Why GamersPlane?

Hello everyone,
I'm new to the site, but in general I am curious as to what pulled you to this site versus the myriad of other PBP options available. I'm in no way knocking on this site at all, just getting to the root of what keeps you here. I'm especially interested in anyone that uses this site exclusively versus a service like Discord. Thanks for your time and reply, it is appreciated. :)

I can't imagine playing PbP in a chat app like discord. It is too hard to store information and read through everything. What keeps me here is its the most active PbP site I've found. I really like the aesthetic and some features of Tavern Keeper, but the site is must less active and has a real lack of basic features. The less said about Roll Gate the better lol.

I believe I tried to get involved with Roll Gate and promptly gave up! lol Yes, Tavern Keeper does have some neat features. I played a game on there about a year ago. Thanks for your opinion on this.

I was invited here to join a friends game. I had never played PBP before. I enjoyed it, got into a couple more games. Enjoyed them.
I found the other players to be very supportive of people learning systems.
I tried one game in Roll Gate and I don't think I will be leaving here again.

I was on a few different sites that all used crazy formats to get data tables, rolls and other game options. It would take me a half hour to just format a response with my characters picture and a roll. This is super easy out of the gate, lots of games, and great people.

Thanks for sharing that! :)

That's encouraging. It does seem to be quite intuitive. :)

I don't even know, it was six years ago. I found the link either through Keleth posting on Facebook, or randomly from Twitter back when I still used that. It was my first PBP site, and the others I've looked at seem like massive downgrades from the features I'm used to here.

There's a fairly large number of active users here compared to other PbP sites I've tried. That's key to running a healthy game, since it means you can always recruit replacement players when someone inevitably has to bow out or (worse) ghosts on you. Having a sizable core of active users also means that even obscure games can get off the ground, which means that, as a GM, it can be an opportunity to run some more esoteric or niche stuff. Finally, the site seems to have a very healthy culture of support and positivity. Since I joined about two years ago, I've only seen one user really challenge this open and welcoming atmosphere by attempting to be edge-lordy, but they quickly learned that the folks here are overwhelmingly committed to making this an open and accepting community.

I joined four years ago. I found out about it from a podcast; I believe it was Dungeon Master's Block. With the great people here and the variety of games available, I haven't felt the need to check out any other PvP options.

Honestly, for me its the Layout of the site and how user-friendly it is. So much simpler to just post a game and get running. The only downside is that it doesn't support as many games other sites.

Community is nice, a good number of active players, games are good, site is pretty easy to use for forum play. Other sites I find are lacking in at least one of those four things.

I found this site a little over a year ago, looking for a place for my friends to play our first game together. It didn't really get off the ground, nor did the hobby stick to them, but I found a good site to play RPGs.

On a side note, I might've liked Rolegate if it weren't for their awful sheets. Have you ever tried to make a custom sheet in Rolegate? Jesus. The blank textbox looks like the genius ruleslite solution by comparison. Like comparing FATAL vs. Lasers and Feelings.

I've been around since 2016. I came here because after having kids, in-person gaming was growing increasingly difficult to find time for. Found Gamers Plane through the Dungeon Masters' Block podcast and was hooked pretty quick. I've tried other platforms and find Gamer's Plane to be the best. It is a solid platform made by an awesome owner that supports a large, friendly community.

I've DMed on both. I really don't like Discord.

Firstly, there are more formatting options on GP. This gives more opportunities to tell the story in the way that it is in your head.

Discord


vs GP



Discord gives me what? Bold, italic and short spoilers.

Font sizes let characters shout and whisper. Colours allow you to have multiple characters speaking and show who's speaking.



Fonts can show the language being spoken.



Discord is a chat system, and it shows. For a more real-time game? Yeah, I'd use Discord. My PbP isn't chatty. I play PbP for the fuller, more narrative experience. It's different to RPG around a table, and I prefer it.

---

What's better about Discord?

Discord has push notifications. But I use email notifications - so GP works fine for me.
Setting up private groups is less cryptic and easier on Discord.
I quite like Discord's emoji, so people can indicate when they love a post.

I use GP's 5e character sheet integration. For me, this works better than Avrae (which as a DM, I never got to grips with). Maybe there are character sheet integrations on discord for non-5e systems. Dunno.

Keleth talking about this site on a podcast was the first time I heard of PBP, so I came here and I just found this page does everything I need. Active and friendly community, a wide variety of games being played, simple but still enough formatting options. I just never felt the need to try out other sites xD
I tried Discord before but I like the forum format better than the chat

I had no idea you could do most of that stuff lol. Judging by the chat toolbar, I thought you could only do stuff like bold, italics, and colors. You should write a tutorial on how to beautify posts!

I'm not allowed to. It's arcane knowledge that has to be passed down from the ancients (Qralloq, I mean Qralloq).

Cthralloq, the great old one

Qralloq, make a tutorial of your forbidden knowledge please.

