1 min read
Meet people where they are, then get the workflow right
Choosing an interface nobody has to learn did more for adoption than any feature. The sequence, not the code, was the product.
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Catalogue
Chancery
The bridge between Discord and the game
City applications, faction management, and in-game automation, handled where the community already lives.
As the Alegacy server grew, so did the paperwork. Cities and factions appeared faster than admins could process them, every application moved through DMs and manual tracking, and putting a tag into the game meant someone typing console commands by hand. I built this bot to move that whole workflow into Discord, where the community already was.
What it is
Players found cities and factions through guided application forms, and admins approve or reject them with a button in a review channel. The bot keeps a registry of every city and faction — owners, members, roles, tags — and connects to the game server to set tags, run commands on a schedule, and act the moment specific players join. A set of admin tools covers everything from channel setup to log collection.
What it taught me
- Meet people where they are. Discord was already the community's home, so using it as the interface meant nobody had to learn a new tool.
- The workflow is the product. The value wasn't the code — it was the sequence: a form that asks the right questions, a review that takes one click, a result that appears in the game.
- Details decide whether people trust it. Case-insensitive lookups so a differently typed name still resolves, one-time commands that clean up after themselves, permissions that stay in the right hands.
- Anything touching a live world needs careful state. Every action had to be safe to repeat, easy to review, and simple to undo.
Where it stands
Ran on the Alegacy server, handling city and faction administration for the community while the server was live.
Related writing
Written while building Chancery