Reddit is great for finding players. Not for running your campaign.
Subreddits are public boards on a platform that owns the rules. Most ongoing play-by-post games eventually move somewhere they can shape the experience.
What changes when your game lives in r/yourcampaign
A subreddit is a great front door. People find it through related communities, the search algorithm, and cross-posts. But the actual ongoing campaign is fighting two things at once: Reddit's sorting (newest first by default, not "scene order") and Reddit's rules (sitewide moderation, account suspensions, format limits).
When a campaign matters, you want the archive structured by you, not by what got upvoted yesterday. You want to control who is in, and you do not want a sitewide policy change to affect your game.
Where Reddit wins
- Discovery. People stumble onto your subreddit through related communities and search.
- Familiar. Everyone has an account already.
- Free, with a working mobile app and a reasonable mod toolkit for size.
Where a forum wins for an active campaign
- Custom structure: categories for in-game, off-game, characters, world.
- Your own subdomain and branding. The campaign feels like a place, not r/something.
- Member-only sections, invite-only threads, no sitewide policy hanging over you.
Side by side for play-by-post
| For your campaign | Forumera | |
|---|---|---|
| Scene ordering | Threads sort by activity by default. The scene people are in stays visible. | Posts sort by upvotes or recency. Long-form scenes drop out of view. |
| Character pages | Dedicated character threads with AI updates and an RPG Stack link. | Wiki page or a flair, both crude. |
| Async writing | Designed for posts written hours or days apart. | Works, but the algorithm favors fresh content. |
| Discoverability | Indexed by Google on your subdomain. SEO controls per page. | Heavily indexed by Google, surfaces in unrelated searches. |
| GM tooling | AI recaps, character updates, canon summaries. | None built-in. |
| Control | You own the data, the brand, and the membership. | Reddit owns the platform. Sitewide bans, content policy, ads. |
Reddit for the front door, your forum for the room
Keep your subreddit if it is bringing in players. Use it as the welcome mat. Link from it to your forum where the actual campaign lives.
Once your group has formed, the campaign needs structure Reddit does not give you. The forum is where the story stops being a stream and starts being a place.
Questions we hear
Stop fighting the algorithm
Free to start, no credit card. Your subreddit can stay. The campaign can move.
Create your RPG forum