Hmmhmm, well, any good role-playing game system has enough structure to settle arguments, like, “Does the goblin kill me before I can cast my spell?” But it’s gotta have flexibility, too! You don’t want systems to get in the way of fun, and so making someone move to a different room in the Discord server every time they went to the kitchen’s storage closet would be pretty silly~
Role-playing is about telling a story with other people sharing the stage. At some point, you just have to trust one another to role-play faithfully! If being upstairs in the tavern is a big deal, then faithful players will act as if they were upstairs, even if there’s only one channel for the tavern.
Having separate rooms for separate locations is mostly just a thematic thing, you know? At least in my head~ But of course if it seems like making the separate locations be more split up would be useful, well, you can always make more rooms!
As for the question about the ruleset, when I first posted this I figured it would be nice for it to be an open style of role-play in general. Then, when specific things happened like someone wanting to go out on a quest with other people on the server, we could break out the rule-books like ExpanD&D or Shadow-Waddle and use whichever one seems appropriate.
The most important part though would be making up a setting! Hanging out in a tavern is one thing, but if you ever want to leave the tavern or (gasp!) talk about stuff besides the tavern, well, there needs to be canon that people agree on!
As I’m writing this, I see @Tag365’s comment, and I’m scanning through that server’s logs. I’ll write a response to you soon!
Edit for @Tag365:
Okay! So I read through some of the channels in that server, and it looks like the RP parts were for having actual D&D games with weight gain expansions, am I right?
In that case, I think the server I was imagining would be a bit closer to Sanctuary, the server in the video @grotlover2 shared . . . but with less . . . mechanics? Something cool with Sanctuary is that there’s a persistent world, and the players are fighting over this thing called the Codex, and there’s a channel called the Deadlands, which is the combat zone where they farm for points to win the Codex with. It looks pretty interesting!
But as I was saying, in reply to @Anonhugger as well, I’m imagining more of an MMO’s safe-zone, like a town where players hang out. The TTRPG part would weave through the city and maybe go out “beyond the walls,” but not everyone would have to take part in the game if they didn’t want to. So I’m imagining a scenario where a group of players meets up in the tavern channel to form a party for their TTRPG session. And if one of them suddenly starts a bar fight, then other people in the channel could either get involved like NPCs usually do in games, even if they weren’t part of the party originally, or they could just leave and go to the Bakery to continue their own role-play. Maybe it would be too disruptive and it would get annoying, but I guess keeping it under control would be part of the GMs challenge!