It’s not that I don’t like Slack. I do. It’s fine.
For work, it’s a great collaboration tool.
For shooting the breeze, it does what it needs to do.
And, to a limited extent – especially the capacity for conversation threads – it’s fairly effective as a platform for collaborative interactive storytelling.
But.
It *is* limited.
Those conversation threads don’t live forever. Once we pass a certain threshold, older threads go away and we lose the story we’ve been building. We could make them permanent, but it would cost $8 per user per month – and that’s an expense I wouldn’t want to manage even if I could afford it.
I’d also have to foot that bill to expand the number of integrations that could be used to make Slack more amenable as a gaming environment.
So, I still want to build an online community for the game going forward. With that in mind, I shifted attention to Discord – a social interface already geared toward gamers. It doesn’t have conversation threading.
But.
It doesn’t charge $8 per person per month to keep our conversations. It allows for channels that accommodate voice conversations *and* game streaming. And it’s got Patreon integration, which means that I can offer benefits for Discord users who join the community and contribute toward this Patreon.
For example, right now, the new JoinTheSaga Discord community offers three channels for Patreon contributors: BookstoreWindow (where I’ll sometimes work on writing projects in real-time), CharacterWorkshop (where I’ll collaborate with supporters on character concepts), and TheCaptain’sMess (a voice channel where I might stream music or host live chats).
Some channels are *only* available to OtherSpace players, but we’ve at least got a few out-of-character discussion areas for participants even if they’re not interested in the game itself.
