Thoughts on Discord RPs?

[NyxDarklore 92]

I personally think that Discord (and other chat-based RPGs) are worse than forum-based RPGs. 

 

For me it comes down to the fact that I don't really like rapid-fire roleplaying which almost becomes a necessity in Discord-based RPGs, especially if there are multiple people involved (thus the risk of getting lost). I like to put thought into my responses, to put thought into building my characters, to write long-form posts that are paragraphs in length, and other such things that allow me to get lost in a story and also to have both open and closed threads.

 

The things that I want out of an RPG are not compatible with the chat-based RPG format.

[DivineRabbit 64]

17 hours ago, xexes said:

I want to roleplay, not chat. So much more of my time gets taken up in conversation and I can't put the most quality in my writing because I'm stuck in speed mode. I'm finding myself getting confused at what's happening in my story, what something means, what my character would do, or what comes next and I need some time away to figure it all out; rushing doesn't help any of those issues.

 

And I'm beginning to hate discord. I slip between the cracks of discord. I get lost in the chat trying to catch up every day. The person that I need to plot with isn't online, or worse, they're in do-not-disturb mode. So I try to wait until I can catch them not in Don'tDisturb and weeks pass ... Or someone sends me a message while I'm sleeping and I just get confused and frustrated and forget all about it later.

I feel like the only reason we're even using Discord on roleplays these days is for push notifications to your phone.

 I am  in agreement with that too. I noticed something that is a double edged blade when you involved any chat platform. More time is spent socializing ( which I beleive in some measure is important for us to have our community feel) than writing- which then becomes an issue eventually.

 

I am in discord because I am admin. But I rarely speak much because I am writing- doing forum and coming up with stories. I love to plot but I dont need hours of discord to do it. And I have lost messages due to time and having little of it.

[Arceus 1,082]

I use Discord all the time. I probably know more about it than the average user, spent some time building Discord bots, created Vesta's seamless Discord integration for those instant notifications of posts that everyone likes Discord for, I'm constantly on it talking to someone. If I'm awake, I'm on Discord. I talk all the time, even in large servers, which should be more difficult for me than it is.

 

Do I wanna RP on it? Aha... no. I left chat-based RP a long time ago and there's many reasons why. I like easily accessible RP histories/archives, I like account-per-player, rapid-fire interaction can cause some issues that are hard to mitigate because of their rapid-fire nature, and I don't like limits. I'm not even talking like I can't keep my replies short; I probably can. I've been known to post 100-200 words at a time if that's all I need and if I don't get too descriptive, I can manage the Discord character limit. The point is it's there. I don't like them. You don't tell me how many characters I can type in a post. End of.

 

It just doesn't jive with me. But I also feel like it's important for RP newbies. I've had a lot of people new to RP join Simprovise's Discord and seem to think we were a Discord RP, and then leave when we weren't, so I have the feeling that RP newbies may be more willing to give it a try with something as easy as Discord. And eventually, they may later transition to other platforms, as many of us that have RP'd for a while have done at some point.

 

So it gives me the idea that Discord RP may be relatively integral to the revival of certain kinds of RP, by indirectly bringing new people to them, and I think it's beneficial to us all that Discord RP exists. Forum RP is becoming more lax over time, thankfully, and that's a good start too, but Discord doesn't require any of the hoops that forum RP does. And yeah there are a few hoops to it inherently. A new login to remember, images, apps, plot threads, things like that, they're kind of intimidating.

 

Discord RP is still not and probably won't ever be truly for me, I can see myself doing 1x1s in a private server, but nothing beyond that, and I can still see its merit. Forum RP is just better suited to me and what I want out of an RP.

[Rem 8]

I think Discord RPs have their place for people who enjoy quicker paced writing, but for me speed comes from trading quality.
I grew up writing in chat-based roleplays (AOL messenger, Yahoo, ICQ, MSN, etc) but once I got into forum roleplay, there was no turning back.

I value the depth you can put into posts and how much more substantial that development feels to me versus the quick rapid-post method of chat RPs.

[Mayu 12]

I personally haven't done Discord RP myself and I cannot really imagine how it is done, but I can understand that people who prefer shorter and more fast paced scenarios would enjoy Discord over forums.

The main reason I haven't touched Discord RP is the 2000 character limit placed on messages.

[Tyra Ravencrone 1]

Personally if I'm doing mindless banter that holds no relevance to a real plot I'm fine with it; but I'm generally a Novella/Multi-Para writer and I need my meat, cheese, extra beef, and bread to feed the muses. If I'm not on Google docs writing back and forth with my partner, I'm more likely to be on jcink pages writing.

[Sunny Flower 3]

I think discord can be better or worse depending on what its being used for RP-wise. For example, a general RP based discord would work for open settings where people can jump in at anytime! But I also wonder about having different characters if the player has more than one. It gets hard to tell who is playing who. But I think discord is fantastic for 1 on 1 RPs, I honestly use this option with my FFXIV RP partners when we can't be in the game to progress a RP. But forum RP... I think most like it for the face one can make a post and not have to invest one chunk of time in one sitting like you need to with real-time RP that's required in mmos and discord based RPs. 

