(This Picture is a Link to the Discord)

Hey everyone!

I’m excited, and somewhat nervous, to announce a new shmup Discord that I have been working on: The Raizing Cave Club! I have gone ahead and written a little essay about the idea and structure of the discord, which can be found in the welcome thread. I will also post it here. Definitely give it a read to get a better understanding of the purpose of the Discord and how its structure will work.

Welcome to the Raizing CAVE Club! 😀 The idea of this server is to have a public place that shmup players/fans can join to talk about playing Raizing and CAVE shmups. The goal of this channel is to focus on gameplay, goals, strategies, emulation, ports, history, and pretty much anything that has to do with playing these awesome games. The reason why I felt motivated to create this server is because it is kind of sad how there is no centralized place for players of these awesome games to gather and and just yammer on about gameplay. The goal of this server is to be a hub of all kinds of gameplay talk and inspire more players to engage in the games a little more seriously than just a casual credit from time to time. With that being said though, the idea of the server is to get more players of all skill levels (not just top tier) engaging with each other and communicating goals and such. So, even though high-level discussion is awesome and important, let’s avoid being pretentious jerks to the new players who are just getting started.

As you will notice (at least I hope ha), the name of this server specifies Raizing and CAVE only, the reason why is because the world of shmups is massive and really there are more quality games than there are active players, so we get a situation of an already tiny player base being stretched extremely thin. The Raizing and CAVE shmups are incredibly popular and the most widely played, so I think it’s a cool idea to have a focused area of discussion for these games. With that said then, I encourage everyone to try to keep the focus of discussion on these games, though mentioning other shmups from time to time doesn’t seem like a big deal or anything. We don’t need to be uber strict, but just keep the general guideline in mind. For example, if a cool new shmup comes out or something, I don’t think it’s a big deal to talk about it here and there. In fact, I’ve an additional section for indie shmups, because they are the future. So feel free to talk about indie STG in there.

So there is also one more unique aspect of this server that I would like explain: moderation. In comparison to my last server, the EUPD, this server is going to have a much larger member involvement when it comes to moderation. As you may or may not notice (depending on when you read this message), the server will have a very large group of moderators. Basically, anyone who has shown themselves to be a fair, constructive, and sociable shmup homie has the ability the become a mod. The reason why this discord is setup this way is because I think it is important to create a sustainable server that can basically govern itself, so that all the responsibility of moderating a public chat doesn’t become a full time job for a few individuals, who may or may not be able to respond at a given time.

In this server, mods are able to manage messages, kick and ban users, manage and create channels, and add emoji. The reason why mods are able to do so much, comparatively, is because I want this server to become a community that doesn’t depend on a few select individuals. One last thing you will notice is that the mods are not in there own little separate list or given special name colors. This is a deliberate choice of mine as I don’t want to make the mods into a cool boi club that stand out in conversation, but merely a system by which the channel can operate on its own and perpetuate itself without feeling like the wild west.

This is probably the most detailed intro to a server ever ha, but I think it’s important to try and let you all know the idea behind how the server works and such. Anyway ….

Have fun 😀

P.S. I’ve noticed that having separate stream channels and stuff tend to get ignored, so feel free to post stream links and gameplay vids in the corresponding game channel.

P.S.S. For all the server members, if you feel so inclined, please do your best to say welcome to new people joining the server, I think that’s always a nice touch for new people to feel more comfortable and not like an intruder or something.

Also … Please be sure to introduce yourself and talk a little when you join, otherwise you will be banned. (This is just to cut down on bots and such.)