A group ad usually opens with a world: houses at war, a cursed academy, a galaxy after the fall of the Republic. Whether you’ll still be writing there in a month depends on things most ads never mention: how often the story moves, what’s expected of you, and who keeps it going.
We read three and a half months of recruitment posts on r/RoleplayGroups and six months of group ads from Russian-speaking Telegram channels, and counted what groups actually say about themselves.
The short answer
Group ads sell the world, not the game. In 294 English ads, only 5% said how often to post, set an activity rule or named a time zone, and only 5% gave a post length in numbers. One in five called itself active. Tumblr and X look the same: in a separate count, 6% of Tumblr recruiters and none of 43 on X set an activity rule.
Russian Telegram ads are the opposite in one way: half of the ads for “floods”, fandom group chats where each member takes a character as their role, set a message quota, typically 80 messages a week. But where Telegram ads state an age limit, three in four accept players under 18.
Before you join any group, ask how the story moves, what happens when you’re away, and who runs it. Or look for groups where those answers are fields of their own: on the Groups board in FictionCore, our app, ads have fields for the platform, GM style, play mode, how to join and a minimum age, and you can filter by all of them.
What 294 group ads mention
| What the ad mentions | Share of ads |
|---|---|
| Discord | 92% |
| An age limit | 51% |
| An existing franchise, such as Marvel | 42% |
| A writing level, such as semi-lit | 32% |
| Lore, a wiki or world documents | 30% |
| Friendly, chill or drama-free | 21% |
| Active | 20% |
| An original world or original characters only | 20% |
| An application or character sheet | 19% |
| Game masters or plot events | 15% |
| Open canon roles or claims | 13% |
| Brand new | 8% |
| No AI | 7% |
| A post length in numbers | 5% |
| How often to post, an activity rule or a time zone | 5% |
The top of the table is about platform, setting and atmosphere. The bottom is everything you’d need to know to tell whether you’ll fit: how much to write, how often, and when. Fewer than one in five ads even used a word like pace, schedule or sessions.
Some patterns stand out:
- Discord dominates. 92% of the ads mentioned Discord; the rest were subreddits, forums and a few other sites. Tupperbox and PluralKit, proxy bots that repost your message under a character’s name and picture, came up in 4%.
- Most age limits are 18 or higher. Of the 150 ads with an age limit, 58% said 18+, 19% said 21+ and 5% said 20+, while 12% accepted players from 16 or 17, and three ads from 13.
- Franchises lead. 42% named one, most often Marvel, D&D and Star Wars, while 20% advertised an original world or original characters only.
- Game masters are the exception. 15% mentioned game masters or plot events, and 15% mentioned stats, dice or combat systems.
- Joining takes a form in one in five. 19% asked for an application or a character sheet.
Telegram floods run on quotas
On Telegram, Russian-speaking group roleplay takes two main forms. A флуд, or flood, is a group chat, usually built around one fandom, where each member claims a character as their role and mostly chats casually under that name; short in-character scenes are optional, and many roleplay projects keep a флуд of their own for out-of-character talk. A ролевая, or roleplay project, is closer to an English Discord server: a world, a plot and longer posts. One caveat for readers in Russia: the country has restricted Telegram since February 2026, and by autumn most test connections from Russia failed, so these channels may not open there at all.
In 2,448 unique ads posted between April and October 2026:
- Half of the flood ads set a message quota. 850 of 1,710 flood ads named a норма, a minimum number of messages per week. The typical quota was 80 messages a week, with half falling between 60 and 100; 100 was the most common figure. About half of the ads that named a quota called it small, as a selling point.
- Inactive members get removed. 5% of flood ads add a чистка, a regular removal of members who missed the quota; about a third of the ads with purges name the day.
- Floods sell free roles. 31% of flood ads advertised open roles, such as canon characters from the fandom, and 22% said the flood was new.
- Projects sell worlds, like English servers. Among 643 project ads, 35% advertised an original world, 44% mentioned lore or plot, 20% gave a length label such as #многострочник, and 11% asked for a character application.
- Many are teen spaces. Only 10% of ads stated an age limit. Of those, 76% accepted players under 18, and the most common minimum was 14.
A quota tells you what activity a group expects; it doesn’t tell you what the writing is like. A hundred short chat messages a week is a different hobby from one long post a week, which is why the same question applies everywhere: how does the story actually move?
