There were some fundamental disagreements about how things should work inside a gaming group, and some severe personality clashes (most of which involving me, and not in a good way). I made a bad decision and nearly forcibly took over the SSC website, then, in a moment of clarity, stayed my action and elected to simply leave. I got "caught" after the fact, which was the source of some additional drama, culminating in what has become my achilles heel in online debates, being branded a nazi. Over the course of about a week, some 60 of the SSC, not counting in game folks who never posted, left and most of them ended up here. That started what seemed to be a mass exodus. Entire divisions left, some, like the Darkspace peeps, went out and found their own way. The real number I think was well over 60. We felt exiled, even if it was by our own choice, from something we loved very much. Its rare to find a safe haven in gaming, we had it, and then we didn't. The name "exiles" is symbolic of htat feeling. I also think it serves to remind us of what not to do, learning from the past ensures that we are less likely to repeat it.
People (myself included) became overly dogmatic, some of us thought the groups ideals were interpreted one way, others pretty much took the opposite meaning. The disgareements were strong, violent (well, as violent as anything can be online) and if people had been in the same room at the time, I am sure someone would have thrown a punch. Many of us put alot of effort into the SSC, and that effort seemed shattered (no pun intended). I hold some extremely bitter feelings towards a handful of the folks I believe were most responsible for our circumstance, and some regret and shame for not reacting better to the events. Those feelings though, are now relegated to the personal, if you want an earful about certain people, I'll happily rant, but only in real time. I'm uninterested in giving them any more soundbites
So, here we are. We play games, we have fun, and we try to avoid the typical silliness. We are a social club of sorts, one that plays games together socially, and chooses the remain together because it gives us some pleasure. I wouldn't have it any other way.
Folks will notice we don't have the 5 Ideals the SSC had, one and only one word appears below the banner up top: Friendship.
We don't have "rules lawyer" debates about what "Honor" means, what "Integrity" translates to in a game, or how "Equality" doesn't equal anarchy. We don't have a code of conduct requiring pages of descriptive exceptions, ferreting out all the possible outcomes of in or out of game drama. There's nothing to bring us authorial intent arguments, no codex by which we mandate people live, game and interpet in a specific way. Stuff gets dealt with as it comes up, rather than reading from a rule book, we discuss it (sometimes in a emotional way), deal with it, and decide.
We're not afraid to have people step up and be in charge, though we're not treating it like a typical clan with authoritarian leaders, all our "leaders" are in charge because the people who play with them WANT them to be in charge. As soon as any one of us loses that mandate, we step aside.
All of these things are different from what we were at the SSC. I think that some of what the new RIGHT group is trying to do is correct some of those same flaws I believe we corrected two years ago when we "left" and reformed here. I think we're doing it right (again, no pun intended), it remains to be seen how successful they will be.
). So to avoid beating a dead horse again we've just taken a stance that everything that needed to be said, has been said. 
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