Fantasy Flight Forum Community Shutting Down

[Commissar Molotov]

https://community.fantasyflightgames.com/topic/313591-ffg-forum-shutdown/

 

The FFG forums - a veritable trove for players of Dark Heresy, Deathwatch, Only War and Black Crusade - are due to be deactivated on February 1st, 2021.

 

Hello FFG forum users,

 

For years, we've featured forums on our website as a place for our gamers to gather and share their experiences—giving a place to discuss strategy, anticipate upcoming expansions, and share homebrew rules and variants. However, in almost every case, the communities centered around these games are more active elsewhere, whether that's on other websites, in social media groups, or with dedicated Discord servers.

 

We hope that you've enjoyed the use of the individual forums for our different product lines, but we have now made the decision to close down our website's forums at the end of the January.

 

All forums under community.fantasyflightgames.com will be shut down on February 1, 2021. If you have content on our forums that you would like to keep, you must save it elsewhere by January 31, 2021, or it will be lost forever.

 

Although we've loved having the forums on our website, we hope that you don't see this as the end of a community around a certain game. In every case, there are other players who love the same games that you do, gathering elsewhere online—this could even be the perfect chance to make some new friends.

 

We've can't wait to see you out there!

Edited December 23, 2020 by Commissar Molotov

[Mazer Rackham]

Good catch.

 

This is a problem, since there are a lot of designer/developer clarifications and modifications buried in there (along with plenty of duff).  There's simply too much to port or sift through and seeing them go is a shame, even though it is a fully understandable step.

 

A quick interwebble search reveals no Cubicle 7 forum of a similar nature, but the BnC RPG nook does pop up.  I know that No1-H3r3, one of the rules-developers does post to Reddit occasionally, so can be contacted there, but if an uptick in traffic occurs we could perhaps lure him here if he already isn't.

 

His Deathwatch 'Adversaries DLC's using Orks (an expanded set) and Eldar (which are mad powerful) are available as PDF's and are a must have, IMHO.

 

All in all - it looks like we're going to have to carry the torch.  I know there's RPG.net, but...well.

 

I'll trawl through some of the Q&A forums for Deathwatch and try and lift what I can - IF i have the time.  The others will have to wait, maybe even put a team together to get on this.

 

MR.

[Beren]

That is one hell of an oof. I still go trawling there time to time for stray ideas... the Haarlock Legacy thread alone is twenty pages long.

[Dosjetka]

Perhaps we can, as a community, ensure that the pages are uploaded to the Wayback Machine or some other internet archive?

[Mazer Rackham]

Perhaps we can, as a community, ensure that the pages are uploaded to the Wayback Machine or some other internet archive?

 

My thoughts too, but I'm about as technically capable as a grilled trilobite.  What are the realistic storage options for those forums?  Would there be any benefit to approaching FFG and requesting access to cull out all the garbage and surgically distil what we need?  I am a member of that forum.

 

Or is that an old fossil pipe dream?

 

MR.

[Jareddm]

Damn.  That really hits hard.  I still remember one of my absolute favorites was a thread about introducing love and courtship cultural practices into world design for Dark Heresy.  The inspiration from that thread alone shaped a big part of my outlook on 40k at the local level.

[Sent1ence]

It'll be missed. Note that it's not just their table top rpg stuff, it's also any boardgames, and their minis, and their just general forums. Everything's going.

 

Probably was inevitable, considering they axed their entire board game and rpg team to focus on making star wars minis, but it is a shame.

[Brother Tyler]

Ultimately, the impending loss of the FFG forums seems inevitable considering the benefits of sites like the Board Game Geek. Instead of bemoaning this (admittedly unfortunate) development, anyone dedicated to these games should be taking action and saving any useful material. I see two potential paths forward.

 

The first is to see if Cubicle 7 will be picking up the content from the FFG WH40K RPG forums. As the inheritors of the games, they are the authoritative source.

 

The second is to trawl through the FFG forums and identify anything that we can transfer here to our forums. This will have to be a manual transfer - copying and pasting (perhaps after consolidation).

