I know, I know, people have felt like this for ages and pure TTRPG players probably thought PbP forum roleplaying was cringe and would kill TTRPG, but I'm noticing a distinct shift in the PbP forums I visit:

• Forums are dying at an alarming rate, it used to be if a forum died it was a big deal, now it happens every week
• Surviving forums are slowly losing activity
• Most forums are arguably populated by the same community
  ^{I see people there that I also see here, it feels a little incestuous}
• A lot of the 1x1 advertisements now revolve around Discord roleplaying or Reddit roleplaying

I'm kind of curious how others have sought to cement themselves in PbP forum roleplaying? Or maybe some of you have given up and just hang out here for nostalgia's sake, and you do your Roleplaying on discord? Or is my vision just wrong and are RP forums doing better than ever?

Out of curiosity, what do you mean by genre?
To me, I'd say, it's a bit more like... the death of a platform. Not that I'm saying this platform is dead, just saying that I think that the genre is very much alive, especially with the increase of interest in TTRPGs.

Just a few scattered thoughts:

Personally, Discord RPing and Forum RPing feels very similar to me - the only difference is the ability to format posts in a more customized way using BBCode. I usually write around four to seven or more paragraphs, and this length does well in both Discord and Forums.

Writing on mobile is way more manageable on the Discord app than on the mobile version of a website.

One-liner RPers might like the speed of Discord more, as the responses feel very real-time. I can also see the appeal of OOC chat in Discord servers.

I suspect that some Discord RP communities can also feel "incestuous", if you're in more niche fandoms.

Reddit roleplaying is something I have never considered or tried, and it seems like a terrible platform to write a long, continuous story on. I am curious to know how popular this is, and why it's popular, at least based on your observations.

All that said, I'm actually here for the specific RPs I've found on this site. It feels like Discord RPing revolves more around fandom-type stuff, and in forums like here, there's a bit more opportunity for original settings and characters to flourish.

Forums are an unfortunate casualty of the modern era shift towards Discord and other such apps for roleplaying, hence why advertisements are pushing more for those platforms. That being said, there is still a small effort to keep them alive--Jcink forums being a common example.

The fighting game genre is dying. Old fandoms are dying. The Tumblr art community is dying.

I think the reason why topics like this cause me to roll my eyes is because I have plenty of stuff to keep me busy. I'm running two group RPs, participating in a third albeit slower moving one, and I have a few 1x1 RPs going on. Despite this, I still come across a lot of stuff I could conceivably join. I do not visit other forums as I can barely keep up with what I do with this one. While you'd be crazy to not acknowledge that forums and forum roleplays are getting more niche, suggesting that they are "dying" implies that interest in them is going to all but evaporate.

There's a few reasons for their decline. We have discord, roll20, and tons of other platforms for RPing. And while they all do what they do well, they aren't a perfect replacement for PbP RPing. Discord has too many irritations for me to ever consider seriously writing on it, and acting out your character spontaneously in roll 20 isn't the same as writing and reading posts. So long as nothing works quite like PbP, it will never be replaced.

There is a second part of this discussion, which is the people who keep insisting that PbP is dying. I've noticed it's always someone who primarily RPs in 1x1 stuff. As someone who's tried both I can say that it can be difficult to find a 1x1 partner to write with. I even joke that the 1x1 section is the place to go when you feel like hating yourself. What makes for a good group interest check make for a horrible 1x1 interest check. Group roleplayers want to know that their GM has an idea of what the hell they are doing and would love to participate in some well constructed world with understandable rules. But 1x1 players typically want something that caters to their specific tastes. Having page after page of reference material will cause their eyes to glaze over as they back out of your interest check and look for something they can have more influence on. They want to be involved with the creation process and help decide how the bricks are laid.

Or they're gooners.

As for how I cement myself, I guess it's a combination of understanding what everyone wants and also a willingness to try things that aren't 100% in my wheelhouse. Magical girls are actually not something that I prefer to write about all the time, but I let my friends drag me into RPs and we end up having fun regardless.

Ancient topic beaten to death.

Truth is simple. In the earlier 00's, social media wasn't such an overwhelming force. Centralization of the internet wasn't either. Nor were smart phone apps, containerized internet experiences and the like. All that's happened now and trends for what people tend to do on the internet have changed.

Traditional forums, BBS and the like, have seen a massive spiral. Only the biggest ones, usually the type peddling products of piracy, still have real activity and have gobble monstered many thousands of their lesser variants that saw life "in the day." Then of that, a fraction still are RP oriented. In that, you typically see the ones with any "active" status be things like erotica.

Notice how many people coming here mention "I came from Discord RP" or "I came from Reddit."

It's just how things have trended. Doesn't help what lingers on in the pbp RP space is battered with nonstop pop-politics wagon dragging and nonsensical clique based drama, there isn't exactly a great "mentorship program" to onboard and keep the concept thriving for new generations.

Even with all this, it's still around and alive. I don't anticipate forum based roleplay will truly disappear anytime soon. Once people stop bellyaching about LLMs, I imagine that'll end up driving some minor growth into the space, if not here then elsewhere. Otherwise it'll retain its niche status until something technological makes barrier of entry such less significant in effort that more people poke at it.

Myself, I write when I want to write and don't when I don't. I only first came here to make fun of LeeRoy for losing in the Arena. Shock and amazement my extremely slow-burn RP on here is currently in the Arena, dealing with not one or two but nine disgruntled adults RP fighting. I see RPG as a fusion of roleplay on the forums and a conduit for collaboration on Discord but, doubt the sweaty arena stuff'll ever not be my focus.

TLDR: There's no perfect solution to any of this, just write.

I would give a more nuanced take, but I like my RPs atm and currently have some good partners like usual. I guess it's never been difficult for me to find people.