Stopping RPs from dying?

[Spinoceratopsrex]

So basically, I've started planning an RP called the Experiment, its probably the most work I've ever put into an RP, and I'm kind of worried about it dying, since out of the previous RPs I've made here, two were complete failures with no one even signing up, the other one had potential and actually managed to get going, but died suddenly. I do not want an of this to happen to The Experiment, Its my baby, and I want it to succeed, especially since I've been putting work into it, putting up an interest check, posting a topic in the workshop to help with a plot, etc. Basically I would like to know any good ways any of you have used to prevent an RP dying. Any and all help appreciated, thanks.

 

[Whisker]

@Spinoceratopsrex


To be clear, I have never been a GM in all the years I have rped. I'm an ideas man for certain, but I'm not very good at creating skeleton ideas as much as improving existing ones. That said I have rped for over 12 years so I've seen some successful rps and some unsuccessful rps. There's a major difference between the two and it all boils down to rest squarely on the shoulders of the GM.

• Do not establish a posting order rule!!!! Waiting loops are basically the biggest rp killers bar none. If Tommy, Suzy, and Billy get their post up within a day, but Jimmy takes a week to post, it can basically slow things down to a mindnumbing pace for your most active players. Hell, they might even start dropping the rp due to perceived inactivity of the thread. You need to cater to basically your most active players and get the rp to somewhere because if there is no movement and activity for your players, then there is no rp. A good alternative is to establish a date that you are going to post. Like telling them in the ooc that you will make a plot update post at least once every day regardless of who responds. DO NOT WAIT FOR JIMMY BEFORE MOVING ON. This goes double if there are people who are not actually interacting with Jimmy's character and shouldn't be waiting on them to begin with!
  
• Encourage your players to ooc but monitor it carefully. Lack of communication between the players in your rp can be as big a killer as waiting loops. Perceived activity and a friendly environment across the board can be a great boost to activity in your rp. In basic terms, if your ooc is healthy then chances are your rp is healthy too. If it looks like a ghost town with tumbleweeds rolling by, then chances are your rp is headed in that direction too. You need to keep an eye on the discussion, however, and nip any fights brewing in the bud as unhealthy active ooc between players can kill your rp as well.
  
• Do not be an authoritarian or feckless GM. If a player is in the OOC and is showing an interest in the rp and is offering suggestions for things and/or pointing out perfectly obvious things to another player, do not swoop down upon them and get snide and accuse them of hijacking your magical GM powers from you. I've literally been in an rp where one guy pointed out to another that Person A had already posted so he could go ahead and get his post out without waiting only for the big bad GM to swoop down and lambast the hell out of him for acting like a 'backseat GM'. Naturally that rp didn't last very long. On the flip side, if you're a GM who isn't making much effort to keep your rp alive by not checking in, not making plot posts, and or just not making an effort in general, your rp is going to die. Period.
  
• Look into establishing a backup GM. If real life gets in the way and you can't devote the attention your rp needs for awhile, you can try asking one of your active players to take charge for a bit while you are out. I've seen this done successfully numerous times (so long as it is made clear what that person can and can't do as well as being given a general direction to take the rp in). The same can go for players too. If a player knows they're going to be absent, but is afraid of missing a lot of the rp, try working something out so that their player has a starting point to jump back in instead of having to wallow through a mountain of posts.
  

So yes, keeping your RP can be done. You just need to be that kind of person who keeps the players motivated to keep going, be able to replace players you lose along the way, and keep as updated as possible with your own rp. I hope this helps somewhat and wish you good luck with your rping endeavors.

 

[call me rae]

To build on the previous suggestions


Keep your roleplay small. It is incredibly difficult to keep people engaged and interacting when you have like fifteen different people in your roleplay. The smaller the group the more tight knit you can become and the better able to communicate you'll be.


Now that doesn't mean you have to limit your roleplay to a small number of CHARACTERs just that I would keep the PLAYER base very small.


