Thoughts on Discord RPs?

[Blooming of the Blooms 19]

I used to be weary of Discord, still am in some ways. I've done 1x1 on it which has worked great, simple formatting and focus on writing, no worrying about graphics, you can create extra channels for all your RP desires and organisational things - it's great! Like your own little world, shared just between you and someone else.

 

Never done group RP on it, am curious to see it. I've taken pre-existing characters off existing forums and done rapidsies on Discord, which I love too. Discord can make it feel like there's less pressure, which is honestly so great.

Edited May 1, 2022 by Rainbow Wilderness

[outskrt 0]

I think that roleplaying on Discord could be great because it's very easy-access. 

[Image 2]

I personally have been a bit wary of discord roleplays, but recently with its current updates to discord with adding threads. I think has made discord role-play posting a little easier and rather enjoyable.

[Matsumota 5]

On 4/24/2020 at 3:31 PM, dylzoe said:

I know many people now are shifting away from the email/forum RP style towards Discord. However, I kind of like the style and personality you can put into forum RPs. I have some mixed thoughts about it, but I have decided I like discord more for one liners or quicker RPs, but forums for longer and more plot-important RPs. Overall, I am more experienced in forum RP, so I wondered what others think about this issue.

 

How do you feel about Discord as a way to RP? Better? Worse? Somewhere in between?

The fast food of roleplay. Generally little substance. Nevermind they don't read. And out of all mediums they have the highest ghost rate by a large margin. And yes, it's fast food. Hence why 99% of them have a life cycle as lasting as a fart in the wind. Though free advice, anyone without a character sheet walk away. Doing that has improved my partners and their commitment by 3 fold. Just be aware most have never made a character sheet, or will jabber off their character is perfectly consistent despite always tailoring them to any world/plot.

Edit- There are good players on that medium. But they are rare. And no, I don't define good under some silly lens such as "dey tyhpe 4 parahs dey bee gud." Length without substance is vapid.

Edited July 22, 2022 by Matsumota

[Lady Hyde 21]

On 7/22/2022 at 1:27 PM, Matsumota said:

The fast food of roleplay. 

 

This is forever going to  be how I refer to discord RP now and I can't thank you enough for bringing that nugget into my life. 😂

 

I WANT to like Discord RP. I have tried to get into it several times now. Made the character, adjusted to the way they're ran. I want to be that person who can churn out small posts and be happy with it. I want to be able to write constantly and I thought Discord would let me take the edge off throughout the day. 

 

But I've never been someone who can do rapid fire. For two reasons: 1. My life is absurdly busy and I'm not great at time management (unless someone is paying me). 2. I have a lot of thoughts and feelings and rapid fire/discord makes me feel incredibly limited. I don't think you can successfully get the depth of a character across in discord. 

 

Maybe I would be okay if it was 1x1 only and the other person was like minded. But as soon as discords get above five people, I'm snowed under. 

 

It also makes me reminisce about where I started roleplaying and I'm quite happy not revisiting the days of chat rp. 

[Zahhy 130]

I actually just launched my first major writing discord server (I have always had them for TTRPGs and video games) after giving it a go playing on a few others. I find that the customizable aspects of the forum roleplay was amazing and I enjoyed the deep commitment to it. However, Discord feels faster and in so many ways the exact same but without all of the bloat.

I spent a year fiddling with a forum only to launch the exact same premise in discord in a week. I write just as long and much and I've noticed a great deal of benefits that have made me very excited to keep giving it a go!

Edited August 30, 2022 by Zahhy

[FallnAngelic 1]

So when I came back into the world of RP after a long time, I experimented with Discord RP. I didn't mind it and I thought it was a good way to get back into roleplaying after I hadn't done it in so long. 

 

However, unless you have nitro, responding is limited unfortunately and for me personally I didn't like that. So I prefer forum RPs over Discord but I don't think it's bad for someone just starting our or someone returning back after so long

[Prophecyte 0]

Man, what a question. Personally? I dislike  Discord for RPing. I know people use it for resources and there are a ton of bots to help you out and make elements easier for quality of life, but I do feel like its...similar to AIM? Convenient after a long day of work. I know after my jobs sometimes the last thing I want to do is write a long post sometimes, but I also know half of the time that's just my own burnout.

 

I think Discord works situationally for some people. Especially ones looking for something quick.

[Untold Tales 2]

On 4/24/2020 at 3:31 PM, dylzoe said:

I know many people now are shifting away from the email/forum RP style towards Discord. However, I kind of like the style and personality you can put into forum RPs. I have some mixed thoughts about it, but I have decided I like discord more for one liners or quicker RPs, but forums for longer and more plot-important RPs. Overall, I am more experienced in forum RP, so I wondered what others think about this issue.

 

How do you feel about Discord as a way to RP? Better? Worse? Somewhere in between?

I think this is really just a preference. I think Discord RP is nice if things are wanted to be kept short and quippy but there's something nice about Forum RP that you just can't get from discord. Now I know discord is coming out with Forums for their community servers so maybe that'll put things more in forum favor or it'll just keep sucking away from online stuff. I guess only time will tell. 

Personally, I prefer forum. Unless it's smaller discord 1v1 or so on and for forth. 

[Nypromi 1]

I am honestly not a fan.

 

I did used to roleplay in IC chats where you can modify your ICON image and name to reflect your character and such in order to play IC but in Discord you can't do that and in order to do you have to use the Tupperbox bot to register and change this and that and honestly I am a old bat, all of that is really complicated for someone like me.

 

I also find that role playing in a chatroom takes away from the forum. People seem to thread less if they can just do in a chat room and I think it defeats the point of the forum all together.

[agrizian 0]

I feel like Discord RP meets a need for some people while quickly turning others away. It all depends on what you're looking for in an rp (and by extension, community). It seems like a great option for those that are into more "chat" room roleplay, like rapid fire free-for all. And no doubt some great writing and storytelling can come out of places like that. For me, however, I very much prefer forums because I have an easier time cataloguing all my threads in an orderly fashion all like little chapters in a book. The option to have both open and closed threads is present on forums as well.

But maybe I just don't like change. Discord rp just doesn't do it for me, same with Tumblr and single thread mass rps. 

[PersonaDraco 0]

Discord roleplay is actually quite convenient for me. As someone who likes to help get 'into the mood' of RP with music and sounds, I often times post it alongside the roleplay because it more often than not makes the roleplay enjoyable.

[vvintersoldier 3]

I've never been able to get into discord rps :(( I'm so used to forum based roleplays, and discord rps are so different when compared to that.

[deimosphoibus 2]

Discord RPs are fine, but damn if they're not a special hell to manage/archive. As far as I know, the only way to archive is manually copying and pasting each reply into a separate document, but that tends to break the formatting. So you have to reformat everything manually. I sure hope that there is a bot or something to automatically generate a PDF from a discord channel...

 

Another thing that bothers me is the character limit, I always end up having to break my reply into two (and sometimes three) parts. The only way of getting around that is by paying for their Nitro service.

[nemesis 2]

I love how accessible Discord is as someone who’s constantly on mobile platforms, but it drives me crazy when RP servers do a poor job of taking advantage of Discord’s most useful features. (Community forum channels, guys! They’re great! Use them!)

 

That said, the pacing can be murder sometimes. The chat-oriented approach that most servers take means things can get super temporally wonky really fast, unless measures are taken to curb the discrepancy between chat-speed roleplay on one section of the server and para-speed writing on another.
 

It’s all in how things are organized, though, ultimately. A well-organized Discord server with its information kept centralized and having clear-cut channels is a dream.