A very unusual question - chat, aliasing and more

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AI-generated summary

Ahkileez is considering using Discourse for a Star Trek literary roleplaying game community. They’re interested in using Discourse’s integrated chat feature, but have specific requirements. One is the ability to change users’ names temporarily to reflect their in-character personas, similar to using the /nick command in IRC. They also explored the staff alias plugin as a potential solution.

Canapin pointed to a similar request on Meta Discourse, which had a custom solution proposed by Arkshine, although it’s not as straightforward as a /nick command.

Ahkileez also asked if it’s possible to set chat windows to fullscreen by default. joffreyjaffeux replied that once a chat window is expanded to full page, it should remember the preference.

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I’m not ad all certain if this is the right place to do it, but none of the others seemed any more appropriate. I apologize to the mods in advance if I’m asking in the wrong place.

We’re looking into using Discourse for a bit of a strange community and I’m wondering if some of the things we’re looking to do are in any way possible with this package.

To describe what we’re looking to do, it’s probably easier to describe how we used to do it.

This community is sort of like a Star Trek literary roleplaying game. It’s basically cooperative writing. Sometimes games are longform and done over email, with the finished ‘chapters’ curated once they’re done. But the more dynamic form is when it’s played in ‘live chat’, which we did for over 20 years via IRC.

THe big attraction for Discourse was the integrated Discourse Chat. In those cases, players play ‘in’ and ‘out’ of character. Which could be done simply in IRC by just using the /nick command and changing your name to your Star Trek character for the duration of the live game and switching back once done. Is this something that can be easily done in Discourse? I did look through the plugins and saw the staff alias thing. Might that be a solution instead?

Also, is there a way to ‘lock’ the chat windows to fullscreen by default?

I think these are the only questions I have at the moment. Thanks in advance for any help you’re able to provide. And apologies once again to the mods if this post is misplaced.

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Welcome, Kurt :wave:

A somehow similar request was made here:

A custom solution was proposed by @Arkshine, but I believe it was not 100% completed (and not as simple as a /nick command, though it could be improved).

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One you have expanded to full page it should remember this preference.