What both scenes have in common
- Recruiting never stops. A quarter of the Reddit posts and half of the Telegram ad posts repeated an ad already posted.
- New groups lean on open roles. On Telegram, 43% of new floods advertised free roles, against 28% of the rest. That can mean a good moment to join, or a group that hasn’t found its players yet.
- Few ads show the writing. Only 2% of the English ads offered a sample scene, and almost no Telegram ads did, so you’re judging a group by its premise.
Tumblr and X: the same pitch
Reddit isn’t the exception. In a separate study of recruitment between August and October 2026, we compared 336 writers recruiting for groups on Reddit with 82 on Tumblr and 43 accounts on X. These shares count writers rather than ads and use a different set of rules from our main sample, so compare the platforms within this table:
| What the recruiter mentions | Tumblr | X | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Discord or a server link | 69% | 72% | 74% |
| Lore, plot or events | 57% | 59% | 16% |
| An age limit | 50% | 60% | 5% |
| A policy on original characters | 34% | 44% | 30% |
| Open or taken roles | 18% | 32% | 21% |
| An application or character sheet | 15% | 20% | 2% |
| An activity requirement | 4% | 6% | 0% |
Tumblr recruiters sell a world the way Reddit’s do, with lore, an age limit and an application. On X, a group ad is a short announcement with a link, and only 2 of the 43 accounts stated an age limit. Activity rules are rare everywhere. In X posts about group life, the most common complaint was that the canon character someone wanted was taken or missing (10 posts), ahead of moderators nitpicking original characters and takes on canon (5). FictionCore’s Groups board, described below, turns the missing pieces into fields: a minimum age, play mode and how to join, plus a cast list that shows which characters are still open.
How to choose a group before you join
- Find the pace. If the ad doesn’t say, ask: “How many posts does a typical scene get in a week?” The Guide lesson Reply schedules and group play covers turn order and what happens when someone can’t reply.
- Ask what’s expected of you. Is there an activity check or a quota? What happens if you’re away for two weeks, and can you come back?
- Find out who runs the story. A game master who drives events and a sandbox where players make their own plots suit different people. Neither is better; a group doesn’t need a GM to work.
- Check the age limit. An “18+” in an ad is the owner’s rule, not a check. On Discord, look for adult channels marked age-restricted, which only accounts in Discord’s adult age group can open, and never send ID photos or selfies to server staff: Discord confirms age only inside its own app. If a group mixes teens and adults, romance and adult content don’t belong in shared channels.
- Read before you write. Ask to see a recent scene, or read the public channels for a few days before you apply.
- Count the open roles honestly. Plenty of free roles can mean the group is new, or that it’s empty. Check how many people posted this week.
How to write a group ad that finds the right writers
Your premise gets attention; the details get you players who stay. Add a short “How we play” block:
- Format: platform, play-by-post or scheduled sessions, and how turns work.
- Pace: a typical rhythm, such as “most scenes move every two or three days”, and any activity rule.
- Writing: a post length range in numbers rather than a label like “semi-lit”, point of view and language.
- Who can join: an age limit and content rating, open roles, and how to apply. If you use a character sheet, our template guide has one built for groups.
- What members shape: lore, events, factions or nothing, so people know what they’re signing up for.
- A sample: one real scene does more than a paragraph of adjectives.
FictionCore’s Groups board has ready-made fields for most of these, so none of them gets forgotten. If you run a group, our guide to recruiting players has a full template and where to post it.
FictionCore’s Groups board: the rules of play before you join
FictionCore is our app for text roleplay: adult roleplayers use it to find partners and groups, share plots and build characters and worlds. We built its Groups board around exactly what recruitment ads leave out. A group ad has a field for each of these:
- where the group plays: Discord, Reddit or a forum;
- its stage: brand new, established or revival;
- GM style: from sandbox to GM-led or a persistent world;
- size: from intimate (under 10) to large;
- play mode: play-by-post, scheduled sessions or mixed;
- who you’re recruiting: members, staff, co-founders or partners;
- how to join: open, by application or vetted;
- a minimum age: 18+, 21+, 25+ or 30+.
