Personally, discord plotting gives me energy and life (and I realize as I say this that my attitude may be contributing to the slow death of forums, but c'est la vie--)

I'm really not a fan of the standard friends/enemies/lovers template, largely because I tend to rp aro/ace characters, and I tend to struggle with personality sections in general. I'd rather write a standard profile of the character's life events and figure out their personality from there.

Discord plotting lets me ramble in semi-coherent one-liners, it's less anxiety-provoking because it's private (if the person never responds, I can mute the DM and never think about them again, instead of having my unanswered plotter pitch on display for all to see), it's easier to follow the flow of a conversation because you can reply directly to things and pin important things for public threading later (whereas if I post on your plotter, do you reply to my post, or is your reply on my plotter thread? and if the latter, doesn't that make it needlessly confusing?).

The major downside is that it has the effect of making the forum look less lived-in (if nobody's responding to plotters or even public discord threads, does that mean the site is dead, or does it mean everyone is plotting with everyone else in private DMs?) but that's a tradeoff I'm willing to make.



Less "What do you want to do" and more "Suppose my character is doing X, then I think your character would do Y, and Z would happen as a result, would that be fun?"

But I agree, that level of spontaneity isn't for everyone! That's why like having the "DM me!" vs "Please don't" roles on a discord and I try not to bug people unless they're showing the same level of energy in the server that I am (which, admittedly, can be a lot).