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Get in Contact
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For a long time our unlikely community has relied on
.I Discord
for communication. Times are always changing however and thus we
have been looking for alternatives. By now, some actually prefer to communicate by Internet Relay Chat (IRC) over Discord and occasionally there's even some traffic on 
.I netnews .
.PP
These are old technologies for sure, but they do have their 
advantages, and we feel they're our safeguard from enshittification and
other modern day hazards. Also there's the
.I Fediverse
offering plenty of options to connect.
.PP
So if you'd like to join us, but don't know how, here are some 
recipes to follow and some addresses to take note of.
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Fediverse
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You'll find most of us on Mastodon. If you don't know whether that's
a stoner rock band or what, checkout: \fChttps://joinmastodon.org\fP. My rpg related mastodon handle is \fC@wandererbill@tabletop.social\fP for example. It has been customary for 
.I Grenzland
to give the handles of the contributors in the imprint (on page 39 in this case). So you might want to have a look at that to find the handles of other participants.
.H2
Internet Relay Chat
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Alex and Kyonshi have setup a tiny network of connected servers, which are 
augmented by the trusty bot
.I Norn
and have most channels bridged over to Discord.
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.nh
To join the chat point your IRC client to either of \fCcampaignwiki.org\fP or \fCwilderland.ovh\fP 
port 6697. You can use \fIThunderbird\fP to connect, so chances are, you're already running the software you need for IRC. Alternatively you can check out \fChttps://thelounge.wilderland.ovh/\fP or ask Alex for an account on
\fChttps://chat.campaignwiki.org\fP.
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However you manage to connect to our IRC, here are some channels
you might want to join:
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#welcome - chit chat and hanging out, start here!
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#next-games - here is where games are advertised
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#sabbel-kanal - another, older general purpose channel, bridged to the Grenzland Discord
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#traveller - talk about that famous family of 2d6 sci-fi games. This channel is bridged to the #traveller on Discord.
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Specific games may well have their own channels. It's probably best to ask around on #welcome if you're looking for a particular channel.
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Also, with IRC being what it is, it's easy to set up a new channel in an ad-hoc fashion. Just join the new channel by typing 
\fC/join #my-new-channel\fP. It will be created if it didn't exist already. You may set the \fC/topic\fP and \fC/invite\fP others to your new channel.
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Netnews
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While IRC is fast but also volatile and usually non-persistent,
there is also netnews for lengthy, thoughtful discussions. Netnews
messages can persist a long time, often decades, depending how the servers are set up.
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Our network is small however. You can have a look via the web
interface on \fChttps://campaignwiki.org/news\fP. 
You'll find that there
are a couple of groups from the larger \fIusenet\fP, but the important
ones are \fCcampaignwiki.games\fP and \fCcampaignwiki.talk\fP.
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Again, you can use
.I Thunderbird
to connect to our newsserver, and read and write to the groups. It's really just like group email. Do get in touch with one
of us if you need help setting it up.
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Voice and Video Chat
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Apart from
.I Discord
we've used
.I Jitsi
many times. The instances we use are:
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\fChttps://meet.ffmuc.net/zurichmondays\fP and
.BU
\fChttps://meet.zrh.init7.net/MontagInZürich\fP
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Recently we've been having good success with a software called
Galène: \fChttps://galene.org/\fP - whoever is hosting a game
will send you the URL and credentials to join.
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So there you have it. There are many options to scratch that 
gaming itch online, without relying on big money services. 
We hope to see you join soon!
.Au lkh
.sp 1
.KF
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