Further encourage talk among your players as @Whisker said the more interaction you have in the OOC the longer your roleplay will last. I don't even mean you have to focus on talking about the roleplay either. The longest roleplay I have ever been in lasted nearly four years and the reason it did so was because their was a core group of about four or five people that kept it going. When the GM would go on hiatus or the roleplay would have to be rebooted due to inactivity these people would keep in contact regardless. We would chat with each other outside of the roleplay and keep up with each others lives. This made us close friends and far more likely to keep the story progressing onward.


Don't be afraid to Reboot. Remember that roleplay I was telling you about that lasted about four years?


Well there were plenty of reboots and hiatuses in that time. I think in the two years I was a direct member of the group there were at least four times when the roleplay ground to a halt for some reason.


But the brilliant thing that comes of keeping the core community tight knit is you can just pick on up whenever everyone's schedules realign or whenever they weeded out the uninterested parties.


And each time it was rebooted? The story kept moving forward. So it wasn't like we had to start from scratch just because Tommy, Dickie, and Harry all flaked out. Instead there would be a short time jump between each threads.


So for example [ keeping in mind this was a school roleplay ]


Say thread A stopped at a fall festival in the school. Well Thread B would start up around Christmas or during some kind of field trip for the Winter Break. Or say we stalled out in the middle of the Spring Semester during Exam Week or whatever. Well maybe we'd start it back up in the Fall Semester.


For that matter this roleplay lasted so long that eventually the students left the school and went on the run for the government ( it was for X-men )


Anyway the point is keep your story progressing and don't be afraid to start a new thread if an old one is kind of dead. As long as you keep the story fresh you shouldn't have to worry about the roleplay ever really dying.

 

[Mordecai]

And to add one last comment:


You just gotta go for it. Babying your roleplay forever out of fear will only make your true fear come true and it will never get off the ground. Furthermore, I've found that a lot of people who have "baby" roleplays are so in love with the storyline following this magical order in their head that they begin to get upset when the roleplayers take it in a slightly different or unique direction. If you try and shove all the roleplayers into a "this is the exact way the story is going to go," it just won't work out. Players want the ability to have some freedom of how their characters act and impact the story and telling them they must follow A to B to C to D plot points is dull for most.

 

[Dave]

And to add one last comment:
You just gotta go for it. Babying your roleplay forever out of fear will only make your true fear come true and it will never get off the ground. Furthermore, I've found that a lot of people who have "baby" roleplays are so in love with the storyline following this magical order in their head that they begin to get upset with the roleplayers take it in a slightly different or unique direction. If you try and shove all the roleplayers into a "this is the exact way the story is going to go," it just won't work out. Players want the ability to have some freedom of how their characters act and impact the story and telling them they must follow A to B to C to D plot points is dull for most.

I may be new to the site, but, I gotta say that sounds about right for not only RP but maybe in other situations this can be applied.

 

[Bacon is fluffy]

And to add one last comment:
You just gotta go for it. Babying your roleplay forever out of fear will only make your true fear come true and it will never get off the ground. Furthermore, I've found that a lot of people who have "baby" roleplays are so in love with the storyline following this magical order in their head that they begin to get upset when the roleplayers take it in a slightly different or unique direction. If you try and shove all the roleplayers into a "this is the exact way the story is going to go," it just won't work out. Players want the ability to have some freedom of how their characters act and impact the story and telling them they must follow A to B to C to D plot points is dull for most.

My biggest problem really is this idea that the players want freedom,but not giving any direction is just as bad, if not worse than letting people go off on their own. I mean it's not always the case. As I have played a few good fandoms where it worked out marvelously,but we were more or less following the story of one person and making minor decisions along the way.

 

[Mordecai]

[QUOTE="Bacon is fluffy]My biggest problem really is this idea that the players want freedom,but not giving any direction is just as bad, if not worse than letting people go off on their own. I mean it's not always the case. As I have played a few good fandoms where it worked out marvelously,but we were more or less following the story of one person and making minor decisions along the way.

