As someone born in the 1960’s, I think my generation wrote more. I think we read more too. Now it is more Audiobooks and video clips. The attention span of young people has decreased.

I watch my kids and they have a hard time sitting and reading a book at 13. At that age I would have read 3-4 books. It is change and an exciting new challenge.

As someone born in the 1960’s, I think my generation wrote more. I think we read more too. Now it is more Audiobooks and video clips. The attention span of young people has decreased.

I watch my kids and they have a hard time sitting and reading a book at 13. At that age I would have read 3-4 books. It is change and an exciting new challenge.

Ok boomer

Watch it!! Lol

Short answer?

In my completely subjective opinion, no.

Long answer?

How exactly are we going to quantify or define the line where which forum roleplaying has died out? Forum activity on dedicated roleplaying boards? The post frequency of a roleplaying board? The number of members? The average word count of posts?

Forum roleplaying isn't slowing down. It's changing and is large as it has ever been. To constrict your view entirely to experience on RPGO or on the other sites mentioned in this thread is simply naive. There are hundreds of other role-playing forums, roleplaying subforums and let's not even get into the other mediums that have arisen over the years that have called themselves 'forums'. I've seen play-by-post roleplaying sub-forums that dwarf RPGO in size and are still active as they have ever been.

So, to put it shortly, no. Forum roleplaying has not slowed down. It's just changed just as the world and its mediums of communication have.

Probably. There could be a lot of reasons for it. Who knows. I remember when I first started there were a lot of places where you could roleplay. Groups, forums, etc. But, with time, a lot of those places have become unavailable not to mention people have lives outside of roleplay.
What you may have been able to do as a teenager, you can't necessarily do when you are an adult, have a family, and so on. I know some people get to a point where they ease out of it completely. Everything is changing, it's the nature of the game.

It has certainly changed, but I also believe it is on gradual decline. As other forms of new entertainment like video games become more advanced and customizable, there is less of a pool of people interested in both writing competently and simultaneously being independently creative for creativity's sake.

Nah. It's more common than you think, you just need to know where to look - a LOT of forum RP happens on forums that aren't actually dedicated to RP, for example. I started 7 years ago in the Flight Rising forums, and my boyfriend to this day RPs exclusively on Paradox Interactive forums, to name just two.

Also, don't take a perceived slowdown of this site as evidence of a decline. Firstly, the site goes through slow and busy seasons, and it's also entirely possible you're just not looking in all the right places. Secondly, I'd wager that half or more of the RP that happens here happens in PMs, not in threads, so there's that additional truckload of RP happening where you just can't see it. There's also a ton of discord and google docs rp - not technically "forum" RP, but written RP nonetheless. (Yes I know OP wasn't talking about specific sites but other people have, sue me)

As well, like someone else said, age is a factor too. I started as a young teenager and things felt way more active back then, but then again I have no way of knowing if they actually were more active or if it just felt more active. For all I know, my experience in the format and managing RPs and posting and all that might just make things seem slower because I've gotten faster at writing or otherwise more efficient with my writing time.

Plus, people tend to gravitate toward their own age group (generally speaking, obviously) so it's also possible things feel slower because your age group is now older with more shit outside of the internet to be doing.

I don't think forum RP is really going to go away, since at least for me, there's nothing else that scratches the same itch. Writing solo loses the fun social aspect of RP, and IM RP or D&D or in-game RPing or whatever don't give you the same narrative freedom. That might only be relevant to people like me for whom the actual writing part (not just the role playing) is the fun part, but I doubt I'm alone there.

Flight Rising

oh my god i haven't thought about flight rising in YEARS

<Snipped quote by Obscene Symphony>

oh my god i haven't thought about flight rising in YEARS

Apparently they're still kicking, I signed up on day one XD