DM friend is looking for a mobile + web-based method of sharing/posting for his pen and paper campaign.
Will Discord facilitate persistent sharing/posting of media/images and be accessible via browser on the web? Or is it all ephemeral chat?
Persistence isn’t its strong point. Slack would handle that better and performs many similar tasks (no voice chat though, I think?), but the free version wipes old history, and the paid version is VERY pricey.
Why not Obsidian Portal?
If you want more permanence, https://discourse.org is your huckleberry. It is 100% free and open source, plus, tons of real time update support. The only downside is that Discourse is not really a pure chat tool, it works more at the unit of sentence and paragraph whereas chats are about individual words going back and forth.
Funnily enough the above reply arrived as I was typing this, in real time…
I paid for a Obsidian Portal instance for him a year or two ago but the engagement fell apart as there was no easy mobile app or way to access it. We tried WhatsApp to keep the campaign on-track but there was no easy public web version.
Thanks for the idea of Discourse but $99/$10/month is outside of his budget for what is just a side hobby.
I would have suggested Google Wave/Spaces but they just shut that down (again)
If you know someone that has a server on the internet they could install it. Discourse specs are $10/month but it is slowly creeping down to $5/month in some places, most notably Linode.
(Requires a Docker compatible VPS with 1gb ram, 10gb disk space, and decent modern CPU.)
Something like an ongoing FB group? You can spawn event invites from it that get added to calendars, keep a running group chat in Messenger that pings all your devices, add files, create polls, upload map and character photos, etc. And of course it’s hyper mobile-friendly.
I’m not immediately familiar with how good the long-term file organization for it is. The groups I run don’t use that feature much or at all.
edit: also, I’m not sure what the prices are like for small groups, but a Meetup could also handle it and provide most of those same features, though not chat, but rather oldschool forums. A lot of the backend management is still super web 1.0, but the mobile app is snazzy as shit. But again, there may not be an affordable options for small groups; I haven’t checked recently.
DM is anti-FB for privacy reasons alas.
Not sure what Armando is talking about, but I have had zero problems with Persistence in Discord. I just went and looked at stuff that was months old and all the images and stuff were still there.
I also like that you can be logged in to the same account from multiple devices at the same time. So, for instance, you could be talking in real-time on your computer while checking for something old on a tablet.
If said DM’s first name is Dave I know that asshole and he’s a liar; he’s on right now with a fake last name despite all his high-minded insistence otherwise ;-)
K, maybe not the same guy. Look at an alternate social network like Ello? Mind, I haven’t logged into my account on there in ages, so no idea if it’s at all comparable by now. . .
I mean heck, I dunno, maybe just spin up a $3/mo Wordpress.com account and install a chat or forum plugin (I’m sure they must be there)? Not great for editing on mobile, but then again, nothing is ;-)
are direct Obsidian Portal competitors; I dunno how good mobile applications on either one are, though, since I’ve never used either personally.
File uploads/images/etc. aren’t easily “stored” longterm unless you just feel like scrolling back up through months of game-chatter to the last time someone dropped them into chat. AFAIK, Discord doesn’t have a dedicated “uploads” section that holds onto stuff in an organized fashion. I could be wrong, but I don’t see anything like that on the servers I’m running.
Hell, would something like Canvas or Edmodo work? Lol, Moodle, maybe. . .
True, but couldn’t you break sessions up into separate channels?
You could have a channel for uber-important images/uploads, no? Maybe not the most elegant solution, but I think it’d work just fine.
So Discord DOES have persistence?
It’s persistent, it’s just not very easy to go back to stuff. (Although you can “pin” posts, which might help a bit.)
Discord has theoretically infinite message history. But, like a FB wall or Twitter timeline, it has no mechanism for organizing that stream. It’s just a pure real-time capture of every image uploaded and chat message sent.
Yes, it’s technically persistent, but I wouldn’t call it useful if you need to recall data.
no keyword search of that backlog stream of data?
They recently added search. Depending how careful you guys are, you could theoretically build a chat-based database, but if you’re a talkative lot, search is gonna get overwhelmed pretty quickly.
It’s a great communications tool for voice or chat. I just think it’s a really shitty place to use as a repository for lore, maps, charsheets, etc.
maybe i should go to irc and start a channel with dcc fileserve bots.
The suggestion of stuff like Canvas isn’t entirely joking. I know it’s ed-focused, but it handles a lot of this stuff. Probably worth looking at the two OP competitors to see if they’re more mobile friendly, though; something purpose-built is probably best rather than bludgeoning a generic tool to the task.
IMO, at least. Half of my campaigns’ data is just contained in endless, enormous email threads. . . ;-)
So the hidden requirement is that it has to be a free product, with zero hosting fees? Thus likely advertising or “we gather your personal info and sell it” ala Facebook subsidized?