I very recently took over as the “Master Scribe” for a Discord group that has been active for several years now, but somewhat quiet. I’d love to build it into a helpful / fun community for people who like using Discord, and for people seeking out information that wander into the group.
If you’re wondering who I am, I have been active in the Adventuron Discord since 2020 and I’ve made several text adventure games for the annual TALJ. I really enjoy championing people, answering questions, and playtesting games, but I’m also a teacher and a mom of two toddlers, so life is busy!
If you, too, enjoy Discord and want to randomly check in to the IF Discord to respond to people and perform very light mod duties, join the Discord and then DM me from there! My username is tristin_grizel.
(If you just want to join for fun and don’t want to be a mod, then we would still love to have you )
Take a page out of Neo-Interactives book. DO things, HOLD events. They have a constant stream of Jams and whatnot going on, which draws new people all the time as well as keeping those already there active.
I’m not suggesting you do the same. We don’t need two IF discords with simultaneous back to back Jams after all, but maybe other stuff?
Like, hosting workshops or even brief talks of the audio side with a Q and A afterward? I could think of various things to cover that would draw attention and activity; maybe a workshop of how to design your own attractive and appropriate IF cover art?
Or perhaps you could have a Quest night? One of you acts as the parser (basically the DM) and, like ClubFloyd, someone ponies up as the driver, and then the rest of the crowd discuss and offer suggestions as the group plays the game in the “Parser’s” head. The person playing the parser could completely wing it with absolutely no preparation, or they could sketch out a game (without haviing to wrtite, program, or bug test it) and then fill in any blanks the players encounter on the fly, allowing a seamless experience for the players. I think it would be a unique draw and would work creative muscles on all sides.
I could spitball other ideas, but the main point is discords servers die as soon as they are not DOING something. Stay active, have events, plan things in the future, have some anticipation or even mystery to keep folks engaged. Neo-Interactives stays hopping because the team running it puts in real sweat and tears making sure there’s a reason to be there and that those reasons appeal to both the parser crowd and the choice crowd, bless them.
I didn’t know this existed, so I’ve just joined up out of curiosity. The first thing I noticed is that I don’t have permission to view the message history of #suggestions. It’s not a big deal, but just mentioning it in case it’s a setting that needs to be changed. I was able to view the message history of all the other channels, although I didn’t delve into the NSFW channel.
Judging by the introductions, the members seem to be split fairly evenly between parser-based fans and choice-based fans, which is a healthy mix. There are a few old-timers, but there seems to be a lot of people just starting out in IF. It will be hard to keep this group interested and enthusiastic. Perhaps workshops, collaborations and tutorials would help out there, but I have no idea how to do that via Discord, except as a place to promote this.
Anyway, the server is now in good hands. I trust you, Tristin. I’m probably over-committed at the moment, but if you don’t get any volunteers to help out as moderators, I can give a hand. DM me here or on Discord if you want to discuss it.
Thanks, I have plenty more, tbh. Just not the spoons or organizational skills to pull them off. Let me know if you’d like me to brainstorm a list of ideas. I’ve been told that’s what I’m good at anyway.
Here’s a freebie. Set up google docs as living wikis, things like a FAQ for the discord, Twine start up guides, Links of advice for writing Dialogue, How to Run successful Jams, Game talks on youtube that relate to IF, etc, etc etc. Then create a read-only (for the rest of the group) channel named Wikis or something like that. Post the title of each Google Doc followed by a quick blurb about the contents of each doc and then the link to the google doc all in one post. Leave the docs themselves open to public alterations, just retain a version history to allow easy rollback. This helps the chronic problem of lost or buried knowledge, which is a common refrain to Discord.
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