So, it's a simple question. So far since the return of the guild, I've only had one RP I participated die, and that was before it started.

So I offer the question to ALL forumgoers, what kills it, and in what levels? Free, Casual and Advanced do share some problems, but I am sure they all have their unique faults.

A couple off the top of my head are:
GM being a bit of an iron fist ruler
and
GM losing interest in the story and letting it drift off.

In any case, please, chime in, discuss, see if we can't find ways to avoid these pitfalls in general!

I usually only take part in 1x1's simply because I hate having to wait for five other people to post.

However, with that being said, in the past RPs I have done that were group games, they were in the advanced section. If the GM disappears and there is no Co-GM, then it dies unless everyone is in agreement to continue it on their own. Even then, there has to be a captain, and the person who takes over may not take it in the correct direction. Speed posting, leaving other characters/roleplayers out, fights breaking out between writers, different people having different styles of writing that don't work well together, and just a general loss of interest by all parties.

A lack of the GM's Passion. Sometimes thats what kills it

Ender Wiggen

"Real life, can't find an hour out of my EXTREMELY BUSY/DRAMATIC/DISTRACTING LIFESTYLE to post a measly 300-500 word post or so. Even though I took the time to dedicate a detailed character sheet as well as involve myself to a degree with the main group of the story."

This lame, pathetic excuse has ruined 90% of roleplays I've participated in. I understand to an extent that people have real lives, and these real lives prevent them from that creative spark or finding time to write. It's simply the amount of times this excuse has been used in addition to said people proceeding to join other roleplay not even a week later.

I expect some people to get rather pissy at my anger toward this excuse, but seriously. It's like the dog ate my homework excuse, it's probably only legitimate about 5-10% of the time it's used.

The nature of a portion of RP'rs losing interest quickly and a lack of assertiveness from others, resulting in a community where people are slow to invest their selves in games and quick to give up.

I haven't come across a lot of iron fist GM's by the way, I've found those lacking a backbone to be more common. Which is generally just as lethal.

Blitzkrieg said
Ender Wiggen

What. Don't you like chess metaphores?

I had enough of drop outs killing my roleplays that I began posting notes that stated if you were away too long I WILL kill you off. It seemed to work to a point...

I find that Inactivity is the biggest killer.

The person you're talking to IC disappears? At least you can go off and talk to other characters. The GM and >3 people stop posting? Entire scenes, interactions and conversations are killed. I, personally, start wondering "Well, what's the point in talking to a character if it's a coin toss whether they respond or not?" I end up waiting a week for a single response only to find more people have vanished and I'm left sitting there thinking "Well, fuck."

Inactivity, lack of interest/participation from players, people over-committing themselves when they have busy school/work/etc schedules - this one killed off all of my roleplays for months on end, and really pissed me off. Surely you must have some warning or idea of how busy you're going to be before you commit?
Lack of GM interest as well - I've been guilty of this myself recently, but seen it happen to really good games from others too.

I think in a general sense attention span is a factor too, RP creators and players can get initially enthused about a concept but then eventually you find them drifting away in a cyclical way to some other concept they'd like to start or get involved in that holds a new freshness for them.

Perhaps the idea is to post an idea and then get the OOC and IC moving at a rate that makes sense. I'm not interested in getting excited about something and then have a GM wait 3-4 days to post an OOC, though 10 of us jumped on the interest check the first day he/she posted it.

Then the IC comes out weeks later. That makes no sense to me.

Also - if you're going to throw out a story and you don't have a plot - get a creative co-GM that can help you spin one quickly because most people come to your story expecting you to have some plot points to throw at them or some direction for the game. If there is no vision or focus for the game - it will die.

There are a million reasons these die, but some of the best ideas I've seen never even get off the ground - tragedy.

TBH the issue I've had is a combo of what Imagination said (drop outs), and the simple restrictions of turn by turn posting. If two people are online at the same time and want to play...they can each only post once because the convention seems to be everyone involved in the game posting once then starting again with person 1. This is so restrictive to me, and it make moving things alone quite difficult if you're waiting on one player who's sick/busy/ect. It seriously increases the number of dropouts/dead games, IME.

The alternative is random posting, although in advanced this doesn't seem to be done much. That can lead to speed posting, where two players advance themselves, but the rest of the group is left behind or out of the loop.

I'm more used to playing on email groups, where you can play with many different people essentially as a 1-1 or small group, at the same time within the greater confines of the game, or games that have an entire forum to themselves where you can create new topics and some can involve everyone, while others (occurring at the same time) are 1-1. This means you can play more often, interact more specifically with other players, and the active people are satisfied without having to wait for the slower posters.