[Detrimentum 2]

On 9/20/2020 at 2:47 PM, DivineRabbit said:

 I am  in agreement with that too. I noticed something that is a double edged blade when you involved any chat platform. More time is spent socializing ( which I beleive in some measure is important for us to have our community feel) than writing- which then becomes an issue eventually.

 

I am in discord because I am admin. But I rarely speak much because I am writing- doing forum and coming up with stories. I love to plot but I dont need hours of discord to do it. And I have lost messages due to time and having little of it.

Agreed! I've noticed this too and it has really slowed traffic on sites I've been on where Discord has become a prominent and chat based. I'm not the biggest fan of Discord roleplays by any means but I hope the people who utilize it are enjoying it and not just doing it because of the lack of activity on forum roleplays that have happened as a result. 

[Juls 8]

I have role played on forums for a long time.  Gone through various phases over the years decades.   I've had some really fantastic tales and written with some very talented writers!  And also had countless RPs wither and die, sometimes fizzling after just a couple posts, sometimes dying a slow, painful death as the group slowly goes from posting every day, then to every few days, then once a week, once a month... 

 

I was approaching burn out with the whole thing last year (not for the first time, I've taken various hiatuses over the years!), and on a whim decided to give a Discord group RP a real try.  

Holy crap!  In the last 6 months, we've had SO MANY great stories and mini-arcs that actually FINISHED!   It rekindled my excitement and love for the hobby as a whole.   It was just fun, rather than a chore!   There's a lot less pressure to write "the perfect post" that I could literally agonize over for hours or days.  

I totally get where some of the perception that a discord group RP has to be real-time chat comes from.  There's certainly a few players in the group (younger ones, I think?) that are only happy if everyone is online at the same time and they can get that 'instant gratification'.   But also plenty of players that are patient about posting speeds, respect the turn order, and have a knack for writing concise posts that are still a joy to read! 

 

 

 

[Rem 8]

I can see the appeal in Discord and other chat-client-based RPs because of the speed thing, but I grew up with forum RPs and haven't found a way yet to configure Discord's channels and categories to replicate that same feeling that forums have. If they made Discord more sophisticated, though, I'd give it a go. Folders, proper profile pages, maybe sub-chat accounts? Etc.

[Juls 8]

8 hours ago, Rem said:

I can see the appeal in Discord and other chat-client-based RPs because of the speed thing, but I grew up with forum RPs and haven't found a way yet to configure Discord's channels and categories to replicate that same feeling that forums have. If they made Discord more sophisticated, though, I'd give it a go. Folders, proper profile pages, maybe sub-chat accounts? Etc.

 

 

If you are having fun with forums, then no need to change a thing!  :)

 

But I just wanted to point out (because I had NO IDEA up until last year and figured some others following this thread might not know), that there's a bot that allows players to post as a character.  While I haven't found a way to link it back to a full character sheet, it'll at least allow the account display name and the profile image to reflect a character!

 

I attached a screenshot for reference (I blurred the text.) 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited June 23, 2021 by Juls

[Kazetatsu 263]

for those concerned with chat tomfoolery taking away from discord rp my trick is to not allow access to the fun channels for people who do not rp. lurker-chatter types, they are welcome to lurk and chat, but they miss out on a lot of the joking around because they are not actively roleplaying. As soon as someone starts actively roleplaying I am willing to change their roles so they can join in on the tomfoolery and jokes. for the chronic lurker-chatters who I know will post rp a few times then drop off into the void again, I often wait until their ocs are interacting with someone else's and the interaction has some traction to give permissions back.

[Gereth Yaztromo 1]

That's a neat idea, does it take a lot of time to manage?

[Flahme 44]

I'm glad this came up as we are thinking of implementing RP channels on my TWW discord. We initially naysayed it as a group but revisiting it six months later and there now seems to be more of an appetite for it.  The idea is they will be for quick and/or short RPs with a maximum word count. If people want more robust and longer RPs they should be doing it on the forum.

 

Also that bot that @Kazetatsu mentioned sounds really interesing. I'll have to look into that.

[Kazetatsu 263]

I didn't actually mention the bot. but its probably Tupperbox or something similar to that. I can't say more about it because I am generally against using bots. I do a lot of my server-tasks manually.

As for implementing roles, It can take time to set up but after it is set up it requires very little thought on my part. I just manually change peoples roles when I see them posting in the rp channels. that said, my server is 'small' and thus fairly easy to manage

Here's how I set up roles initially.
create 4 channel category types. info, ooc, fun, rp
create 3 roles
staff, rper, lurker
edit their initial permissions under the server settings. I usually set image/links/embeds to off for everyone to limit spam/raid issues

edit the category permissions not the channels within them.
all members can read the channels
staff can post in all categories
rper can post in ooc, fun and rp
rper may be allowed to post images/links/embeds in fun.
lurker can post in ooc and rp.
adjust permissions to your preferences.
when making a new channel, make it in the category that best fits the desired permissions. then move to other categories if needed.

extra categories might have combinations of these permissions. for example, a character-submissions category might have one channel where everyone can post images/links/embeds as part of the submission process and another channel that is read-only character-creation info.

Edited June 25, 2021 by Kazetatsu