Readers can filter by all of them, so you learn how a group plays before you join, not a week after. The ad template prompts for pace, post length and age boundaries. A group ad can attach a world from your Codex with a list of characters marked open or taken: the open roles that 13% of the Reddit ads list in plain text, and an answer to the complaint we saw most on X, that the character you wanted is already taken. And a saved search notifies you when a matching group appears.
FictionCore is for adults only, and nobody can publish an ad before passing the Community Quiz on the app’s rules. It’s available on Google Play for Android. The group itself still plays on its own platform, and Telegram isn’t one of the platform options.
How we counted
- English ads. We collected the 400 newest posts on r/RoleplayGroups, about 13,000 subscribers by Reddit’s own count, back to 6 July 2026. After removing 103 reposts and near-copies of earlier ads and 3 very short posts, 294 unique ads remained, the newest from 18 October.
- Russian ads. We read 6,853 public posts published between 18 April and 18 October 2026 in five Telegram channels that carry ads for floods and roleplay projects. The two busiest channels go back only to July and mid-September, because we stopped at about 3,000 posts each. After removing 1,822 posts that weren’t group ads and 2,583 repeats, 2,448 unique ads remained. Ads that used the word флуд counted as floods; the rest that described a ролевая or project counted as projects. Some projects that run their own флуд chat may have landed with the floods.
- Categories. Each topic was matched by phrases in context; ages counted only when they described who may join, not the poster or a character. We read 10 random matches per category by hand, and most were right in at least 9 of 10. Shares for the Russian sample depend on the mix of channels, so compare the patterns, not exact percentages.
- Tumblr and X comparison. From our study of partner and group ads published between 1 August and 20 October 2026: 946 recruitment posts by 336 writers on Reddit, 297 by 82 writers on Tumblr and 45 by 43 accounts on X, coded with the same rules and counted by writer. The complaints come from 576 public X posts about text roleplay with human partners from the same months.
- Platform facts. Discord’s age groups and age checks come from its help centre, and Telegram’s status in Russia from OONI measurements for 1–19 October 2026, when 85% of tests were flagged as anomalous, a sign of interference.
- Privacy. We publish only aggregate counts, without names of servers, groups, channels or people. Many Telegram channels in this space are open to all ages, which is one reason we don’t name them.
Questions roleplayers ask
How do I find a roleplay group?
Look where groups recruit: r/RoleplayGroups for Discord servers and forums, Discord server directories and, in Russian, Telegram channels that post ads for floods and projects, though Telegram is hard to reach from Russia in 2026. The FictionCore app has a Groups board of its own, where play mode, joining rules and a minimum age are fields you can filter by. If an ad doesn’t say, ask about pace, activity rules and age limits before you apply.
Is there an app for finding roleplay groups?
Yes. FictionCore, a text roleplay app for adults (18+), has a separate Groups board: recruitment ads with fields for the platform, GM style, play mode, group size, how to join and a minimum age, all of which you can filter by. It’s available on Google Play for Android.
What is a flood in roleplay?
In Russian-speaking roleplay, a флуд (flood) is a group chat, usually on Telegram and built around one fandom, where each member takes a character as their role and mostly chats casually under that name; short in-character scenes are optional. A roleplay project with long posts is a different format. Our glossary of roleplay terms explains more of the shorthand in group ads.
What does a message quota mean in a Telegram flood?
A норма is a minimum number of messages each member must post, usually per week. In the ads we read, the typical quota was 80 messages a week. Some floods remove members who miss it in a regular чистка, or purge.
What should a group roleplay ad include?
Besides the premise: the platform and format, a typical pace, a post length range in numbers, the age limit and content rating, open roles, how to apply, and ideally a sample scene. Only about one ad in twenty gave a posting rhythm, an activity rule or a time zone. For the premise itself, see our plot ideas.
Are Discord roleplay servers 18+?
Some are, but not all. Half of the group ads we read stated an age limit; most of those said 18+ or 21+, and some accepted players from 13 or 16. Check the rules, look for adult channels marked age-restricted in Discord, and don’t send ID to server staff.
How can I tell whether a roleplay group is active?
Not from the ad: one in five calls itself active, and almost none say how often scenes move. Read the public channels for a few days, check the dates of recent posts, and ask how many people posted this week.
The world gets you through the door. Ask about the pace before you unpack.