Anyways, new question to spark conversation. Why do you guys think roleplays die here so often? I've begun to notice that even though they die a lot (By a lot, I'm mean way too much), many of the RPs' members are still here. Is it just lack of interest? Same story just gets old sometimes? What do you think it is?
(BTW, if a new Digimon RP were to be made, which universe would people want it to be based in? (For mechanics reasons.) Examples of course being: Adventure, Tamers, Data Squad, etc. Also, do you think set Digimon partners is a good idea or should the RPer get to choose?)
I feel like roleplays dying is just the nature of the game. People have to rely on each other in order for activity to go, so once one person starts to teeter, it cascades and effects everyone else. The waiting between posts is usually what gets people bored, which is kind of the unavoidable in text roleplays. Only way I've seen to avoid this is to keep people always participating in something regarding the roleplay, like having a chatroom to discuss plot and development and stuff, but keeping people active in the chat is work in itself.
The lack of shame for dropping roleplays around here seems to help with the quick deaths of roleplays too. An interesting roleplay pops up, a ton of people join, then a ton of people back out shortly after it starts, causing it to fall apart because of the cascading effect I mentioned earlier. People back out for a ton of reasons, because they have too much on their plate, circumstances required, just lost interest, etc. Point is people drop pretty often because people aren't too harsh on leavers, which is fine, I'd prefer a nice community over a strict stern community with everyone on top of each other angrily any day.
SAO: Sanctuary did a pretty good job at countering the leaving effect by letting the roleplay be free enough so even if people left, people can still keep roleplaying without any big issues. Having a dedicated GM is probably the most important factor in keeping a roleplay alive, but it's hard to do that without some type of support from players, which is again, why chat's that supplement roleplays usually lead to a more successful roleplay, from my experience anyways.
Regarding the digimon roleplay, I was toying around with the idea of a digimon roleplay in a Xros type world. I think letting people decide their partners will probably lead to the most fun just because it let's people be creative in making their characters, being limited to a couple different digimon sort of sucks, especially when someone takes the one you had in mind.
Edit: P.S welcome back P.S