User blog:Sinthorion/Group chats for servers

On big servers sometimes a group (faction or otherwise) wants to talk privately. You can use  (or  ) to have a private conversation with one single player, but there is no simple command (and I know of no plugin) that makes the same possible for more than 2 players.

As a solution, here is a rather simple method how to emulate group chats using vanilla commands (so that no plugins are required). The setup of this group chat and adding of new players has to be done by an OPed player but after that the chat can be used by anyone.

This method uses the vanilla scoreboard teams. If scoreboard teams are used anywhere else on the server (for example for redstone based minigames) or if any plugin changes the scoreboard command, this method will probably not work.

Setup
(These steps have to be done by any OPed player)

First, the group needs a name. For this tutorial I will choose the name 'dwarves', but you could use anything. Just replace 'dwarves' in the following commands by your team name.

Create a scoreboard team by using this command:

Add a player:

Remove a player:

If not needed anymore, remove the team:

Usage
Every player who wants to send a message to all players in the chat has to use this modified  command (  and   are the same, so   is also possible):

Maybe you will see a message " You can't send a private message to yourself! ". Simply ignore it.

That's all. I hope it helps.