What are you up to?

[Porter]

Warms my heart to still see people to check in here from time to time. This place has been on my mind a lot lately.

Also I don't think Strayed checks these forums at all, but we still chat daily, so I'll say hi on his behalf.

PS. Lun say hi to Verb for us!

You guys chat on Facebook? Are you even in on that anymore?

[Porter]

Hi all! This brings back so many memories. I hope y'all are healthy! I think I might steal some lore of The Way for a future DnD campaign. The idea of the rolling mists and forcing the population to wander is good stuff.

In other news, I'm married and a dad now. In a bout of nostalgia I considered replaying The Way but opted to start watching a let's play by Shadowhawk on youtube instead. Dad-gaming is easy when the kids sleep most of the day. but once they start running it's difficult. And it will stays difficult until they develop or learn self-control and risk assessment.

Congrats Tele, I still needed to take that trip to Sweden with the wifey to check out your town.

[Wellsy]

It warms my heart and brings a tear to my eye to see you all checking in here. I guess I must be the old man of the forum, turned 40 last year, and have two great kids. Working as a microbiologist in a medical lab for the Air Force and have made a decent career for myself. I still sometimes think of this wacky community of weirdos that sprung up almost two decades ago - it's so good to hear from all of you.

[Porter]

Games I've loved lately:
Stardew Valley
Necesse
Core Keeper
Heroes of Hammerwatch

[Sling]

Hard to believe I've been on this website for 17 years now.

[Porter]

Annual check in. Hi all!

[Occurrence of Something]

On the one hand, it's really cool that this place is still here and people still post. On the other hand, it's absolutely terrifying to be able to look back at what a dipshit I was as a teenager.

Anyway, I, too, am married

[Porter]

Good lord your signature, sounds like something I'd say.

[Sling]

Well, I was banned from an online community of writers for pointing out that both fascism and National Socialism both retained significant elements of de facto government control over their economies and so should be more properly thought of as centre-left rather than far-right. Well, even though that is an objectively correct fact of history that I was able to demonstrate the truth of fairly easily, that apparently counts as "Nazi apologetics", and so I was permanently banned with no chance of appeal. When I appealed to the moderators and admins, I was summarily ignored. Eventually, one of them posted that I had been banned for issuing "legal threats" even though I had already been banned at that point. It's wild, too, because I had very specifically denounced all forms of totalitarianism, not just one form of it. I later discovered that this community had been hijacked by far-left political agitators from Tumblr and Reddit back in 2018 and had begun diluting the content with poorly written self-inserts and excessive amounts of needlessly gratuitous sexual fetishism, and that the original admins and mods who got purged set up their own breakaway community. Moreover, the original community mods and admins routinely engage in nepotistic favouritism, the serial abuse of their power to target users they don't like for harassment, and claim this breakaway group is openly bigoted, even though users there are: openly gay, openly trans, and openly of different social, cultural, economic, religious, political, ethnic, and national backgrounds.

[KeeperofGlyphs]

Ah, such is the way of modern internet communities post 2016. The corruption runs deep, and there's little love for artistry - those who scheme have schemed long enough to rise to the top and destroy what they once loved. Each word and reason they give is merely a means to deceive and manipulate, their arguments hold no truth. Without understanding and accepting the concept of an "absolute enemy", or even "absolute evil", it's difficult to comprehend those types of people - for neither reason nor justification are something they require.

-----------------------------

As for me, these days? I'm in a comfortable spot, even if nearly anyone else in existence would hate it. I've come to love my work and have been spending my free time as well on aspects related to game development.