Role by Post vs Discord for Play-by-Post

Discord is a general-purpose chat platform, and many tabletop groups already use it. It is free, familiar, and works well for a lot of things. The question is whether it is the best home for a play-by-post campaign specifically. Here is an honest comparison.

Where Discord works well

• Familiarity. Most players already have it, so there is nothing new to install or learn.
• Real-time voice and video. If your group also plays live sessions, Discord covers that in the same place.
• Community servers. It is great for large communities, announcements, and voice channels beyond the game itself.

If your group mostly plays live and only dabbles in text, a general chat server may be all you need.

Where a purpose-built app pulls ahead

Play-by-post has specific problems that a general chat platform is not designed to solve.

The story stays readable

A generic channel is built for fast, ephemeral conversation. A play-by-post campaign needs a readable, searchable timeline: scene breaks, quoted replies, and reactions that stay attached to the post they belong to. Role by Post is built around that timeline, with full-text search and the ability to export the whole campaign to Markdown.

Game tools are part of the conversation

On Discord, dice and character tools usually mean adding bots. In Role by Post the dice roller is native: tap 1d20+5 in a post to roll it, open an ability check with your modifier pre-filled, or roll pools and success dice for systems that read each die on its own. NPCs, character names, and portraits are part of the message flow.

Turns and pace are tracked

Asynchronous play needs to make it obvious whose turn it is. Role by Post tracks unread counts, marks new messages, and sends push notifications you can tune per channel — everything, Game Master posts only, or just your turn. An AFK status pauses your turn alerts when you step away.

Safety tools live with the table

Role by Post includes lines and veils and an anonymous X-card inside each channel, rather than relying on a separate bot or a pinned message.

It feels like an app

Role by Post is mobile-first and installable, so a campaign opens like a native app on a phone instead of a browser tab full of channels.

The short version

Try it

If your group wants a dedicated home for play-by-post, Role by Post is free and takes minutes to set up. Start with what play-by-post is, or read how to run a play-by-post game.