RP's That..Don't Make It

[Ghurdrich]

Speed Posting is my issue....We all have lives and sometimes it gets in the way and so comes the time when you check and Rp and your lost...it's why I'm reluctant to come back to Role Playing because of my college life. Iv'e missed it since myspace and have been itching to return but I have avoided any sort of rp's with multiple people because an Rp can go like 3 pages ahead of when you left it and sometimes one on one rps can just have people loosing interest.

Sorry for butting in a bit late, but... You don't partake of a hobby you enjoy because sometimes people lose interest or get ahead of you? Sounds like you're getting ahead of yourself before even giving others a chance to do it for you Have you tried bumping upward a level from what you're used to? I know in adv, speed-posting is literally nonexistant. People are patient and wait for others to post. If you don't have time in a night you just do it tomorrow and nothing of value was lost I dunno about the difference between Free and Casual, but if you're into it, I personally think it's silly to nay-say yourself before you've given it a fair shot.

And since I'm here, I'll respond to the thread too, so as not to get off-topic. I believe RPs tend to have a snowball effect. If you get a group together who are on a lot and love to post ASAP, that's gonna snowball, and it's entirely possible that people will burn out, or else get impatient with others and lose interest. Alternatively, if people are taking their time (or, god help us, waiting on a single person who may have dropped or may not have dropped,) it's possible for people to get side-tracked until they've forgotten, and then tomorrow they forget, and the longer they go without posting, the harder it is to get back into it. Snowball effect. You need a good balance, and a good, solid player base.

[xbriannova]

I believe roleplayers losing interest is just a symptom of the problem. There are many RPs that are actually fresh, fun and interesting. I just think it could lack of discipline and dedication on the part of the roleplayers and sometimes GM. To truely have fun, especially on the long term, we must actually work for it. Some people are just too neck deep into consumerist culture to understand that.

[Hagazussa]

In the games I have been in or which I have ran that have not worked out the three main reasons why the RPGs fail is:

1) Players looses interest so that the game eventually just dies.

2) To many players in the beginning so there is to much speed posting which makes it hard to keep track and then folks just stop posting.

3) One player who is in a position where the entire plot hang on their character so none can post before they have resolved the current issue just drops out and do not let the others know so before the GM decides that oh well let us just take over this character and get the game going again then the rest of the players have lost interest.

[SilverwindBlade]

Roleplays I've run have died mainly not because of lack of interest at all. I've had a wildly enthusiastic and excited player group, eagerly posting characters and a lot of back-and-forth chat in the OOC about the upcoming game, the game universe, and whatever else they're doing... and then all at once, everything will stop abruptly because of something completely outside of the game. Usually related to school/college/uni/whatever, and then none of them will come back afterward.

It's kind of annoying; surely people must know these things are coming up? Are there not allowances made for them? Is it not polite to inform your GM and fellow players that you may be busy for a while? Or does that not even come into it?

I've also had experiences with players (In fact, with the same pair of players) who are massively enthusiastic and eager to join into a game I've written, but then when asked to post get pissy about having to do so, and instead drop out of the game?!

A reason I've dropped out of a game before has been due to the lack of character involvement, plot details or development. The game was purely action-based, with no development of characters, no interaction between characters, and no explanation of the background.
Another time, it's been due to crippling attention to realism and detail, and just simply feeling as though I didn't fit in, and it wasn't really what I wanted out of the game at that time.

Other RP's I've run haven't taken off due to the constantly rotating 'flavour of the month' that comes and goes on here so often.
Games, movies, anime, TV shows and books will become popular for a few months, and there'll be a rash of games all on the same themes, or thinly-veiled expies of those properties, they'll get masses of interest, while anything not of their kind will have a murmur of interest, but be lost in the flood of, say, Naruto threads.
Once they die down, if you post something more original, or more to your personal niche interest, you'll likely get a few more replies.
It's also totally worth hunting down people you've played with before who have similar interests if you want to run something much like you have before. Sometimes it can bring in more people too.

[DMZ]

Never really noticed the flavour of the month thing. Twilight is ever popular by the looks of it, and that's the most random thing I can think of that will die down fast.
Then again, I don't visit the forums much apart from my own RP's.

One issue I've noticed lately is a private 1x1 game where the other player felt like I was pushing them into something. I found it strange, since I stated from the start(and always try to) that if you don't agree with something, bring it up. People seem reluctant to talk for whatever reasons, let each other know what they do and don't like. Is it really the best option just to ignore the other person instead of saying "I am bored/I don't like it"? This is based off multiple experiences, I just brought it up only now to confirm my suspicions.

I am even willing to say that every single RP I have been in, that has been dropped, did so due to reasons outside my influences. And I have a fair track record so far. I don't really know what's the trend with that.

[Holeypaladin]

Some of the biggest problems I've seen are actual OOC conflicts between the writers.

When all the sudden one of the writers gets all mad at the GM and kills off all her characters, everyone else facepalms, and then people more or less just stop posting in general because by that point, the RP is more or less not fun anymore for most.

[Herostratus]

I'm not saying you can't have a plotted roleplay, it's just that a planned ending is no fun. Or even if the ending isn't planned, but you still have an idea or set goal for the roleplay, it becomes just as boring.

What in the world am I reading?

[Hellis]

What in the world am I reading?

I do believe he or she is saying that for him or her as a GM, knowin the end of her or his story before hand is boring. I tend to agree. I have not vaguest clue as to how my own rp's are going to end. Becouse I have no idea how my players will act troughout the rp.

[Jannah]

I think a big one is just loss of interest. For me that's a common one since it's difficult to find RPers willing to play out historical events. I had one RP about the Bolshevik Revolution and another about the Titanic last awhile though. Oh I miss those RPs .

[SgtKlum]

I find that there's several things which can kill an RP. Sometimes an RP is a good idea poorly executed by the GM, other times one or two key players drop out and you're left with no-one to advance the plot... most of the time, however, it's a mixture of several factors. I myself have been guilty in the past, as a GM, of rushing things too much. You get an idea, you set up an Interest Check, next minute you're working on the OOC, next minute you're working on the IC thread. Then a week later you're already four pages into your RP before you realize that you really hadn't thought through certain plot points as well as you should have. You hopelessly try to re-direct things, but at this late stage the cogs are already turning. The players are now stuck in a dead-end plot device with a massive empty chasm between them and the next objective. They're done. You're done. Players drop like flies, threads lay abandoned, everyone moves on...

Not that I'm talking from experience or anything...