Lifespan and Longevity

Most, if not everyone, knows the bitter sting of a project they loved making or participating in falling apart, for whatever reason. The GM disappears, people stop posting, interest falls away for one reason or another. We always see it happen and we always try to find some sort of preventative measure for it in our next project. (Or we charge in and hope this will be the one.)

What do you think some of the chief causes of and RP's untimely demise are? How exactly can we prevent these and the more common issues?

For me personally I think investment and variety are two of the most important aspects of a fledgling RP to get past that deadly stage where the RP has just begun and the danger of it stopping has never been higher. Get players to write their characters often and in different scenarios that keep them intrigued and inspired. In Z, for example, the weekly stage change and large amount of pre-made missions as story hooks are all put in place to give the players a sense of progress while also giving them a fresh topic to write about each time a new stage is posted.

But what do you guys think?

tl;dr

What kills RPs most often? How can we stop those things? What are your techniques for keeping an RP hyped up and running OR helping your GM do as such?

Hype might be one of the bigger reasons RPs die, since all the excitement is exclusive to the concept of a RP. There's little to no attention on how an idea should be executed, and without ever taking the time to assess these projects in development, they'll most likely end up as fads that can only survive off hype for a limited time. Hindsight is something to bear in mind when developing any RP; something that may look good on paper might not exactly turn out as flawless in practice.

Because of that, I really think Workshop threads should become the norm rather than Interest Checks that just go over an idea or two, since GMs are encouraging the community to offer constructive feedback and suggestions to help optimize their RP. They have an opportunity to fix any issues that may have not seemed important to the GM prior to its release. The entire process strengthens the RP's appeal as a standalone project rather than just relying on players' familiarity with some popular franchise, and consequently this increases the chance of its survival throughout its early phases since the RP is able to shape its own identity.

Ech said:

I really think Workshop threads should become the norm rather than Interest Checks that just go over an idea or two, since GMs are encouraging the community to offer constructive feedback and suggestions to help optimize their RP. They have an opportunity to fix any issues that may have not seemed important to the GM prior to its release. The entire process strengthens the RP's appeal as a standalone project rather than just relying on players' familiarity with some popular franchise, and consequently this increases the chance of its survival throughout its early phases since the RP is able to shape its own identity.

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Agreed to that.

As for the original question, the most usual reason RPs die is a combination of two things:

1: One person has some event happen IRL, which makes them too busy to post for an extended time. Their role in the RP is too critical to simply skip over (especially if they're the GM), so the RP goes on pause for that time.

2: By the time they are back, almost half of the players have moved on and no longer have interest in coming back, OR it simply becomes impossible to get in contact with them anymore.

Needless to say, 1 is not preventable. IRL stuff happens. If any part of this is preventable, it's 2, but that's still quite a hurdle.

#x Players sign up for RPs on a whim and then realize that they don't actually have time for it or as much interest beyond initial hype as they thought. This is really not true for a lot of people, but there are still those players (and GMs) who do this and that can kill a RP early on, when a chunk of its people disappear.

Solution: only make a rp/sign up for a rp if you believe you really can.

The reason a lot of people drop out is because its them only joining on a whim. A few interest checks which get more attention have seen more success due to them building up energy and interest more, whereas someone just throwing up an ooc and saying hey come join this its x thing thats not around or hasn't been done yet might get initial reactions of 'cool dude ima join' but then as people really start to realize what it is, what its about, how itll go or whatever they just slowly lose interest for something else they're more committed to seeing through.

So more in depth interest checks? Only sign up for something if you're truly interested in it and not just think it's a neat idea? As a gm, don't be in such a rush to get started and ensure that everyone is on the same level and knows what you expect?

Honestly, I think that the biggest killer of rps is just time. The longer an RP goes the more likely people will get tired of it or that you'll lose players (or the GM) to the horrors of real life. I think if we want more RPs to start finishing, we need to stop aiming for long and complex RPs and try for short and simple.

Joining on a whim is definitely a big reason for RPs failing. I've done it before, so I know I'm definitely one of the people to blame.