[/QUOTE]
There is a balance, definitely. Giving too much freedom causes disorganisation, but too much is suffocating.

 

[Pariah Stark]

I'm not long for the site, but this question in particular is one I'll give a quick answer to.


You want a roleplay to survive? The first thing you should look at is roleplay itself. What truly defines roleplay as an action and as an entity? Seems like a huge question to answer, but in the end, not really. LARP'ing, Tabletops, Dice, Nations, Text-Based, MMORPG - they all share one thing: interaction. With the exception of single player RPG's, such as the Witcher III (simply my current favorite), every single iteration of roleplay requires interaction. Roleplay is defined by it; without it on this site, all you'd be doing is writing a book, rolling some dice and pretending to be something you're not.


But, when you begin to interact with others, whether as a player or a GM or anything in between or maybe even as some other unique force, you truly take part in roleplay. You want a roleplay to survive? You want it to survive and be incredibly strict? It can be done. You want complete freedom in a sandbox roleplay? It can be done. Any extreme of the spectrum can be done and while its true that you can make an abundance of mistakes far beyond the amount of control a GM has in a roleplay over its setting an plot, in the end, the thing you need to truly be aware of is the interaction.


How are the characters interacting? How often? Is it negative, positive, somewhere in between or completely pointless? Are the conversations they're having pointless filler, or is there real character development? Do things intend on changing, or will they be static? But, it goes beyond that. Not just "what are the characters doing?", but "what are the roleplayers doing?" Are they constantly waiting on someone to post? Are they enjoying the OOC? Are they reading your immense lore? Or, are they making a new character? Are they micromanaging several? How are they interacting - not just with others, but with the roleplay itself. This question is so important that it not only defines the roleplay, but it can forge friendships and create communities. This question which every single GM - experienced or brand new - should be asking is the most fundamental, yet is so often overlooked.


Log out of your account. Make a new one, even - there's no rule against it - if only for this reason. Look at your roleplay, read it, try to make a character with a fresh mindset. Read a book or watch some anime you like - get your mind out of the rut of your roleplay and expand it into something refreshing, then use that mindset to perceive your roleplay. How does it feel to you? What does it look like? How does this piece of art, this labor of love, these hours of focus and thought, look through the eyes of someone who has just clicked on it for the first time? Or, maybe it's their tenth time. Can they see a difference? Is it lively - are things happening. Maybe it's their hundredth time, and they're a new RP'er to it just starting out with a bunch of OOC posts and a few IC's maybe. How does the roleplay look to them? Maybe it's their thousandth time and they've been roleplaying with you since the beginning and you're on page fifty now - how does the roleplay look to them? Is it different? If so, how? Is it good? Is it bad? Has it improved or just drug on? Then look at those questions and realize that I measured them in "how many", not "how often" or "how long" - how frequently and for a fact the period of time a person has viewed and interacted with your roleplay changes their perception so greatly that I won't even begin to explain it. But, I assure you that it does.


The very first interaction you have with a roleplay is how you perceive it and how you continue to perceive it. The mechanics of the roleplay, whether it's too free or too constricting, are the culmination of the interaction within it - and even more than that.


If you have a problem, the first step to solving it is identifying it. Any problem. And, in the world of roleplay, how you interact as a player, as a person and with your characters defines everything - including your potential problems.


I could give you or anyone tips, advice or even explain some minor issues you're facing, but those are short fixes. In the long run, it's best you begin understanding your own style, shape it into something healthy and constructive and eventually, you'll get it working in a way you enjoy and that brings others to you whom also enjoy what you're doing. You can't please everyone, period. It's a good thing you don't need to.

