I started a forum for my SCA group in Virginia, because I was the group's webmistress for a while. It was mainly used for announcements and posting meeting minutes, though, or coordinating rides to events. We mostly stuck to the mailing list for group conversation purposes, hehe.
Other than that, I've found most forums to be really not that great. I use them for information collecting purposes, but not so much to be a part of the community. For the most part, they're dead, or if not, they're filled with flame posts, or spam.
Abandonia had a nice group of people, and the pace wasn't too fast or too slow, so I stayed.
