Community, Messages, and Social

Myth-Weavers is a community first and forum software second. A lot of the folks you'll meet here have been around for fifteen or twenty years, juggling several campaigns at once, and the non-game corners of the site are where you'll catch them between sessions. This guide is your tour of that side of things: the community forums, search, direct messages, friends, and all the social settings that tie them together.

Community forums

The Community Forums are site-wide gathering spaces, sorted into categories. Where a game forum belongs to one specific game, these are open to everyone with an account, so they're where the whole site comes together to talk.

You can reach them from the home page or through Community in the navigation. The categories span general chatter, system-specific talk (D&D, Pathfinder, GURPS, and the rest), recruitment, site feedback, off-topic wandering, and plenty more.

The community forums behave exactly like game forums: start topics, post replies, follow a forum for notifications, keep tabs on what's unread. If you'd like the complete walkthrough, Forums, Topics, and Posting has you covered.

Search

Myth-Weavers has full-text search across the entire site, accessible from the search bar in the navigation.

Search filters

When a search turns up more than you bargained for, the filter sidebar helps you narrow things down:

• 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.

Tags

Tags are short descriptive labels you can pin to topics, issues, and blog entries, and they're how you make content easy to find again down the road. A system-d&d-5e tag on a recruitment post, a rules-question tag on an OOC topic, a bug tag on an issue: each one means you can find it easier later.

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-rules reads better than HomeBrewRules or home_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.

You'll also be offered a Subject — optional, but it decides how the message is filed. Give one and you start a brand-new conversation, even if you already have a thread going with that person; the subject becomes its name in your conversation list. Leave it blank and your message continues the conversation you already have with them, if there is one. So you can keep several separate threads with the same person — one per topic — the same way you could on the old site.

The Send Message shortcut on a profile or hover card doesn't ask for a subject, so it always continues your existing conversation with that person rather than starting another one.

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, with each message as 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. 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 is 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

Every user's profile has an Add Friend button. Click it, and they'll get a notification they can accept or decline at their leisure.

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.
• Blocked users — the people you've blocked, with an unblock action.

Blocking someone

Blocking a user cuts off contact from them to you. Once you block someone, their direct messages, friend requests, game invitations, and mentions/quotes/replies stop reaching you. This means no notifications, no bell entries, nothing in your inbox or requests list. Blocking is quiet by design: the person you block isn't told, and from their side their messages and requests appear to send normally. Existing conversation history stays where it is; only new contact is suppressed. Unblocking restores future contact, but anything they sent while blocked remains hidden.

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

On a desktop browser, hovering over a username (for example, a post author) pops up a quick bio card which includes their avatar, role, join date, last-seen, and post count. It also includes shortcuts to message them or find their posts, so you don't have to open the full profile.

Who's Online

The Who's Online panel on the home page shows who's active on the site right now. 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. The same privacy controls apply throughout.

Next steps

Stay on top of events and updates with Calendar, Events, and Notifications.