What Causes Roleplays to Die?

[Queen Raidne]

Certainly a lack of posting can be claimed to kill all RP's. But why don't people post? What can you do in creating and running a roleplay to avoid these things?

[Kestrel]

Queen Raidne said
Certainly a lack of posting can be claimed to kill all RP's. But why don't people post?

Contra had a nice list on this pre-guildfall. There's a variety of reasons, but generally the issue is a lack of investment and susceptibility to "Well if they don't post, I can't post." Which I like to call chain-quitting.

What can you do in creating and running a roleplay to avoid these things?

Get people more invested in your RP. Make their actions feel significant, move your events quickly instead of lounging 4 pages at the local tavern doing nothing of note (taverns kill RP's) godmode the fuck out of drop-outs, have a good amount of luck, but most importantly; communication. OOC's are fantastic for that, but skype- or steam-groups work as well. It doesn't have to be about the RP, even, you could ship Winnie the Pooh characters with George of the Jungle for all I care. As long as it brings people together, it'll help you a lot. They become more invested in the social dynamic of your RP, which is a great reason for them to keep coming back.

The beginnings of games are far more fragile than ones that ran a couple months, but in the beginning you should always have a plan for drop-outs. They're going to happen. You're going to lose people in every stage of your RP booting up, including the first months of the IC. This is why doing things like making a plot reliant on certain characters is a no-go, unless you as a GM feel like juggling it all (at which point people often feel you're focusing the RP more about your characters than theirs and the whole thing falls apart.) Something I found to work quite well, was to find ways to brutally murder dropped PC's, because it gets people to think and talk of how they'll be killed, we can have the scene affect the active characters by having it play out in front of them, or even use it to mix up the plot.

There's a lot more things to do, but little time to write it down so yeah this may or may not be continued.

[Ellri]

For communication: We've also had fairly decent experience with using a private channel on the Guild IRC. Our current RPs do to slightly varying degree use such a channel.

It is of little consequence how they do it, so long as the players do speak with each other.

[Brovo]

Short answer: A lot.

Most common reasons noted from a guy who has been rping for ten years?

#1: Interest spikes and dies. common for the primarily high school based population of Roleplayer Guild.
#2: One or more players quit out of spite against a GM whose decisions they didn't like or because of another player, causing a chain reaction.
#3: Nobody has any idea what they are doing story-wise and everyone suffers for it.
#4: Because nobody takes action in the story with their characters: They comment on what has happened, giving less total actions to comment on next time, until this compounds into an implosion when the RP can no longer sustain their dead weight.
#5: Especially in Advanced, people scared of posting subpar material never feeling satisfied with their posts. Thus they never post. Back to compound implosion.
#6: Because the story ends up filled with characters written like main protagonists instead of party members. (aka: Everyone is Commander Shepard syndrome.)
#7: Because the GM and/or players never stop thinking about new ideas, thus causing old ones to die from split attention. (ADHD syndrome.)
#8: Because bad luck. Happens to everyone.
#9: Because most people are too arrogant to admit that their writing skills may be flawed. Ergo they usually write themselves into corners, make scapegoats and excuses, and quit instead of learning how to better write next time.
#10: Because people are abhorrent at managing time and get caught up in other activities, such as education, or gaming.

I'm guilty of some of these on occasion too, so no, I'm not writing these up as some elitist who claims to be exempt from these.

Generally speaking, the only solutions are to...

#1: Through trial and error, find a core group of players/friends you can depend on to consistently post, who share a similar taste in role plays such as you.
#2: Constantly self-evaluate your own work. Make sure to always leave ways for other players to interact with your character(s), and make sure you're always seeking out interactions with others.
#3: Maintain interest. Be focused. When you aren't writing a post, think about potential ways the story could go from there. That not only helps to keep your mindset on the story, but gives you potential routes you can pursue when you are ready to write your next post.
#4: Never join more RP's than you can handle, and always have enough time to keep up with whatever pace the group has set. This is usually where I fail most often.
#5: Never be afraid to post even stuff that you consider subpar. It's better to have a mediocre post to work with than no post at all.