 

[Archie]

So basically, I've started planning an RP called the Experiment, its probably the most work I've ever put into an RP, and I'm kind of worried about it dying, since out of the previous RPs I've made here, two were complete failures with no one even signing up, the other one had potential and actually managed to get going, but died suddenly. I do not want an of this to happen to The Experiment, Its my baby, and I want it to succeed, especially since I've been putting work into it, putting up an interest check, posting a topic in the workshop to help with a plot, etc. Basically I would like to know any good ways any of you have used to prevent an RP dying. Any and all help appreciated, thanks.

Management and PMs are the most ignored thing. Seeing a plot racing ahead and players not picking eachtoer up? First keep in mind that having more than 6 players dedicated and constantly posting in your RP is an accomplishment and usually 6 is a pretty solid hard cap, but if you want to incorporate people, you've got to build a culture of being open and bold with things - never judge where people take it, only, like improv comedy, build off it in your own direction. Characters should be encouraged to dream so put them through a lot of things and see how they respond if you're the GM, if you're not, plot extensively in PMs and OOC - that gets people excited. You can usually judge the success of an RP based on the length of its OOC thread

 

[Pariah Stark]

You can usually judge the success of an RP based on the length of its OOC thread

Yeah, I firmly disagree with this. Even though I see you use the world "usually", I still openly disagree with this. Not only is the OOC where many problems arise, but there are plenty of ways to have friends, a community and a culture than an OOC. Hell, I don't even have access to PM's anymore, but I still have methods to communicate. Before I forcibly shut down my previous roleplay, it had 10 dedicated posters at a high quality in a fairly notable frequency, and the OOC was only ever really used for a few brief discussions and to explain if someone was going away. That roleplay was, person-for-person, posting faster than every single one of its genre and was growing faster than ones that had been existing longer than it already. It's ratio of IC/OOC was growing in favor of IC. See, I focus on a narrative - I want to tell a story. No, I'm not setting that story in stone, either. I want to take the characters I have and create a story for them that evolves with them. I want it to be so enthralling that people anticipate their next post because just like getting to the next chapter in a book - they want to see what happens. OOC isn't really needed for that. If anything, OOC interaction can somewhat take away from that experience.


I don't want to plot extensively in PM's and OOC - I want every brand new post to be like a new episode of your favorite show. Sure, at times, I might need to discuss something with someone - but that's why I have select few that help with storyboarding while others are along for the ride. And, even then (and if I linked them here for you to see), I kept surprises from them so even though they knew what was going to happen, they didn't know how. Not only that, this was a fandom roleplay where I put pretty strict confines on how far you could stretch the established world and shut down several attempts to resurrect long-dead groups/families and even more so either helped to edit characters or just outright denied ideas I didn't think fit the theme. And, this was a genre with a LOT of competition where those ideas were allowed. I had success in statistics and when I shut down the roleplay (due to my own reasoning), I received universal praise from everyone in it.


The true success of an RP doesn't necessarily require an OOC to keep people invested. In one of the more strict cultures I came from, actually having an inflated OOC was a sign of weakness. While this isn't the belief I hold any more, I came from a group that saw a giant OOC keeping a roleplay afloat as a sign you required the good faith of your roleplayers and interacting with them in "mean time" to make things work. That may sound crazy, but they had countless thriving roleplays. Imagine that: creating and sustaining a roleplay with the OOC existing pretty much just for necessity. Again, I understand and default to the importance of an OOC to the livelihood of an RP, but you can have thriving roleplays without it.


A roleplay itself needs to be healthy. It needs to be well-wrote. It needs to be something roleplayers anticipate the next post for. Have a hugely-detailed roleplay that requires paragraphs of reply? Well, keep in mind that there are one-liner roleplays with virtually no structure that the roleplayers are absolutely in love with and have potentially ten times the anticipation for the next reply even if it's less than one-hundred words. These types of roleplays, like it or not, are some of the ones we should look at, too. Allotting their success to lower standards isn't always fair; a lot of them die out almost immediately. There is a factor there for success, and that factor is one that does translate over into more detailed roleplays. The OOC and subctulure of a roleplay is a big factor, sure, but you need to have a solid roleplay to begin with and proof of that exists all across the site.

