Discussion Forum or Discord RPs?

[Thundawave]

The main mediums for roleplaying in this community are forum and Discord. Forum RPs allow for more description and showing inner thoughts, but they’re much slower. Discord RPs, on the other hand, zoom by and have better potential for natural interactions, but they require people to think on the spot and be online at the same time.

So which one do you prefer? Forum, Discord, a hybrid, or something else?

 

[Grunt Beavie]

From doing wrestling RPs, we have used both written posts on forums where we write out an entire RP piece (or a Promo), and also some of them legit use Twitter, which is kind of like using Discord in that it is instant.

I've enjoyed writing a nice in-depth RP piece, sometimes having someone help with it if we need to interact, and I guess I enjoy the sense of control I can have with it. However, it can be a bit more work and in terms of a forum RP, you sometimes struggle to write something longer than a couple of lines since there are some cases that it's all you realistically need and you need filler.

On Twitter, I like the instantaneousness of it and I established allies of my character and enemies entirely thanks to it. However, I think because it is so instantaneous (and in the case of Twitter we didn't have control over it) it's hard to keep a direction and safeguard against someone doing something utterly stupid. Like there were cases where people had decided to pick fights with other people's "companies" including trying to break the fourth wall or just reduce to bullying. I can imagine in a Discord server, there is at least more control to stop that kind of stuff, but it may also move too fast to keep up with.

 

[Moonwatcher]

Even ignoring my personal feelings towards Discord, (had some bad interactions there recently and have essentially left,)
I still prefer Forum RPs.
I'm never very good at coming up with things on the spot. I like to reread everything and have time to plan out stuff in advance. Not that I ever end up doing that.
Also, I take some time to get into character. If I'm interuppted writing a post, then I can just come back later when I'm ready, wheas with IMs I have to get right back to RPing cause the other person will be busy too.

These all apply to talking anywhere online though. I prefer Forums over Discord in general for all the same reasons.

 

[Mystical]

I think Discord is good for short or casual roleplays. Then you basically don't have to think about it too much, you just sort of go with the flow, and it does go by faster, plus the GM doesn't even need to control as much, just maybe coordinate certain story points.

Forum roleplays can be casual or literate. As for more fluid interactions, I sometimes like to co-write a post with someone else so they or I don't have to reply to each line individually, and if done well, it can even work better than on discord, in my opinion.

From my experience, I prefer some forum roleplays I've been in, with some very creative roleplayers who were able to builld upon another character's interactions and on the story together. It never seemed like a task, and I could freely practice my writing skills and better develop my character. I really don't think the story would have come out the same way on discord, so I do value forum roleplays. But a lot of credit also goes to the people I roleplayed with. Plus the discord roleplays I've been in have been great at the beginning but then just died, while forum roleplays can last longer because of the flexibility that you can take longer to write a post, so if you don't have time one day then you can start writing a post and then finish it another day.

Additional note: maybe discord or instant roleplays worked better when people were in school because then people didn't have as much responsabilities and could take one moment each day to just goof off and interact with the other characters. Discord can even be adapted to not be as quick but still be quicker than a forum roleplay. Nowadays most people have their own thing going on and don't have much time to roleplay on discord (this is my theory, at least. ) Also, I have tried discord RPs outside of marri and it works better with less people (sometimes with only two or three).

 

[Godot]

Both have their advantages and draw backs. I like a mix of both, a forum rp that uses discord for planning or OOC. Or maybe a forum RP that has some sort of Discord for collaborative backstory/world building (not sure how this would play out, just an idea off the top of my head). Honestly I can work, and thrive I might add, in just about any type of roleplay format. Admittedly the flaw is that overtime folks lose interest and this is a problem with both Discord and the forums. Eventually people stop playing for whatever reason, things get put on hold indefinitely, and then the game just dies. It happens, and if you're lucky the story ends before that point but it's pretty rare for something like that to occur.