Id like to create templates which have required fields, ideally these would be via dropdown selection boxes.
For example, if a field required the user to list their favourite animal they could choose from a box containing: “Dog, Cat, or Gargoyle”, I’d really like to provide options rather than have free form entry. Is this or anything similar possible?
If you use tags you won’t have to write a plugin that will be likely to break every time templates change upstream. I recommend that you spend an hour or so trying that before starting to write a plugin.
You can have a look at https://github.com/paviliondev/discourse-topic-previews/blob/master/plugin.rb for an example of creating Topic Custom Fields.
Discourse is, at heart, a free form discussion software.
If what you really need is a strict form, you may have better results using a more appropriate software. You could embed solutions like Google Forms and Typeform to ease the transition for your users, like this example:
Thanks, I think my wording was bad, still want free form discussion but certain things are required to initiate that. I think using the tags and templates will be enough to make it work😀