MotdBot

A Paper plugin that pulls quote-style messages from a Discord channel and displays a random one as the server MOTD on every server-list ping.

Designed for the kind of channel where friends collect funny things they've said to each other — "this is a quote" -name. The plugin parses that shape out of arbitrary Discord messages, formats it for the MOTD's two-line layout, and rotates one onto the server list every time a client refreshes.

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Prerequisites

• JDK 21 (or newer) for both building the plugin and running the Paper server. Any Adoptium / Microsoft / Zulu / GraalVM build works.
• Gradle 8+. The repo does not ship a Gradle wrapper; bootstrap one yourself if you want one (see Build below).
• A Paper Minecraft server on API 1.21+. Spigot/Bukkit will not work — this plugin uses PaperServerListPingEvent, which is Paper-specific.
• A Discord bot application with the Message Content intent enabled (steps below).

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Build

gradle shadowJar

The plugin jar lands at build/libs/motd-bot-<version>.jar. The build produces a fat-jar; JDA and its transitive dependencies are relocated under buzz.chuz.motdbot.shaded.* so they don't clash with other plugins.

If you prefer a Gradle wrapper, generate one once:

gradle wrapper
./gradlew shadowJar

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Discord bot setup

1. Visit https://discord.com/developers/applications and create a new application.
2. Under Bot, create a bot user and copy its token.
3. Under Bot → Privileged Gateway Intents, enable Message Content Intent.
4. Under OAuth2 → URL Generator, pick scope bot plus the permissions View Channel and Read Message History. Open the generated URL and invite the bot to your Discord server.
5. In Discord, enable Developer Mode (User Settings → Advanced), right-click the channel you want quotes pulled from, and choose Copy Channel ID.

The bot only needs read access. It never sends messages, never writes, never reacts.

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Install

1. Drop motd-bot-<version>.jar into your Paper server's plugins/ directory.
2. Start the server once. The plugin will create plugins/MotdBot/config.yml and log a warning that the token is missing — that's expected.
3. Stop the server, edit the config, and fill in discord.token and discord.channel-id. Quote both values; channel IDs are 17–19 digit numbers that YAML can mishandle without quotes.
4. Start the server again. Watch for log lines like:
   • Connected to Discord as <bot-name>
   • Cached N quotes from #<channel> (skipped M non-quote messages)
5. Open the Multiplayer screen in-game and refresh the server entry — the MOTD should change to a random quote on each refresh.

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Quote parsing

The parser tries to extract a "quote text" -Author shape from each message. Supported input shapes:

Discord message	Result
"this is a quote" -name	quote + attribution
"this is a quote" - name	quote + attribution
"this is a quote" -@mention	quote + attribution (resolved)
"this is a quote" -name	quote + attribution
"this is a quote"	quote, no attribution
"this is a quote" (next message: -name)	quote + attribution from next
Plain text without "…"	rejected
Image-only message	rejected
Multi-line dialog (multiple "…" segments)	rejected (configurable)

Quote characters can be straight (") or smart (“ ”). Dashes can be hyphen, en-dash, or em-dash. Attributions can be plain text or @mentions — for mentions, alias keys can match the user's server nickname, global display name, or raw username.

If a quote message has no attribution but the very next message in the channel is just an attribution line (e.g. -bolb), the plugin pairs them automatically.

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Config reference

plugins/MotdBot/config.yml (defaults shown):

discord:
  token: ""                      # bot token
  channel-id: "0"                # channel ID
  initial-fetch-limit: 200       # how many recent messages to load on startup

motd:
  max-length: 90                 # truncate the rendered string to this many chars
  fallback: "&aA Minecraft Server"
  quote-color: "&f"              # used only when random-color is false
  attribution-color: "&7"        # color for the " -Author" portion (light grey)
  bold: true                     # bold the entire MOTD
  random-color: true             # pick a random palette color each ping
  rainbow-chance: 0.15           # 0.0–1.0; fraction of pings that go full rainbow
  palette: "c6eab9d5"            # legacy color code chars used by random + rainbow

filtering:
  ignore-bots: true
  ignore-attachments-only: true
  ignore-image-only: true
  require-quote-marks: true      # only cache messages that contain a "..." segment
  allow-multi-segment: false     # reject messages with multiple "..." segments
  min-length: 2

# Map a Discord display name OR username (case-insensitive) to a friendly alias
# used in the attribution. Anything not listed falls back to the raw name.
aliases:
  # "discord_username": "Friendly Name"

Color codes use the standard & prefix; see Bukkit's ChatColor.

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How it works

• On enable the plugin starts a JDA gateway connection, fetches the most recent messages from the configured channel (paged in 100-message chunks up to initial-fetch-limit), parses each into a quote, and caches them in memory.
• It listens for new, edited, and deleted messages and updates the cache live.
• On every PaperServerListPingEvent it picks a random cached quote, formats it as "quote" -Author wrapped across the two MOTD lines, applies bold + random color (or rainbow), and sets it on the ping response.
• If the cache is empty (e.g. Discord is unreachable at startup), the configured fallback MOTD is served instead.

There is no persistence — the cache rebuilds on every plugin start, since Discord is the source of truth.

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Security notes

• plugins/MotdBot/config.yml contains your bot token. Treat it like any other credential — don't commit it, don't share screenshots of it.
• The .gitignore in this repo excludes plugins/MotdBot/config.yml and common secret-file patterns, but the in-source src/main/resources/config.yml is a template with no real values. Keep it that way.
• If a token leaks, regenerate it at https://discord.com/developers/applications → your app → Bot → Reset Token. The old token is invalidated immediately.

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License

MIT — see LICENSE if present, otherwise treat as MIT.