 

[Archie]

[QUOTE="Pariah Stark]Yeah, I firmly disagree with this. Even though I see you use the world "usually", I still openly disagree with this. Not only is the OOC where many problems arise, but there are plenty of ways to have friends, a community and a culture than an OOC. Hell, I don't even have access to PM's anymore, but I still have methods to communicate. Before I forcibly shut down my previous roleplay, it had 10 dedicated posters at a high quality in a fairly notable frequency, and the OOC was only ever really used for a few brief discussions and to explain if someone was going away. That roleplay was, person-for-person, posting faster than every single one of its genre and was growing faster than ones that had been existing longer than it already. It's ratio of IC/OOC was growing in favor of IC. See, I focus on a narrative - I want to tell a story. No, I'm not setting that story in stone, either. I want to take the characters I have and create a story for them that evolves with them. I want it to be so enthralling that people anticipate their next post because just like getting to the next chapter in a book - they want to see what happens. OOC isn't really needed for that. If anything, OOC interaction can somewhat take away from that experience.
I don't want to plot extensively in PM's and OOC - I want every brand new post to be like a new episode of your favorite show. Sure, at times, I might need to discuss something with someone - but that's why I have select few that help with storyboarding while others are along for the ride. And, even then (and if I linked them here for you to see), I kept surprises from them so even though they knew what was going to happen, they didn't know how. Not only that, this was a fandom roleplay where I put pretty strict confines on how far you could stretch the established world and shut down several attempts to resurrect long-dead groups/families and even more so either helped to edit characters or just outright denied ideas I didn't think fit the theme. And, this was a genre with a LOT of competition where those ideas were allowed. I had success in statistics and when I shut down the roleplay (due to my own reasoning), I received universal praise from everyone in it.


The true success of an RP doesn't necessarily require an OOC to keep people invested. In one of the more strict cultures I came from, actually having an inflated OOC was a sign of weakness. While this isn't the belief I hold any more, I came from a group that saw a giant OOC keeping a roleplay afloat as a sign you required the good faith of your roleplayers and interacting with them in "mean time" to make things work. That may sound crazy, but they had countless thriving roleplays. Imagine that: creating and sustaining a roleplay with the OOC existing pretty much just for necessity. Again, I understand and default to the importance of an OOC to the livelihood of an RP, but you can have thriving roleplays without it.


A roleplay itself needs to be healthy. It needs to be well-wrote. It needs to be something roleplayers anticipate the next post for. Have a hugely-detailed roleplay that requires paragraphs of reply? Well, keep in mind that there are one-liner roleplays with virtually no structure that the roleplayers are absolutely in love with and have potentially ten times the anticipation for the next reply even if it's less than one-hundred words. These types of roleplays, like it or not, are some of the ones we should look at, too. Allotting their success to lower standards isn't always fair; a lot of them die out almost immediately. There is a factor there for success, and that factor is one that does translate over into more detailed roleplays. The OOC and subctulure of a roleplay is a big factor, sure, but you need to have a solid roleplay to begin with and proof of that exists all across the site.

[/QUOTE]
Yeah exceptions exist but I'm just talking empirically


No doubt if people sit around and talk and never take action in posts it's a problem and it looks like your group solved the problem and harmonized a ton


But it goes without saying that they're closely correlated. Without a lot of OOC chat (especially in the beginning of the RP), people who joined late or weren't part of a cascade of initial events or the main group find it hard to get in, and since for detailed RPs especially the labor/ideas ratio per post is very high, people keep themselves excited with the future. For groups that know eachother and for less detailed RPs, OOC is way less important


Think of managing an RP like a company, or anything. Yes, you can roll the dice, put the idea out and hope you have the right group of people who haromize like the boston symphony. But if you communicate, you take less risks (not no risks) - provided everyone has the baseline that every RP needs which is initial commitment (due to time constraints IRL, I can't stress enough that's not a given)

 

[Pariah Stark]

See, I would consider that a design flaw. If a roleplay is difficult to join during a series of events, that might make sense, but if it's designed so that it never has points when recruitment phases can happen or slower points to make it easier, then that's really a fault on the GM. It doesn't have to be that way; recruitment doesn't absolutely need to be significantly harder once the initial events unfold. Of course, this particular point is completely in correlation with the plot and genre, and on that point, neither one of us can really give a true "empirical" statement as to how things should function. The social constructs inside roleplays vary immensely based on several factors, and I personally think that proper forethought and design can avoid a lot of the problems you're bringing up.

