Where'd All the Forums Go?

In the '00s, we used to have lots of little websites with forums, chat rooms, and comment walls. Those seemed to gradually wither and die during the Social Media Years. I've been trying to find some again, but it's a struggle.

The best example of a community site I've found is The Bolter and Chainsword, for Warhammer 40k. This is a very active forum where people are posting their WIP minis, game questions, news, and -- most importantly -- updates on upcoming 40k books. It's a nice little site; I haven't posted, but I do read it weekly.

Pathfinder Community

I really wanted to find something like that, but for Pathfinder. Unfortunately, the options are limited: you can join the subreddit, the discord, or use the official Paizo forums.

About a year and a half ago, I gave up on reddit. I was a long-time user¹, and for a while it was a good site. Too good, perhaps, since it ate up everything else on the internet. But, I'm not interested in having every single hobby and interest turned into a money-making opportunity for some assholes in SV.

I don't like using discord either. I've found it impossible to keep track of discussion in servers with 100+ people active. I tried joining the official PF2e discord and gave up after about five minutes -- there's too much chatter. It seems like you need to watch the chat like a hawk at all times to get any useful information out of it.

The official Paizo forums are ... fine. But they leave a lot to be desired in terms of UI and being pleasant software to interact with. That's a general theme for Paizo's web stuff: it's all very 2004.

Our mastodon server has a relay set up to try and get more posts with the #Pathfinder 2e tag, but the posts are unfortunately few and far between.

I want to find a nice little forum with PF2e (and SF2e) discussion, news, and funny stories from players/GMs. Maybe with a play-by-post section to RP as some less-heroic folks in Golarion -- that'd be useful for learning more about day-to-day life in the setting. If you know anything like that, please tell me about it!