Why are so little roleplays taking off?

[Atlas Graveyard]

thats deep....a very true.

i mean how sad is this, first page on the interest check and the top has posts from 12 minutes ago and the bottom three days. Thats how little RPG is moving, one page covers three whole days of nothing.

[Ninkitty]

I've noticed this too. Since I'm in a roleplay that has gone days without anyone posting in it. You'd think people forgot about it or something. And it's almost as if the GM forgot too since there has been another character posted but no response from the GM.

But then I also know the end of the school year is coming up. People are probably just busy with studying for finals or something is what I thought was up. Could be any number of things, but the first reason that pops in my head is everyone is preparing for finals.

[Atlas Graveyard]

Technically i should be fininshing all my college work too lol ^_^ but i think ill wait abit longer lol

[Grif of Hearts]

Because everyone insists on making the same shit over and over again.

That's a pretty good point actually. Recently, I've noticed a few Roleplays with very similar plots to ones which are either dying or have recently died, which I'm assuming isn't a coincidence.

Plus, the end of the school year is drawing ever-closer, and I'm sure many people have things to plan and revise for, which is obviously taking people a lot of time and patience.

[Fateless]

I think the biggest culprit is instant gratification, as a couple of others have said. Most people want something they can have fun in right now, not after the GM gets the ball rolling and gathers enough people and finishes writing all the world history, etc., etc.

As a player, I can list a few things that keep me from joining an RP.

1. The histories/set-up of the RP looks too complex. I don't want to have to actually study pages of text and convoluted fantasy names/regions to get involved in something.

2. If the IC posts look too long. I can post rather long, myself, and I like long posts that are entertaining. But if I'm glancing at someone's IC for the first time, and the first few posts are novels -- that's a lot to read and keep track of, right off the bat. I'd rather start with something more accessible. Since I stick to higher casual and advanced, I haven't seen ICs I might be interested in that had posts that were too short for my tastes. I'm sure those are out there, too.

3. The GM is letting some total, obvious idiots join the RP. No explanation necessary here, I imagine.

4. The idea just doesn't appeal. This one is obvious, of course, and mentioned by some of the others here.

But, when this RP is actually your own RP, and you become the GM, things are different. Maybe you'll let idiots join the RP because you're just grateful that someone else is interested in your idea and don't want to be rude. Maybe you love the super-duper long posts, and if they are about the setting you created, then that's great to you. Maybe you love world-building, and can't help yourself listing out all the details and source-material you want people to use when they RP in your setting. I'm guilty of some of these things myself, to a degree. (See my own shameless plug: http://roleplayerguild.com/f44/costu...-and-up-89452/)

All of that stuff is wonderful, fun, yadda yadda, but it's not going to make RPers want to read what you're putting out if the idea you have doesn't grab them to begin with. I know I'm pretty lazy. I don't want to invest time reading a lot of history and back-story to something if the general plot doesn't leap out of the page.

Then, there's what Calamity mentioned. Most of us are students of some sort, or younger people that work. There are definitely times that are busier in our lives than others. If you are a student, then that time ranges around the next few weeks or so.

I'll add another possible reason that I've mentioned in another thread like this, some time ago. Every RP community I've ever been apart of - which is many - has had their points where the players lament a decline in the quality of roleplay in said community. It's a cycle. New blood comes in, old blood goes out, and some of the key players that hang around notice the change and reminisce about the "glory" days when "people RPed for real, damnit, and it meant something!!"

From my experience, things will either pick back up in time, or some new, more accessible RP platform will emerge that people will migrate towards.

In the meantime, the energy spent lamenting could be spent role-playing.

[Ninkitty]

I'll add another possible reason that I've mentioned in another thread like this, some time ago. Every RP community I've ever been apart of - which is many - has had their points where the players lament a decline in the quality of roleplay in said community. It's a cycle. New blood comes in, old blood goes out, and some of the key players that hang around notice the change and reminisce about the "glory" days when "people RPed for real, damnit, and it meant something!!"

