I don’t really like discord, but my gaming group have been using it for rpg stuff. Chat channels, video calls and easy to setup bots have all been really useful.

But I get the feeling the enshitification is going to get worse, so I was looking for somewhere else to migrate to. The video stuff isn’t as important, we could switch easily to other services. But before I start a new campaign, and spend time setting up bots with routines for rolling dice and calculating tables, I’d like to do it somewhere that isn’t in talks for an IPO.

I’m not really up on stuff like this, so I don’t know if there’s some obvious similar choices or an alternative medium that I haven’t considered.

  • lambalicious@lemmy.sdf.orgEnglish
    2·
    20 hours ago

    Since you mention stuff like “the video isn’t important”, “other services” (plural), I’d consider not just one alternative but several. The big problem with big name social media is that they provide a all-in-one experience that is designed for profit, and as such looks and acts worse than any of its independent parts (not to mention, the sum is artificially made more addictive to users).

    • For publishing campaign materials itself, all you need is a filehost or filebin - something like pastebin.com but that allows you to upload and organize any kind of files. Any of the offerings in the FOSS market will do, but if you are going to focus on posting quickie (rich¡) text documents that are easy to build and parse I’d suggest a Markdown-based document bin like Hedgedoc.
    • If your campaign is gonna run like a chat, XMPP / Jabber. There’s servers like Prosody or ejabberd that are easy to set up.
    • If your campaign is gonna run in web “play by post” mode, any modern web forum system will do, for example Discourse. Heck, even oldie-style web forums might do, like phpBB.
    • Voice: Jabber has access to audio IIRC. I’ve also heard very good things about Mumble.