 

[SpamBot]

If people drop the roleplay, you can keep going. Find a way to work around the vanished characters. I've seen it done many times by people.


I wouldn't consider the roleplay to be 'dead' unless everyone loses interest. And if that happens, yeah, do not hesitate to reboot, revamp, do whatever. Maybe even keep a group you know you trust and run with them while keeping it open for new people. Maybe set it up to where people can come and go.


Communicate with your partners, let them give input. If something feels like it's stagnating, or not a very good idea, then talk with the group. Find ways to keep moving. If someone ignores you? Don't give up right away, they might be doing things in life, but give them a chance. If still nothing, don't dwell on it. Again, keep moving.


That's all I've got. There are a lot of good points here, and I didn't want to seem too redundant.

 

[Archie]

[QUOTE="Pariah Stark]See, I would consider that a design flaw. If a roleplay is difficult to join during a series of events, that might make sense, but if it's designed so that it never has points when recruitment phases can happen or slower points to make it easier, then that's really a fault on the GM. It doesn't have to be that way; recruitment doesn't absolutely need to be significantly harder once the initial events unfold. Of course, this particular point is completely in correlation with the plot and genre, and on that point, neither one of us can really give a true "empirical" statement as to how things should function. The social constructs inside roleplays vary immensely based on several factors, and I personally think that proper forethought and design can avoid a lot of the problems you're bringing up.

[/QUOTE]
Agreed but its a very common problem (nto so much in groups of people who've RPed before, but for ones that dont know eachother) just because post times and quantity vary a lot


Ideally we'd need zero OOC but people sometimes just need direction and a sense of where everyone fits in

 

[J0ker]

As someone who is literally limping to the end of an RP so that I can make a sequel, I feel your pain. What killed my RP is stagnation. After someone left my RP mid-way through, all I was left with was my hardcore group of friends who had done it all before. We had no new ideas, the plot got stale and we're having to put it on ice for some time. New ideas are crucial! Ask around outside of your RP if you must. Recruit new members if the old ones leave, but always make sure they're loyal and won't bounce within a week. Just keep getting new blood.

 

[Captain Asshat]

People need to make formal announcements when they're gonna be too busy to post for a while or if they have to drop out. You don't even have to explain why, just say you're gonna be gone for x amount of time. Takes like two minutes. People act like they don't have two minutes for that, but really, they do. They're just forgetting that there are other people on the other side of the screen who will be inconvenienced by your mysterious disappearance, and it can tend to have a chain reaction on the rest of the players.

 

[J0ker]

People need to make formal announcements when they're gonna be too busy to post for a while or if they have to drop out. You don't even have to explain why, just say you're gonna be gone for x amount of time. Takes like two minutes. People act like they don't have two minutes for that, but really, they do. They're just forgetting that there are other people on the other side of the screen who will be inconvenienced by your mysterious disappearance, and it can tend to have a chain reaction on the rest of the players.

A fucking men.

 

[BloodyKharma]

People need to make formal announcements when they're gonna be too busy to post for a while or if they have to drop out. You don't even have to explain why, just say you're gonna be gone for x amount of time. Takes like two minutes. People act like they don't have two minutes for that, but really, they do. They're just forgetting that there are other people on the other side of the screen who will be inconvenienced by your mysterious disappearance, and it can tend to have a chain reaction on the rest of the players.

(>_>)