Do people use Discord for PBP?

[Douglas Muir 406]

I mean... obviously they do, because people use Discord for frickin' everything. So I guess my question is more "How does that work, how /well/ does that work, and is this something worth trying?"

Note that I'm not talking about getting a group together at 7 PM every Sunday for online-but-live gaming. I'm talking about play-by-post, just like on these forums, except with Discord. Has anyone around here been doing that, and how has it worked out?

Thanks in advance,

Doug M.

[Shadow Dragon]

It exists, I've tried it and, while it's not my cup of tea, it is popular among many players.

[Gerard Nisroc]

Yes, and they have bots that can help with rolling, character sheets, like Avrae, etc...

Some use it in combination with a Virtual Table Top (VTT) or Table-Top RPG (TTRPG) for shared maps, visuals, etc...

I have a Discord Server that discusses VTTs/TTRPGs, VTT: Table Talk <<< Link You might gain some insight there, it's a very small server.

But, I've been playing PBP here, at the Paizo Boards, since Aug 2010.

[Driftbourne]

Douglas Muir 406 wrote:

I mean... obviously they do, because people use Discord for frickin' everything.

That's the problem Discord isn't good at everything. I find Discord great for live interactions, or short notices. I get instantly lost trying to follow ongoing conversations like a PBP or sharing larger information like how to play PGP on Discord. Unlike the Paizo forums, it's hard to follow a PBP on Discord to learn how it's done. I haven't yet found a good way to learn PBP on Discord.

Discord split some of the PBP community away from the Paizo forums. But even on Discord, it's even more fragments between different Discord servers. Of the people I know who left the forums for Discord PBP the main reason has always been Discord is better if you are only or mostly going to pay from a phone.

I've played in some PBP games that used both Discord and the Forums. The game was played on the Forums and Discord was used for short notices we could get on our phones, mostly the GM posting "GM post" so we knew there was something new to react to.

[Shadow Dragon]

Driftbourne wrote:

Douglas Muir 406 wrote:

I mean... obviously they do, because people use Discord for frickin' everything.

That's the problem Discord isn't good at everything. I find Discord great for live interactions, or short notices. I get instantly lost trying to follow ongoing conversations like a PBP or sharing larger information like how to play PGP on Discord. Unlike the Paizo forums, it's hard to follow a PBP on Discord to learn how it's done. I haven't yet found a good way to learn PBP on Discord.

Discord split some of the PBP community away from the Paizo forums. But even on Discord, it's even more fragments between different Discord servers. Of the people I know who left the forums for Discord PBP the main reason has always been Discord is better if you are only or mostly going to pay from a phone.

I've played in some PBP games that used both Discord and the Forums. The game was played on the Forums and Discord was used for short notices we could get on our phones, mostly the GM posting "GM post" so we knew there was something new to react to.

That was my biggest problem too was following the 'action' on Discord. It just seems more difficult for me but I didn't start out using Discord first and then was introduced to the Paizo forums. I've always thought it was a 'me' issue for the most part.

[Andostre]

Driftbourne wrote:

I get instantly lost trying to follow ongoing conversations like a PBP or sharing larger information like how to play PGP on Discord. Unlike the Paizo forums, it's hard to follow a PBP on Discord to learn how it's done. I haven't yet found a good way to learn PBP on Discord.

I've got to second this; it's been my experience as well. It's basically a chatroom with too many unintuitive options.

I also think a lot of the PbPers who prefer Discord that I've encountered like it because they are already on Discord for other reasons, and having a game there means it's a hub site for a lot of their interests. They like not having to come to Paizo.com (or wherever) just for one specific game.

[Richard Lowe]

There's a number of thriving Play by Post communities on Discord, we have a number of Society lodges that run games using it and it works very well, as well as PbD games taking part in numerous PbP conventions. There's definitely a number of ways to run games that work better than others on the platform (separate channels for IC and OOC as an example etc) and lots of advice on how to best GM for it can be found on our lodges. If you're interested in Society play or even simply talking to some GMs who've a lot of experience with PbD as a format I'd recommend the following discord servers;

Cayden's Keg
Find the Path
Roll for Combat

Best of luck, it's a faster format than the forums PbP but it has a lot of people who enjoy it and use it in a very similar fashion!

[Shadow Dragon]

Richard Lowe wrote:

There's a number of thriving Play by Post communities on Discord, we have a number of Society lodges that run games using it and it works very well, as well as PbD games taking part in numerous PbP conventions. There's definitely a number of ways to run games that work better than others on the platform (separate channels for IC and OOC as an example etc) and lots of advice on how to best GM for it can be found on our lodges. If you're interested in Society play or even simply talking to some GMs who've a lot of experience with PbD as a format I'd recommend the following discord servers;

Cayden's Keg
Find the Path
Roll for Combat

Best of luck, it's a faster format than the forums PbP but it has a lot of people who enjoy it and use it in a very similar fashion!

Which one of those has PFS1 games?

[Richard Lowe]

I couldn't tell you offhand from memory if any PF1 games are recruiting right now, but any and all of them should be fine running PF1 if there's interest there.

[John Woodford]

I played several PFS1E games on the Org Play Online server in the past couple of years.