Community, Messages, and Social
Myth-Weavers is a community first and a forum software second. Many of the people you'll meet here have been around for fifteen or twenty years, running multiple campaigns at once, and the non-game side of the site is where you find them between sessions. This guide covers community forums, search, DMs, friends, and the social settings that go with them.
Community forums
The Community Forums are site-wide discussion spaces organized into categories. Unlike game forums (specific to a single game), community forums are open to everyone with an account.
Browse them from the home page or Community in the navigation. Categories cover general discussion, system-specific talk (D&D, Pathfinder, GURPS, etc.), recruitment, site feedback, off-topic, and more.
Mechanically, community forums work exactly like game forums — create topics, post replies, follow forums for notifications, track unread. See Forums, Topics, and Posting for the full posting orientation.
Search
Myth-Weavers has full-text search across the entire site, accessible from the search bar in the navigation.
Search filters
The filter sidebar narrows results:
- Content Type — posts, topics, games, advertisements. Toggle each; counts per type show in the header.
- Post Type — In-Character, Out-of-Character, or Normal.
- Has Dice Rolls — only posts that contain dice rolls (useful for "find that one combat").
- Author — content by a specific username.
- Character — posts made as a specific character.
- Search Within — scope the search to a specific game, forum, or topic. Start typing the name and pick from matches.
- Include Archived — pull in content from archived games. Off by default to keep results recent.
- Date Range — from/to date pickers.
Each result shows the content type, a highlighted snippet of the matching text, the location (game › forum), the author, and how long ago it was posted. Click any result to jump straight to it.
Under the hood: how search works
Search runs against a tsvector index over post content (PostgreSQL's full-text search). Posts are indexed at write time, so freshly posted content is searchable within seconds. Stemming is enabled (searching "rolled" matches "rolling"), and stop words ("the," "a," etc.) are ignored. Boolean operators aren't currently exposed in the UI — keyword soup works fine for most cases.
Tags
Tags are short descriptive labels you can attach to topics, issues, and blog entries. They make content findable later — a system-d&d-5e tag on a recruitment post, a rules-question tag on an OOC topic, a bug tag on an issue.
Applying tags
The tag picker on a topic/issue/blog form is an autocomplete:
- Start typing; matching existing tags surface, with usage counts so you can prefer popular ones.
- Press Enter, Tab, or comma to commit each tag.
- Up to 10 tags per item.
Tags are optional. Most items don't need any; a couple of well-chosen tags is more useful than a flurry.
Browsing by tag
Tags display as clickable badges on the item itself. Clicking a tag runs a search for that tag and surfaces every other item carrying it. There's no separate "tag directory" yet — search is the way in.
Tag style
A few light norms:
- Lowercase, dash-separated —
home-brew-rulesreads better thanHomeBrewRulesorhome_brew_rules. - Prefer existing tags. The autocomplete is sorted by usage; reusing a known tag means your content shows up alongside related items.
- Avoid one-off tags. A tag that only ever applies to one item adds clutter without helping discovery.
Issue tracker
Bug reports, feature requests, support questions, voting on what gets built next — all in one place. See Issue Tracker for the full reference.
Community announcements
Site-wide announcements — maintenance windows, new features shipping, community events, the occasional important policy note — appear as dismissible banners on the home page. Admins write them; everyone sees them until they dismiss or the announcement's end-time passes.
Game-scope announcements (visible only within a specific game) work similarly but live on the game's page — see Game Master's Guide for the GM-side authoring.
Direct messages
The built-in DM system handles private conversations between users.
Starting a conversation
The Messages icon in the navigation bar opens your conversation list. New Conversation lets you pick recipients by username and start writing.
Group messages
Add multiple participants to a single conversation for group chat. All participants see the full message history; adding someone later means they can scroll back to read the prior conversation (no hidden history).
Editing, deleting, and linking a message
Conversations read like a forum topic — each message is its own card. On your own messages you'll find Edit and Delete: editing updates the message in place (and shows an "edited" note), and both changes appear live for everyone in the conversation. Every message also has a Copy link to post action; pasting that link takes you (or whoever you send it to, if they're a participant) straight to that exact message, scrolled into view and briefly highlighted.
Typing indicators
When someone in your conversation is typing a reply, a typing indicator surfaces it so you know a response is coming.
New-message alerts
You don't have to keep scrolling up to check for replies. When a new message arrives while you're elsewhere on the site, three things happen:
- A brief "New message from …" pop appears, naming the sender. It stays up for a few seconds and has a View message link that jumps you straight to the first unread message in that conversation.
- The browser tab title gains a count badge — e.g.
(2) Myth-Weavers— so unread messages are visible even when the tab is in the background. - The notification bell gains an entry for the conversation, showing its name and how many unread messages it holds.
The tab badge and bell both count unread conversations (one per conversation, however many messages it contains) and clear once you're caught up.
Read receipts
Messages show when each recipient has read them. Useful for the "did they see this yet?" check.
Opening a conversation clears its bell entry immediately — you don't have to dismiss anything by hand. Clicking the bell entry (or the toast's View message link) drops you at the first message you haven't read yet. Note that "Mark all read" on the bell leaves message entries alone; they clear only when you actually open the conversation.
Reporting an abusive DM
If someone's harassing you, the conversation has a Report action that flags the thread for moderator review. Reports go to the community moderation queue; you can also block the user from your Account Settings → Social → Privacy page.
Friends
Build your network on Myth-Weavers by adding other users as friends.
Sending friend requests
Any user's profile has an Add Friend button. They receive a notification and can accept or decline.
Managing friends
Account Settings → Social has three tabs:
- Friends — your friends list.
- Requests — pending friend requests (accept or decline).
- Privacy — who can send you requests, whether your online status is visible.
Privacy settings
The Privacy tab controls:
- Who can send you friend requests (everyone, friends-of-friends, or no one).
- Whether your online status is visible to others.
- Whether your activity (recent games, recent posts) is publicly visible on your profile.
User profiles
Click any username to view their profile. Profiles show:
- Avatar and About Me
- Supporter badge (if applicable and they have it visible)
- Activity information (subject to their privacy settings)
- Action buttons: send a DM, add as friend
Who's Online
The Who's Online panel (home page) shows users currently active on the site — a passive sense of community energy. If your privacy settings have online status visible, you appear here when you're around; if not, you're invisible to the panel.
A related Who's Viewing indicator appears on individual topics and games, showing other users currently looking at the same content. Same privacy controls apply.
Next steps
Stay on top of events and updates with Calendar, Events, and Notifications.