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.
I’ve never felt a desire to move off old-school IRC.
Funny enough, Skype is dead now, just like ICQ, MSN, and many others. But IRC is still alive. Decentralized protocols <3
Unfortunately, it’s only alive as long as you don’t close your client.
The community had solved this problem decades ago. Of course, bouncers, relays, and other solutions are not for everyone. But there are also modern web clients like https://thelounge.chat/ that always stay online. You can use them pretty much like discord for text chats.
I’ll be that guy in 2051.
Too soon, add 500 years.
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.
Matrix.
Features-wise, Guilded has all of the same features that discord has (and maybe slightly more).
Internet Relay Chat
a technology handed down to use from the ancients.
Video chats though?
don’t be a creep
OP literally mentions video calls for RPG stuff, and although I haven’t used irc in a hot minute, I’m pretty sure it’s not relevant for them.
You know, I’m gonna be the oddball suggestion here.
Forums. What forums? I don’t know, the last time I used them was proboards back in 2010 so I’m sure I’m out of the loop on the options, but I do miss forums sometimes. That was where I ran RPGs, back in the day.
We are considering a seperate play by post game using some of the forums and sites set up for that. But having a voice and video chat with friends, with easy options for adding dice and game management bots is appealing.
Yeah, I hear you. And even if you post at lightning speed, there’s something about forums that just feels slower compared to the speed posting in a chatroom can get you.
ZULIP
What’s good about zulip? It’s not one I’m familiar with.
- Open Source.
- IRC Integration
- self-hosted
First i hear of this one, interesting, how far along is it?
Not even close to being a replacement currently. I’m hoping it gets there though
Not sure tbh
During the pandemic, discord has been a lifeline for me and I did not find alternatives that had a specific feature that may appear irrelevant but that I found deeply comforting: When people are hanging out in a vocal channel, you can see them. It was not much, but it was the closest we had to going to university and seeing groups of friends just chilling together.
There are many other platforms for text and vocal chats, but this is a feature I am still looking for.
Prove me wrong !
Matrix. But if you want something that looks and feels exactly like Discord, there is Revolt. It’s FOSS.
If only revolt added federation. Then I’d be behind it 100%
In the FAQ, they state that federation is not in their roadmap, but if someone can do it, then they are willing to merge it. Since Revolt is written in Rust, we can use Lemmy devs’ activitypub federation crate. I might take a look at it someday.
I’ve even thought about it, but I don’t know rust and right now just don’t have the time, but it seems like it’d be fairly simple. Matrix and revolt have a lot in common, it’s just translating between the two
Oh no like I meant using ActivityPub to federate between different Revolt instances or even other future software that might be an alternative to Discord and is federated using ActivityPub.
Oh, yeah no activitypub isn’t meant for private messaging. It’s great for things like mastodon and lemmy, but there is zero privacy, it’s meant to blast out to anyone who wants to listen. Messaging the best standards right now are Matrix and XMPP.
Well yeah. Revolt is not really E2EE (yet), so it doesn’t matter. And it is not impossible to build a private messaging app with ActivityPub, see sup from the dev of Pixelfed. It also seems like some people are trying to get E2EE encrypted DMs in Fediverse to be a thing: https://wedistribute.org/2024/05/encrypted-dms-activitypub/
Yes, but if you need a truck, use a truck. If you need a car, use a car. They both do similar things, but the reason it’s taking a while for that stuff is because the protocol was not built for that in mind. They’re two different use cases. You’re not the first to have the idea here, and I’m sure you won’t be the last. Use each protocol for what they’re good at. ActivityPub was designed to be a great social network protocol. Matrix and XMPP were both built to be great secure messaging protocols. Trying to shoehorn either one into a use case it wasn’t meant to be results in a subpar experience.
What would be neat is if the Lemmy Client added a messaging protocol with it, so it could be both a matrix and a lemmy server. Each user gets their own Matrix handle out of the gate, so DMs are actually Matrix DMs. Then you could also open any matrix client with it too. The clients I have no problem with them being dual purpose, the protocols though, those are very specific.
I mean, our friend group still uses IRC. Go back to the roots, discord is merely a fancy IRC anyway. Quakenet is still up and running, working as smoothly as ever! (So at least one netsplit* a day… :D)
Matrix? I think you can setup text channels and also do voice/video/screen sharing in the channels as well if you’re using element, though I havn’t been able to convince my friends to jump ship yet, so don’t know how it compares to discord
Jabber, a.k.a. XMPP. It’s decentralized, featureful, standardized, and low on server resources.
Here’s a user’s guide I wrote.
https://contrapunctus.codeberg.page/the-quick-and-easy-guide-to-xmpp.html
This is the right answer.
I’ve adminned both, and XMPP is ridiculously performant. Matrix made a mistake making the room the atomic unit.
There’s Revolt, if you’re happy being on an empty platform that none of your friends will ever move to.
Never say never, once Discord goes IPO and the enshittification goes bad enough to annoy gamers Discord is fucked, and Revolt is a drop-in replacement, the fact that it can be self-hosted will also be a plus for some people, mass migrations are rare but they DO happen
Hah, that’s fine, because it would be for our group activity they’d be fine with making accounts. I never used discord to chat with people outside my small group of irl friends.
Oooh! This sounds like me!
Why this over matrix which has similar features, actual users, and is federated?
Revolt has better feature parity with discord.
If all you’re looking to do is replace discord with a friend-group who is already on board, it’s ideal.
For gaming-related use cases, matrix isn’t there yet. It doesn’t noise gate voice calls, or support audio chat rooms, just to mention a few things.
I’m pretty sure Revolt doesn’t have audio chat in any form, or has that changed recently?
While I believe you can at least make voice rooms with element/matrix
It definitely does.
Matrix does not have audio rooms. You can start a group video call in a text group chat, in some clients.
It currently does not compare well with discord functionality.
As someone who hasn’t used any of the advanced Discord features (audio/video/streaming), and neither has really tried Revolt, how far along is it these days? I heard it was aiming for 100% feature parity but was behind in those advanced ones, but that was some years ago and haven’t kept up, it would be very good if it was at least at “acceptable” level in all those by the time Discord goes IPO
Fair enough. I’m on hundreds of servers and have never seen voice chat being used so forgot that was one of its main features for genZ/gamers.
I think Element/Matrix could do the trick
At least that’s what I intend to do with some friends for our gaming sessions and daily mindless chat
