the LP forum isn't all dating sims. Here's the list by NEWEST date:

Code (text):

1. POKEMON x8
2. Yu Gi Oh
3. Sonic
4. Cherry Tree High
5. Lone Survivor
6. Ristorante Amore
7. Conan Kill Everything
8. Monster Rancher 2
9. Heart No Kuni No Alice
10. My Sweet Bodyguard
11. TMGS Premium 3rd Story
12. Heartache 101
13. Diabolik Lovers
14. Jenna Moonlight
15. Princess Debut
16. Tokimeki Apocalypse!
17. Other Age
18. Frozen Essence
19. Castle Chase
20. Catz
21. Mitsumete Knight
22. The Legend Of Dragoon
23. The Witch's House
24. Ib
25. Spirited Heart
26. Kerbal Space Program
27. Toki no Kizuna
28. Heileen
29. Play X-note
30. Juniper's Knot
31. Black Wolves Saga
32. Summer Found Me
33. TOAW3

I'm unsure about some of these, but roughly HALF of the games there are Visual Novels or Dating sims. And EIGHT of the other games are Pokemon. If you sort by number of either views or replies, of the top 40, probably 7 or 8 aren't some brand of VN or DS, and those 7 include Bioware RPGs and The Sims.

Why did I go to the trouble of this exercise? So that the people in that forum realize that when people talk about separating these games, we aren't picking on the little guy, we're fencing the 800lb gorilla so that the other animals have a chance.

Now, going through these gave me another realisation: A lot of these threads aren't LPs anymore. They're catch-all threads about a game, its sequels, its community, whatever its community is thinking right now, etc. they're giant fish distorting a very small pond.

So my solution for the insulation is relatively unorthodox: you guys in the LP forum just need to follow the rules. LP forum is for LPs. In the Love Revo thread, gertrudetherobot is finally LPing again, but the entire page before that was: cat pics, discussion of the Walking Dead, pics of awesome Basking Sharks, and OMIGODWHATTHEFUCKGOBLINSHARKKILLITKILLITKILLIT.

We *have* threads for all those. post that stuff there, and hey presto, not a problem anymore. People are integrated, cats and dogs are living together, happy happy joy joy joy. Want to talk about a new Visual Novel you found? Make it in the general games forum, post screenies, a website link, let us know what it's about. Then if you want to LP it, do that in the LP forum. The benefit of that is that the game forum is a lot more populated and robust, so the japanese game discussion wouldn't necessarily overwhelm the other stuff. And if it does, THEN we can think about separating it, the same way we did for MMOs, traditional games, and multiplayer forum games. But the key part is you guys participating in the rest of the forum. If you do that, then I promise that the game separation won't feel like discrimination, the same way that I don't feel discriminated by having the Warhammer thread outside the general games forum.

I think I'm being taken more seriously than I intended. Though I also believe that anyone using the term is being taken more seriously than they really intended. Though maybe there really is an undercurrent of intolerance toward those fucking weirdos that post in the LP forum? I donno.

What you don't see on my avatar is the word 'LOLI! ^_^' with an arrow pointing at Donald. It's just off screen.

The hypersensitivity over what has become a running joke is an odd one, that's for sure.

Call it hypersensitivity. The problem from my point of view is that the people made fun of are clearly not in on the joke. That makes it considerably less funny, and turns it more into picking on someone. Which is where the "How old are you" is coming in.

Can we just sequester kerzain instead?

A couple of problems with that. This sort of thing blows up on a regular basis - which is why it's such a headache for Lum - and the same thing has been said repeatedly. You have been part of these discussions in the past, so shouldn't be getting all Captain Serious about those comments now. Anyone part of those discussions who doesn't understand that those comments are jabs that are intended to be humour with a sliver of truth has not been paying attention. Anyone who isn't part of those discussions still has to stretch a long way to start viewing it as bullying. I don't believe these comments are being made to LPers who are posting normally on other subforums; they're just there when a stereotypically "LP" post is made.

I shouldn't really get involved in this again, as far as I'm concerned it's being blown up into something well beyond what the volume of posts by LPers outside the LP forums actually warrants. There are very few threads created like that and it's a shame that the ones that are created are so fucking daft as to attract the obvious jibes. Is repeating the same old gag childish? Course it is. It's still fairly amusing in a totally harmless way, and I'll take that over a (edit: often utterly impenetrable to anyone who isn't already one of the LP crowd) forum thread dedicated to yet another rape game.

