In regards to feedback/criticism, all I can say is that after participating in three games of this style, one of them being my own, I think the primary reason for loss of interest is the lack of engagement. By that, I mean that players are given so much freedom, and the overarching plot is pushed so far to the background, that eventually everyone's left thinking, "Now what?" So, long story short, I think a way to guarantee the game lasting longer is to put more emphasis on the main plot. Retain the sandbox element, but with a larger focus on the bigger scope of things. I hope that made sense.
I don't necessarily agree with this feedback (or at least it is not true all the time). The Create-A-Hero RPG has been going strong for two entire years so far (and that's not counting how long it was going before the guildfall). My own All-Star Marvel has been chugging along for almost a year now, too (mattering which thread you count as the 'start'). In neither of these two games have we gotten to the "main plot" (although in All-Star Marvel, we are starting to put together the Avengers for the first time). There has been solo and collaborative story arcs, but these (particularly the collaborative arcs) stories have been rather limited to a few characters.
Furthermore, there have been game-wide events in CAH RPG, but these have been rather player driven instead of GM mandated. The closest thing to a "main plot" in the CAH RPG was an event that a new player pushed out (ironically this player also disappeared, leaving us to finish it off). But there was no real planning for this (or at least on my or Nitemare Shape's part). It was spontaneous and, while it did result in a rule being made where you need to consult the GMs to make sure an event does not conflict with anyone, gave certain characters reasons to push their character(s) forward.
So, for my own feedback (although I was not really involved in this roleplay - I will try to give feedback from my experiences in the Create-A-Hero RPG and All-Star Marvel, the first thing to make these games successful is having an active GM. Please don't take this as a personal attack or anything, Gowi. And when I mean "active GM", I don't mean "post in the IC everyday". Instead, just make sure you can consistently make posts. Furthermore, while you don't want the OOC filled with pages and pages of discussion that might be better for a chat room, I also believe that having a somewhat active OOC in general is beneficial. And again, what I mean by this is that, if the last OOC post was from three (or more) days ago, then I think there is a problem.
Next, you also need at least a dedicated core group of players who you can rely on to post and keep the ball rolling. I have found this true for both CAH and All-Star Marvel. Sometimes you just need those two or three players who know what direction they want to take their character(s) and can keep the IC active while other players try to find what direction they want to push their characters. I have done this before in the CAH thread in its infancy after guildfall and I have had other players in All-Star Marvel do this. Basically, if your thought process, as a player, is "I will wait to post until others post", then the roleplay will imminently run out of steam. Any roleplay (whether a roleplay like this one, All-Star, and CAH, or something else on this website) is a two way street. Both the GM and the players must be active
and motivated.
Another improvement that might help is enforcing the "one character at first, then two more characters are 'unlocked' after a few posts" rule, even for the "veteran" players. I think that if you allow players to start out with three characters (or even more) at the very beginning, they might be overwhelmed with having too many tools in the tool shed. It is either that or players need to know when they are taking on more than they can handle. I feel that if the game would grow "naturally", then it might help out. What I mean by this is that each player at first take one character and start making posts. After two or three posts, if the player feels that they can take on another character, then allow them to make another character sheet.
Another thing I learned from running All-Star Marvel is, especially in the games infancy, you need to be able to be flexible with players who "disappear" (especially for months at a time or even not showing up again at all). For All-Star Marvel, I allowed potential players to retcon the history of characters who have "disappeared" because usually the type of player who does this disappearing act will only have made a few posts that have not interacted with anyone and it makes it very easy to retcon without messing with the roleplay's lore. Furthermore, I feel that the "first arc should be a solo arc" really facilitates this and weeds out people who would disappear anyways. While this might not be necessary for the first arc for your third player, for new players, this makes sure that if they disappear without any explanation, they are not going to screw over that character.
Unlike Create-A-Hero, where we can just ignore the characters of missing players, since they are original characters and someone making a CS for a specific character does not affect the availability of another character to another player, these games where you base the characters on established comic book characters do not have this liberty. This is why I like the "retcon" option and the "first arc must be a solo arc" because it prevents a situation where someone might make a character CS and screwing over that character (and other characters who would interact with that character) for future, potential players.
Okay, I think I am going to stop here for now. If I think of anything else in the next few days, I'll let you know. I hope some of this will be helpful. I really do enjoy these types of games and really don't want to see them whither away due to inactivity.
@GowiP.S. Okay, I lied. One more piece of advice. While this might not apply as much as it did a month or so ago, I think we need to make sure our player base is not split. What I mean is that (I am overusing this phrase
), at one point, we had similar games (Marvel, DC, combined) running both on this site
AND SuperHeroHype. While some players do participate on both boards, I feel that having two "All-Star" Marvel, 2 "Ultimate" DC, and 2 "One Universe" games going at the same time just divides the potential players in half. Either that, or the players who are participating in both are too stretched thin.