There is this post about embedding images

Thanks!

The issue with CSS formatting is that it can be abused. While we can use it to do the things Adam has demonstrated, it could easily be used maliciously. As such, after discovering that they work, we quickly realized as a community that the risk of spreading the knowledge was too high.

The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the deadly light into the peace and safety of a new dark age

Thanks. I'm starting to see what you mean. :)

Very encouraging! I've had similar experiences with PBP in general, but this seems like healthy and reliable place.

Thanks! :)

Very informative. I see your points and I agree. Thanks!

Thanks!

A friend invited us here to play a game. Claimed GP would work better than the basic tool we had on this other site we were hanging out in. Some years later, another guy on that other site insisted we played a game on tavern keeper instead. While tavern keeper has some really nice features, I found its dice roller to be really unintuitive and unable to handle most rolls GP is capable of.

Just looked at https://www.tavern-keeper.com/

Not gonna lie - that looks quite pretty.

Yeah it's got some really nice coding and some cool ideas. My favorite is you can leave comments on a post where the post will flip over like a notecard and so it makes every post it's own little sub-thread. It's much cleaner and saves space instead of making a new post and just quoting the original post.

Ugh! Responsive design.... which is all on the left! Man! That's gonna give me a wicked crick in my neck.



The dice roller is better than GP's in that it can handle things like: 2d8+1d4+3

But (as far as I can see) it's one dice roll per post - and anybody who's been in one of my games knows that that isn't going to work for me.

(Edit: you can add multiple rolls if you comma separate them. Nah man, I need multiple lines)

Yeah I never noticed before how much white space there is haha. Apparently like Keleth, the creator's working on v2.0 so the website has been in "stasis" mode for awhile.

I played pbp for probably 2 years before I found Gamersplane.

Bounced around through the major sites, tried a couple smaller places. Once I found GP I never looked back.

Reason number 1, and the most important by far, for me is the community. I experienced a lot of elitism at the majors, a lot of cliquee-ness. I experienced severe cliquee-ness, mostly relating to the "founding community" at the few smaller places I tried. Never got any of that here. Certainly ppl have ppl that they know best and may tend to form groups around those ppl still here, but I never experienced exclusivity. Very open. Very helpful. And most importantly, just kind. That last bit can be surprisingly rare...

The other reasons for me is the "suite" of tools. Just the combination of in-post dice roller and easy formatting tools, the in-forum character sheets, and the ability to have individual avatars for characters and NPCs.

I specifically searched for a PbP site in Google a few years ago when I found GamersPlane. Back then, I looked through a few of the more popular ones, but most of them intimidated me with their large userbases and high standards for writing (or at least high standards I suspected that they had). Not to say GP doesn't have standards, but it just looked more approachable! Plus, it had a nice design, and after scouting through the forums I liked the community I saw.

I much prefer smaller sites over bigger ones because otherwise I start feeling anxious over fitting in with an established userbase. But here I will eventually get to know some players, and thus will feel more comfortable around them! :D I certainly didn't regret joining, and it's still the only site I use.

As for Discord, same deal - can't interact with too many people at once. And chats make it harder for me to respond because they don't offer an option to ponder for a while over your words (even if they do, the time pressure's still here). Plus, Discord isn't very good for organizing things. Though ability to add a lot of bots for rolls and such is nice. :)

Thanks for that. :)

Yeah - - the bots are cool, but I get your point here. Thanks!

I don't have any new insights to offer.

I started 2 years ago trying out some common storytelling, with no common ruleset but alot of cliquee-ness and our way or the highway mentality.
I found a few sights and as FlyingSucculent said there were those sites that were intimidating in their complexity and sub-sub-sub-sub forums, as well as written application to have a chance to play in a game.

GP felt open, simple enough to get started and complex enough to be creative. I would great joy in exploring a character in a way there was never time for around the table.

I got back into RPGs about 6 years ago and didn’t have any local players. I searched around for some sort of online play and didn’t really like my options until I came across GamersPlane - signed up immediately and got to playing!

Thanks!

Awesome. Thanks for sharing.

As many others have said, I joined GP because of the easily understood interface and stayed because I met so many folks I love to game with.

Thanks! I hope to be among them one day!

I joined Gamers' Plane because I wanted user id 1. Makes me feel special. I also have user ids 2 and 3. Because I'm special.

LOL - that is close to cheating Keleth!

I'm late to this conversation and the OP has gone inactive but here's my say anyway:

I've tried a bunch of PbP sites but GP has the best community by far! The site itself isn't perfect but I still much prefer it over other sites, and it's constantly improving. But that's only secondary. The community is what makes me play here exclusively.

I have to agree with Jabes. The community here is so good and welcoming to new users. It honestly feels like a big family.

This! I've been here a little over two years now and tried most if not all of the sites and I find GP to be the best of all of them for the above reasons. With the later and current improvements, the site is getting better and better.