How to create a TTRPG Discord Community?
This is The Raspy Raven Rag, a newsletter about TTRPGs.
First a shout-out to the man that started me on this journey, Chris Sharp.
Chris is an outstanding developer and decided to try his hand at developing an RPG (Role Playing Game) system for a new VTT (Virtual Table Top), called Foundry. On Twitter, I saw he was looking for help with testing and I, therefore, offered my services. I was new to Foundry and the game he’d developed for it, The Dee Sanction, was on my shelf of shame. I’d bought it on Kickstarter and never played it, so I thought it an excellent opportunity to learn the game and the VTT at the same time.
Well, roll forward a few months and I’d run all The Dee Sanction adventures, many of them multiple times and had advertised for players on various Discords and Twitter, so the Raspy Raven, as I’d named my Discord had swollen to around 40 members. The Dee Sanction, thanks to its author Paul Baldowski was fairly prolific in dropping adventures and had won a number of awards, Ennies, etc. This massively helped in growing the server and I enjoyed running the game and learning/interpreting the system, it really struck that perfect goldilocks space for me in terms of crunch.
I ran a homebrew adventure for The Dee Sanction at a few cons, my first ever face-to-face and hooked up with many grognards, some of whom joined me on The Raspy Raven and others I met up with face-to-face once we found out how physically close we were.
Phase One, unbeknownst to me was complete, I’d gone from a couple of players to around 50 in three months, thanks to playtesting and running The Dee Sanction, again thanks to Chris, all the players and especially Paul Baldowski for his patience with my many questions and generosity.
Phase Two sprung from an idle conversation with Nigel Clarke, who declared 2d20 a system he didn’t care for, though in language that sent my moderation bot into overdrive. A small debate raged with Matt (Naehl) and others declaring it their favourite system. I’d seen the fancy 2d20 books, and loved the idea of Dishonored in TTRPG (Tabletop Role Playing Game) form, so a plan was formed. I’d find some 2d20 GMs and run a season of every 2d20 game, surely the debate would be settled one way or another? Well in the end we ran Achtung! Cthulhu, Dishonored, John Carter, Dune, Conan and Star Trek Adventures - certainly not every game, but enough for folks to make their own minds up. We didn’t really decide anything but it was a lot of fun, thanks to Syd, Simon, Andy, Matt (Naehl) and all the players who took part. We’d also picked up some more players, the server was around the 60-person mark, and I was still running Dee Sanction games, but we now had an enclave of 2d20 devotees too.
I’d enjoyed the organisation of this season as much as the running and playing, so I started to plan something ambitious, Phase Three, every Free League game! I knew it would, in some ways be easier, due to the popularity of Free League and I managed to pull in star turns like Paul Baldowski to GM Symbaroum, which he’d also written for. I stretched it over four weeks and used a combination of sesh and google sheets to keep track of everything - firstly lining up GMs, then planning dates and then getting players to sign up, lots of promotion of social media and other discords. By the time we’d finished, we’d run over 17 games for a month and a half and the Raspy Raven now numbered around 100 members.
Seasons carried on, one after another, a mini Doctor Who season then Cyberpunk, all helping to keep the Raspy Raven discord vibrant and diverse (as much as a load of plump, balding, grey-bearded, middle-aged men can be considered diverse).
Gumshoe and Phase Four. Gumshoe has a special place in my heart, I bought the books when I had no inkling of coming back into the TTRPG hobby, I was just curious about what the latest incarnation of a Cthulhu roleplaying game was all about. I read and collected them, a lot of them, as I had more money than sense at the time. But it wasn’t until I finally got to run The Kingsbury Horror, followed by The Black Drop, that they came alive for me. So, similarly to Free League, I aimed to run every “official” Gumshoe system and a few unofficial ones. I enlisted some amazing GMs, some first timers like Jason, others experienced and friends of the server like Rob, Nigel, Martin, Syd, Fabio, Hector, Andy, Carl & PT and some fantastic designers of RPGs, old favourite Paul Baldowski, Paul “Liminal” Mitchener, Jesse “Between the Devil and the Deep” Covener and Sean F Smith, producer of reams of indie RPGs and then last minute we twisted the arm of Kevin Kulp to run Swords of the Serpentine. With Promotional help from Cat Tobin at Pelgrane, we had around 55 people ready to sample the delights of Gumshoe and our server members now stand at 200+.
So that’s how I went from 0-to-200 in about a year and it almost broke me! Luckily the Council of Ravens has stepped in to run the future seasons of Westerns and OSR(ish) - big, big thanks to Fabio, Graham, Rob & Simon for all their support and advice.
Future seasons are always being discussed, but The Raspy Raven seasons will be on hiatus over the summer and return with a vengeance with one of; Science Fiction, Cthulhu, Heists, PbtA/FitD, Mauve or something yet to be dredged from the fevered mind of one of the 200. Oh! It’s also the 60th Anniversary of Doctor Who… so many opportunities.
Watch this space!
PS - Art and Design by Graham Roewe