For me, I never really gave much thought to community curation or community building. I always sort of went with “this seems fun” and it either drew people who wanted to play or it didn’t.
Darkwater was my first and at a time most popular game I ran. I started it with a secret backstory I don’t think the players ever discovered. However, in the long term running of the game I made a lot of mistakes and a lot of toxicity began to seep into the community.
I would have probably called it the most successful game I ran, at one point. But now I don’t. Again, while it was popular— there were times when the players had no faith in me. And, frankly, times where I resented the players.
A lot because I wasn’t really thinking of it as community effort. I wanted to run a game telling stories, but I didn’t sit down and think about what kind of community I wanted. I allowed anyone in, and shouldn’t have.
I think if I ever dust off another project, I’ll need to sit down and consider the theme a bit more. What kind of community do I want to engage in? How can the systems I put in place draw those types of people? How can I ensure that theme drift doesn’t lead to community drift.
Tl;dr: Never in the past, but absolutely in the future.