 

Hopefully this will be an impetus for more activity in the B&C forums, but I suspect that we'll have to continue to look at other sites for additional material (the RPG Geek, Discord, and Reddit being the most likely).

[Mazer Rackham]

Thanks Brother Tyler, that was my intention (trying to work the problem, that is).

 

A friend has already fired an email off to C7 and is waiting to hear back.  In the meantime, I'm trawling for useful things I can save as pdf's and word/excel documents that will help potential GM's and Players alike.

 

It's just doing the...consolidation work that's taking the time up ;)

 

MR.

[Dosjetka]

Damn.  That really hits hard.  I still remember one of my absolute favorites was a thread about introducing love and courtship cultural practices into world design for Dark Heresy.  The inspiration from that thread alone shaped a big part of my outlook on 40k at the local level.

Do you have a link to that thread? I'd be very interested in reading it and saving it.

[Mazer Rackham]

We may have missed the boat.

 

It looks like the Deathwatch Errata thread from 2011, the one which the DW 1.1 FAQ is distilled from, is gone.

 

Got a 404 three times.  It looks like the grand cleansing has begun.  If you happen to find threads of interest, bag them now.

 

MR.

[Beren]

Is there a way to archive an entire section of a website?

 

Apparently HTTrack has been used on other FFG subforums?

Edited January 4, 2021 by Beren

[Mazer Rackham]

We could try that, but it depends on the size of the database surely?  I'm not a tech wizard. 

 

In other news, no word from C7 yet, and to be honest, I doubt my mate will get any reply.

 

MR.

[Brother Tyler]

Assuming the other actions have been taken, and with the end of January quickly approaching, I recommend action starting now (hopefully already ongoing) so that the community isn't left with a last-minute effort.

 

The specific action is to simply save any suitable discussions. The results aren't pretty, but you'll have the important stuff saved for later consolidation/prettifying.

 

Further down the road, if C7 doesn't pick the forums up, we can look at how the information might be presented here (and we may have to clear some things with FFG/C7). One possible solution is to re-create them here using the discussion topic format. Another possible solution is to make them available as downloads, converting the ugly saved versions into a format that is legible and concise, then making them available via our Downloads (as a series of .pdfs).

 

If we don't save the [useful] discussions now, however, everything will be moot. The highest priorities in my mind (and feel free to disagree) are the Rules Questions, House Rules, and Game Masters forums (in that order). Those that are interested in participating should coordinate their efforts. For example, someone might take responsibility for the Dark Heresy Rules Questions discussions, while someone else might take care of the Dark Heresy House Rules discussions. With each person publicly declaring what they are working on, we can avoid duplication of effort (and thus, wasting time). In addition, participants should declare either which discussions they are saving or which they aren't saving, either as an ongoing log or as a summary. This will allow other participants to save discussions that weren't saved [if they feel they are worth saving]. When in doubt, save a discussion. The act of saving each individual discussion doesn't take long, but the sheer number of discussions means that the overall time will be considerable. By focusing on the saving now (and ignoring other time-consuming elements of the overall effort), we guarantee the availability of the information should we be able to make use of it later.

[Mazer Rackham]

I'm going through the Deathwatch Rules Questions first, as suggested.  A goodly number of them are taken care of by the FAQ, so it's a bit of trawl for the gems.

 

If anyone wants to take the other games, as Brother Tyler advises, feel free!

 

MR.

[Jareddm]

 

Damn.  That really hits hard.  I still remember one of my absolute favorites was a thread about introducing love and courtship cultural practices into world design for Dark Heresy.  The inspiration from that thread alone shaped a big part of my outlook on 40k at the local level.

Do you have a link to that thread? I'd be very interested in reading it and saving it.

 

Get it while you can.

 

https://community.fantasyflightgames.com/topic/19449-marrage-in-the-imperium/

[Mazer Rackham]

The FFG forums are now gone.

 

Thanks to those who made the effort to grab some bits and pieces, but whatever we managed to glean from there is now it.

 

There has been no reply to any query made to Cubicle 7.

 

I will PM a Moderator to have this topic closed, as it is of no further value.

 

MR.