I think discussing video games - to include dating sims, visual novels, etc - is absolutely appropriate for the general video gaming forum. If you can play it on a console, PC, or mobile device then it's a video game and should fall under the general aegis of that forum. A thread about "Hey, anyone who's played the Pickett route of Gettysburg Boys Love III, has anyone got the good ending after Appomattox?" is as valid as "What's your favorite Atari Jaguar RTS?" or whatever the kids are playing these days.

The Let's Play forum should be for threads wherein someone plays a game (video game, board game, actual-physical-sports-game, etc) and relates their experiences. Heck, if someone made it to the World Series of Poker and wanted to liveblog it in the LP forum, I'd think that'd be just as appropriate as doing it in the Traditional Non-Video Games forum. Example - the two kickball AARs I did went in the LP forum instead of the Sports forum, mostly because I related the story in video-game style. Had it been more of "Nute's attempts to get a date via kickball", I'd have done it in the January & Everything After catch-all forum.

So I'm in agreement with Astromarine - let the LP forum be for the recounting of playing through a game and all the attendant "UGUUUUUU~~~/teh FEELS!/needs more desu!" hangers-on. If folks want to actually discuss the game, that's what the main video game forum is for.

You know what ? You are actually right. Just noticed it, realized it was supposed to be funny and commented that they fail to be so. But far be it for me to cast stones when it comes to childish humour.

Edit: I reserve the right to comment on it in the future, though. My brain, it is addled most of these days.

Hey, hey I didn't say unfeeling! I said we had one emotion*.



*And I also constrained the parameters of our cold, grimdark natures to forum posting on the internet. AND, and I added a thing to make it clear that those were generalisations which didn't cover each special sparkly, individual who each have their own delicate perfect natures. In your case I suspect your dark internet bound rage burns hot and enormous in that passionate way that only a swarthy man of the Mediterranean climate can muster.

I mean I include myself in the grognards but I never posted on usenet and I don't even own a single game by Matrix! Plus, when it comes to cool rage I'm a failure, I'm in a ridiculously good mood today the kind of mood where I want to bring people together under the happy rainbows of stupid jokes, at least when I'm not ranting about profiteering in education*.





*(Plus, I don't even have a beard)

I'll be honest, I'm a little surprised Lum feels the need to make this change. However, he's aware of more of the forum than I am for sure. I think his splitting of LP/dating games was a good idea as there was already a natural split and having the two of them in one subforum was proving to be a usability problem as much as anything else. But I was kinda under the impression that the "the sky is falling!" anti-LP stuff (such as it was) and the persecution cries from the LP crowd (along with some potential line-crossing discussions) were both at a very low ebb.

This why I don't run the forum.

Actually, that's a lie. I can think of at least 20 reasons why I don't run the forum. This is probably #21.

Also also Dan Lawrence's original post deserved more than the one like I could give it. That shit was funny. I lost it at "sangry".

I'm guessing there's some context here that I'm not seeing, but for my part I have no problem with fans of dating games creating threads to talk about those games in the existing forums. Is there some reason the dating sim fans don't want to? Or is the concern that they'll create so many threads that it'll wipe out the rest of the PC/Console Gaming forum?

Maybe those folks should just use the existing forums until and unless the number of threads becomes a problem. I'd like to see more integration anyway, provided they don't mind if us grognards occasionally get confused, horrified looks on our faces as we pass by. :)

Fucking amen. Dan Lawrence deserves more than Likes, he deserves a custom title for that shit. Like "Sangry Neckbeard" or something along those lines.

By and large (despite the handful of successful 'crossover' posters) their community exists on one subforum; so they probably feel like there's no real need for them to discuss these games on other subforums where the audience is less receptive and potentially even hostile to what they want to discuss. Which is why Lum wants this separate forum.

Le Boche diabolique!

I don't mind seeing threads about games I'm not interested in within the wider forums - after all probably half the threads in PC/Console Gaming and almost all the threads in teh MMO forums are about games I'm not interested in anyway. What I don't particularly want to see is posts in threads I am interested in from people who cannot write like functioning adults. By all means post where you like but make an effort to not sound like a twelve year old.