I recently received this letter, which I shall share with you now.
An Open Letter to the Fan Community, By Melissa Xavier (JiveX)
I love you. All of you. Even you Hekatonkhire with your unflagging skepticism and dour demeanor, and Plague, whose arguments are always just biting enough to annoy me and just correct enough to make me aware that I'm wrong. You fill my long days in the editing lab (I'm a film student / part-time editor when I'm not fighting crime, running campaigns, and posting on the forums) with entertaining and distracting, if sometimes frustrating discourse. For the last year that I've posted on these boards I've only once or twice ever seriously found myself annoyed to the point of disinterest in the goings on of the forums. Generally, this is a good place to be. It is a place of lively discussion, clever debate and creativity.
Recently, and perhaps it’s just me feeling crotchety and nostalgic for the 'good-ol-months' I've begun to wonder if some of the old gusto hasn't gone out of things. Where once you couldn't go a day or two without someone posting New Yozi charms, a new take on this, a description of the Lotus Crusade making landfall, or a hypothetical third circle demon, now you see eight to nine threads about 'fixing' the same hypothetical problems. This was always present, there were always people who would post new VAP or BoTBM's for your enjoyment, sometimes they were good (rarely) and sometimes they were awful, but they did not represent the majority of the content being discussed on the forums. Those threads that are not seeking spoilers or "word of god" answers from the freelancers are discussing the relative power of two randomly selected entities with rabid fervor. Threads that ask tentative exploratory questions ("Can you do this," "What's it like here" etc..) are met with scorn or disinterest. Where once we had an 8 page thread on the clothing styles of creation, now we have a 23 page thread on which deathlord could kick ligier's ass. Where once we had volumes of fan created charms, character artifacts etc being posted on the forums, now we have no fewer than 4 concurrent threads all trying to 'fix' the solar anima.
Cool contests like the hill crushing hero, charm of the month, artifact of the month, etc on the wiki go ignored despite the best efforts of people like Bodhisattva who really do try to incentivize fan creativity.
Its not that one is right and one is wrong, but, upon reading another thread today I began to wonder if in our new found zeal for mechanical tweaking we may have let contributing to the setting and to the general, rich, and living world that is 'exalted' fall by the wayside. I know people have their pet projects they work on when their bored, I've heard them discussed. For instance there was a cool attempt to port elements of the Cthulu mythos (as much as I personally HATE HP Lovecraft) to the setting, there are the numerous contributions from fans like friv yeti and plague of hats and Reminiscent Oasis that I would love to see get some more attention. I feel like these people, these profoundly creative people, don't bother with the forums anymore because they don't see them as being worthwhile. And maybe I'm imagining this, maybe I'm using this little window I have to address people as a soapbox to give voice to a problem only I perceive, and if that's so fine.
The Fact remains that, to all those who do work to add new and fun content to the setting and feel like they aren't receiving enough feedback to make posting worth the hassle, I'm watching, I'm reading, and, hell, I'm even willing to help/give feedback if you like. I'm always on the lookout for new and interesting material and, if for some reason I miss it, shoot me a PM and I'll be sure to give it a look.
I encourage others to similarly try to encourage and take a look at new material; I assure you whatever you have to say about it, it will at least be something new being said about something, rather than a rehashed and repeated argument about the failings of Void Avatar Prana.
Thanks for reading. And I hope to enjoy all of your company for another year full of fun, argumentation, and maybe pie.
All the best,
JiveX