Yep. I agree with this. I've been apart of an RP community a few years before this one. quality in roleplays started going down. It was also seeming as if the new people coming in didn't know how to use their grammar and spelling skills. Or they make one-liner posts (which is one of my pet peeves about roleplaying lol).

But I wasn't able to stick around to see if things picked up again or not as I got real busy around that time with real life situation. Around the time I was getting out of Highschool and going to College basically... But I got the chance to be in a RP community again and so found this one.

Which brings up another reason. Some probably just have stuff going on in real life that they have to deal with and it may be taking longer to deal with it than expected.

[Atlas Graveyard]

So we wait to see if everyone returns and this site becomes active if they dont...we have a problem lol

[Redorath]

Every RP community I've ever been apart of - which is many - has had their points where the players lament a decline in the quality of roleplay in said community.

Happens every couple of months. There pretty rapidly comes a point where seeing these threads in Discussion is so commonplace that you just stop noticing them. Or you read through them, and your eyes just sort of glaze over, then you zone out while quoting yourself from two years ago on exactly the same topic.

i mean how sad is this, first page on the interest check and the top has posts from 12 minutes ago and the bottom three days. Thats how little RPG is moving, one page covers three whole days of nothing.

Three whole days!? Disaster!

Sometimes I don't even sign in for three days. Seriously.
This is, of course, not to mention that the general, non-area-specific section of Interest Checks has always had diminished activity compared with the others. ALWAYS.

If it takes a mere three days for you to think RpG has basically ground to a halt, I don't think the problem is with the community, or with this mythical "decline in standards/activity/whatever" that people insist is always going on all the time, because apparently humanity is losing the ability to read and write. Oh, and nobody ever has any original RP ideas, 'cos as we know they all just copy the latest TV/Movie/Book/Game/Anime that's currently popular, and how dare they want to play around in one of their favourite universes, or have fun with canon settings -- sacrilege! Oh let's just face it, nobody has any imagination whatsoever. Except for me, obviously. Because I said so.

*cough*

Maybe you just spend too much time checking the site.

Anyway, it was no different in 2008. Only a handful of people around can vouch for that, but the only real major difference between then and now is that now we have the Interest Check section. Oh, and VMs. And Social Groups -- nobody uses those.
Before, people would take stuff directly to an OOC they were interested in, or go through PMs, and thus the OOC forum was slightly more active than it is now -- barely. These days things typically go through the IntChecks first, then to an OOC, with all the other avenues mixed in with it.

That doesn't really help explain anything at all. I think I can live with that.

Besides, the Interest Check is a testbed for ideas, not a guaranteed pathway to a fully-functioning roleplay. There are plenty of terrible ideas floating around, and many of them aren't picked up. There are also a lot of very good ideas floating around, and some of those don't get picked up either. If it was so underdeveloped, vague, or cliché that nobody wanted to touch it, or so overdone and needlessly complicated that nobody could be bothered with it, then the RP won't take off. It just localises the deadness of impractical and/or shitty ideas to the IntCheck forum, rather than having a load of stillborn RPs floating around. That happens anyway, of course.

I will, however, go so far as to say that any lack of activity you've noticed is all in your head, and little more than a gross generalisation of the whole forum based on a tiny snapshot of it from your POV. And, well...

EVERYTHING IS FINE!

[Atlas Graveyard]

Three days may not seem like much to one person but when a guild of over 400 people can't fill one page with posts in three days. Even if only 100 people log on in three days its still not much activity.

And as others have expressed its not inside my head. Worry does not stint from nothing, activity on the site is low. Roleplaying and ideas getting off the ground, lower.
As we have been discussing its most likly due to work and studies due to the time of year.

and we can hope for activity to pick up after all the exams and peoples studies have passed.

[Usurper]

Just in case some of you didn't know, it's final essay and exam time for a lot of folks.