Gamers plane chat

I'm thinking about a simple chat system, part of it on the home page. Also to help drag some people from discord.

But I'd also like it to report activity within the site (but that might get confusing, dunno).

I just want the site to feel more alive. Community is our strength.

--Adam just entered gamers plane
--Ratilla posted in The Underling's Revival
Adam: Hi, wassup?
Ratilla: Nothing much.
--Bowlofspinach posted in Games Tavern / The dead are coming
Adam: Huh, I wish they would talk about the M&M system - it makes me think of chocolate.
--New member Freshie just entered gamers plane
Bowlofspinach: Welcome to Gamers' Plane!

The two functions on Discord that I'm unsure of are: notifications (really only necessary if we had a number of channels), and auto-refreshing (no F5 needed, the screen updates instantly with each new addition).

Are these possible with the process your contemplating of adding?

Notifications is a separate question (and applies across GP). But that's possible for everything except iOS. There are subtleties which we could discuss in a separate notifications thread.

Not requiring F5 is easy.

Notifications within the site are good enough I think. Like the little black unread icons GP had for its forums, rather than a notification service that pushes to your device.

I like this idea.

Just noodling, do you envision a chat thread added to every game (akin to Discord private servers), or would we keep them relegated to broad public threads (akin to GPs Discord server)?

I like one GP chat community (although I'd design it for multiple channels for later). Like a lobby where we can see each other, see what's going on, chat. I'm just interested in helping the community connect a little more with this feature.

We already know who's online (from The Gamers page), but if you watch then people drift in and out like ghosts. I just clicked it and I don't know many of the people online at the moment. I've not played with most of the people you interviewed on GexP, and that saddens me a little.

That reminds me... copywriting.

Not sure everyone would like to have notifications pop up every time they enter the site, visible for everyone. Other than that, I think this would be a neat idea. Would make the site look more inviting to newbies and would provide a very easy and obvious palce for them to ask questions

We would need to allow people to disable it, set themselves to 'invisible' mode as chat apps call it.
That setting might interfere with those who check the Gamers page to see who is online, but it could be kept separate from that.

I think it's a great idea. A lot of people don't want to touch Discord or don't know it exists (It can be hard to find unless you look for it). This would really help us stand out as a community-driven site.

I like the idea of a chat channel for every game, though I don't know how difficult it would be to implement. Maybe on the game's root forum page.

I think it's important to have various chat rooms so you don't have a pile of people in a single chat page.

Lastly, would this be a window that follows you along no matter which page/forum you're in? Not many people hang out on a specific page on GP, so it would be convenient to be able to access the chat from anywhere (other than game forums).

I'll abstain here. I don't love site-specific chat tools -- I think Discord is far and away the place for real-time gaming comms these days, and I personally find it far, far easier to participate in communities if they are there, vs. on individual sites. I'm likely in the minority here, so ignore me.

I get you Harrigan. I both like and dislike this idea. It's really hard for me to say right now in advance.
I definitely see the use but also some issues

Me too with the like and dislike without seeing a site-specific chat tool in action.

I am in favor of a chat system, but for me, its about game specific channels. I don't think there's a need for a site wide system, discord does that better. If we had a chat system, we'd want it to enhance the PbP experience. We'd be better off putting time into a discord bot if we want to link the site and chat together.

While I agree with you here 100%, I don't see the difference between a ingame/inforum chat and the OutOfCharacter tread.

2 conserns:
Discord works well on my phone and I can keep up there. There is a lot of funktionality to match before any ingame chat will be on the same level as Discord.

It can differentiate between active and new players. Hear me out here
Before I found GP I looked at danish several pbp sites, all had a chat (example here, button of the page). All the regular players were chatting away, and my cautious Hello got lost in the stream of shit-chat. I never really felt welcome. By keeping to forum discussion, old and new users have a more equal voice, while chitchat is directed to the discord general channel.

I think you make a good point there, Rune. The site can already feel quite siloed and cliquey, anything that might accidentally make people feel unwelcome would be awful - the law of unintended consequences.

There's a cliché that nobody wants a drill bit, what they want is a hole. I don't want a chat system, I want a more connected community.

I'm not saying that we're bad at this - I think our community is GP's strength - I just want us to play to our strengths.

And, anyway, since this chat feature was floated we're already getting a more connected community on the site. It started with Qralloq's video interview series, and I think the public game visibility has helped bring us together too.

Instead of chat, perhaps we should also have short text interview forums/threads - like AMAs. Because not every new member has twelves hours to spend watching a video series, but they might want to read a short AMA from the DM they've just signed up with.

Instead of chat, I now wonder what tweaks we can make to leverage the public game renaissance. It should feel like "Look at all these people having fun - pull up a seat..." or something (Imma need help with the "or something"). What can we do to improve public game participation - public reactions? public ooc?

Instead of chat, maybe the LFG random user selection thing might help us to know one another too.

Dunno.

AMA threads are also a fun idea. Not really a site functionality thing. More like a community activity thing

Perhaps you could be the first? I don't really know how they work - I've heard about them but never read one.

I think it is a wonderfull idea. Have a week or two where people could pick bowlofspinach's brain for anything. No question in relation to GP or pbp is too stupid to be answered.
I would gladly take the next week

Sounds like a fun idea. I'll think about it. I'll have to go to work in a moment but we could get something like this rolling soon

Yah, I like AMAs. I'm happy to be a part as well, though I feel like people have heard my story a bunch of times. I vote Adam to host an AMA.