Simply put, a text game is a sort of interactive story where one person writes in a Discord channel, and other people provide input
>using commands usually formatted like this ,
and the author/Game Master responds immediately.
It's related to IF (interactive fiction) games and forum games, but this particular format is distinguished by the GM writing immediately as soon as they receive the command, usually responding for only a couple hours at a time, unlike forum quests where it might take days to write a response.
It can get very hectic, especially if there are a lot of players, or if the game has been running for a while and you don't know what to do.
But please don't be afraid! The more the merrier, and hopefully this guide can help you get your bearings.
(this guide is written primarily for the Union Server of Evillious, and thus reflects its setup. If this is not where you are running a game, ask your local server admins for help)
The general format for commands looks like
>Do the thing
or
>Is there no flask ye can get?
(Be advised that placing a space after the > causes the message to be formatted as a blockquote: this usually doesn't matter, but the convention, for aesthetic reasons, is to command without a space)
The GM will then take each command and write how the character carries it out, and how the world responds. If there are conflicting commands, how to resolve them is up to the GM's discretion.
Some games may have special rules: don't be afraid to ask the GM about anything!
(And, of course, have fun!)
Feel free to run your own!
Text games can be a fun way to practice writing really fast, with immediate response from people in chat.
It doesn't need to be intricately plotted or whatever: you can just have fun and mess around, make it up as you go! You're not obligated to stick to established formats, either.
Go ahead and @here, as long as it's within the relevant channel.
(In the USoE, courtesy is to use only @here for games in the #games channel, even if the game itself will be run in, say, #18-plus)
Do note that a text game needs someone to play it, so it might be good to gather interest before starting a new game, and take note of when your players will be available.
Even if you try to schedule your games at appropriate times, you can't always guarantee the presence of all of your regular players. With only one channel for games, it's easy for old sessions to get buried under new messages.
To ease backreading, DMs of continuity-heavy text games often archive their text games, and copy commands and story text to an external doc, or even AO3. Consider doing this to make it easier for new players to learn what's going on!
Since text games are held on Discord, markdown is used to format text.
Different GMs have different preferences, but here are some common formatting choices:
commands | ```commands``` |
| - | `commands` |
| game text | *game text* |
The old spreadsheet contains data on text games from 2017-2019. I have no intention of going back to chronicle sessions from 2019 and 2020.
Future plans to implement:
-Text game history
-Archiving tips
-Links to IF writing resources
(This carrd was last updated in March 2021.)
The general format for commands looks like
>Do the thing
or
>Is there no flask ye can get?
(Be advised that placing a space after the > causes the message to be formatted as a blockquote: this usually doesn't matter, but the convention, for aesthetic reasons, is to command without a space)