Bring on the Discourse

23 Jan, 2025

A Call to Forums

Let's bring back forums! Or rather, let's bring OSR discussions back to forums. Indeed, there are already OSR and RPG-related discussions happening on places like enworld, rpg.net, odd74, rpgpub, the cauldron, and so on.

However, the majority of discussions within the OSR community (.e.g. between creators, players, etc) are not happening on forums.¹ They are happening on Discord, and to a smaller extent Bluesky and Reddit.²

Social Media Mostly Sucks

I'm not going to spend a lot of time regurgitating my feelings on microblogging platforms like Twitter/X or Bluesky (and Mastodon, let's not forget). They are toxic places that destroy community rather than build it, and at best serve as a font for advertising. If you're reading this you probably already know exactly what I mean.

But I'll admit, I really do miss Google+. It had the perfect balance of social and forum posting; I even moderated a few communities there. I miss the Gauntlet forums (which are still accessible), and I even miss the story-games forum!

However this is not a nostalgia post. This is a plea to those that feel as I do about the ephemeral nature of discord and the toxic wasteland of social media. You might ask, "But Yochai, why do you care if other people join your dumb little forums?"

I care because while there are a bunch of forums out there, not enough people are using them! For example, the RPG Cauldron has seen very little traffic since the slow burst of discussions during its inception.

You can see a significant increase after I left Bluesky (thanks!), but it was pretty much dead before. And that's partly on me, I got tired of talking to the void! The OSR Pit is no longer online, and the remaining OSR & Indie RPG forums seem to be dying at a similar rate.

What's Wrong With Discord?

I'll admit, Discord is really good at facilitating real-time communication. Users can join a server, pick a channel and just start talking, so the barrier to entry can feel low (this isn't totally true of course, as we'll see below).

Discord has channels and categories for specific topics, is extensible via bots for scheduling and planning sessions, and the voice/video functionality is decent for online gaming. Also, Discord is free to use. This last bit can't be overstated! No one has to pay to host a server, and even paid "Nitro" users gain very little for their money.³

Sounds pretty good, right? Well it ain't all roses. In my experience most public RPG Discord servers are disorganized, poorly moderated, and difficult to find. A lot of folks find Discord quite overwhelming due to message volume and near-constant notifications. Conversations flow on endlessly, switch topics without warning, and are often dominated by only a handful of regular users. Most servers have a "culture" of conversation that can be very off-putting to new users. Internet shorthand and in-jokes are rife.

Another of my gripes with Discord is the difficulty in finding past discussions. The search function works, but it isn't organized by topic; you can of course search by channel, but it isn't quite the same. In recent years Discord has rolled out new features such as threads and "forums", neither of which make ongoing discussions any more approachable, nor finding past discussions any easier. In short, Discord is for chat, not carefully thought-out posts.

Relatedly, I fear that if Discord shut a server down or put access behind a paywall, we'd lose everything. The history, images, files, discussions, and so on. This could also happen on public forums, but there is a higher chance of cached and backed-up copies lying around. I'm afraid we'd be in another Google+ fiasco! Of course you can manually backup Discord servers, but the process is tricky and getting harder and harder to do, as the chat exporter bots I've used rely on older APIs that will soon be inaccessible.

And finally: discoverability. Where do people find Discord servers? If you searched for "OSR Discord" on Google for example, here is what you would see:

The top post is a Reddit thread from four years ago. The top "answer" suggested by Google is to a dead link to the "Purple OSR" server (arguably the largest RPG community on Discord).

The second suggestion links to some system-specific or dedicated podcast servers. There are two non-Discord databases of servers that offer no information (and might as well be poisoned). Finally, there is a link to a forum post from TheRPGSite (please don't go there) that also goes to a dead link!

I think that the primary mode of finding OSR servers is from other users, so that the onus of inviting new members is on folks already within that community. I don't think this is particularly accessible.

Forums: The Answer to All My Problems

As this recent post by Russ at YUM/DM points out, discussions on forums are typically of a much higher quality. Posts are arranged by topic and category, typically siloed around a specific top-level post. For example, here is a long discussion about the game Troika! on the RPG Cauldron. You can see that folks there made well-thought out responses, replied to specific comments by others, and overall were very kind to one another. And critically, that conversation is public to the Internet, meaning others can find it!

Forum search is typically more powerful and easier to use than on Discord, largely because there is a much smaller signal-to-noise ratio. There is a lot more chatter on Discord, and that isn't always a good thing. There are fewer memes, advertising, trending topics, etc. It's quieter on forums, and for some that offers serious relief.

The If you're looking for community, join a forum or discussion board. We're waiting.

Footnotes