However, I disagree on RPs failing if they are too long. Sure, I understand people can lose interest the longer an RP goes, but it sort of falls along the same lines of joining on a whim. Joining an RP and understanding how much time will ultimately help a lot. I remember a few years back where several RPers joined thinking the story could only go for so long, while the GM had planned to extend it way past the expected point. Other times, its the exact opposite. People join expecting a long story to take place and find out that the GM had only planned some small campaign.

It's another reason why the "first, deadly stage of an RP" that Jay mentioned is the most important. If people can get past that point, you can almost guarantee that they will stick around longer.

As an RPer, I try to get people back into the RP by attempting JPs if the situation allows. Often times, people run into writing blocks or down times and it stops a lot of people from continuing. Having someone else to work with helps a lot in these situations, at least imo. As a GM, I just try to keep things interesting. Always give people something new to work with. You can't let people hang without direction or you won't get anywhere.

I'd estimate that 80% of the RPs I've been in that stopped progressing, were because the GM stopped participating. Not because they were bored, because IRL things came up.

Actually, I can think of one where the GM seemed to just burn out, but that one had been going on for a LONG time. I expected the adventure to be shorter.

I am "more of a "fine dining" kind of dude when it comes to gaming. Shorter, tighter titles with fine tuned experiences rather than big, long titles with tons of content (including filler). I usually only apply this to video games, but it probably applies to group roleplays too, now that I think about it.

I find it interesting nobody has brought up the matter of interesting characters. Creating a character is very different from writing one, and just putting some stuff that sounds cool down on your sheet doesn't make for an interesting character to write per se. Combine that with having an interesting plot for your character, and you already have two barriers you as an RPer have to overcome. On top of that is the interest in other people's stories and your personal life that affects it.

I honestly belief that a lot of people, myself included, drop out of RPs because their own characters and stories fail to grab them. You can't just retcon your character and start anew three posts in, or just start writing a different story.

Ice said:

I find it interesting nobody has brought up the matter of interesting characters. Creating a character is very different from writing one, and just putting some stuff that sounds cool down on your sheet doesn't make for an interesting character to write per se. Combine that with having an interesting plot for your character, and you already have two barriers you as an RPer have to overcome. On top of that is the interest in other people's stories and your personal life that affects it.

I honestly belief that a lot of people, myself included, drop out of RPs because their own characters and stories fail to grab them. You can't just retcon your character and start anew three posts in, or just start writing a different story.

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Every roleplay that's ever crumbled to dust around me, has had very interesting characters. Speaking from personal experience.

If the characters weren't interesting, then I wouldn't be invested enough to care that it crumbled before I was done interacting with those interesting characters. But I do -- so it's always a gut-punch when those characters are no longer around.

I'll speak for my own RPs and maybe somebody will hopefully be able to relate

busy people + high RP standards kill my own RPs

it's so tough to get people who are doing this for a hobby do it with a high standard, because it's just not their job. They're mostly focusing on their actual job or studies (which is fine). For me personally, I would like to RP every 2nd or 3rd day, since for years now I've been blessed with lots of free time and a vigorous amount of creativity and imagination, but keeping up with my own pace just isn't possible for a group of people who are studying or working for a living.

As a result, posting production gradually slows down, and after many months pass, people just lose interest I guess. It's happened to a couple of my RPs, sad thing to see

In my years of grizzled experience as a post-mortem RP investigator, I've found the most frequent cause of death is a knife to the throat, with a bunch of dandelion seeds sprinkled about the corpse. The mysterious Deadly Dandy has slain many and left not even a hint of their existence besides the seeds; not one fingerprint, not even a scrap of clothing. The only hope for stopping this RP-killing monster is to catch them in the act and whack them over the head with a massive brick.

Although I don't have much to add in the initial reasoning department besides the obvious Deadly Dandy threat, which needs to be addressed before we're all dead as heck I think the domino effect is worth noting. Different people have different levels of commitment to any given RP, and RPs can obviously be less enticing to remain in if people are leaving. Once one person mysteriously disappears probably Deadly Dandy's doing that may well prompt one other person to disappear - especially if the person who left is the GM or has a character who is currently interacting with another player's character at the time. And then another person might disappear because of that, and then another, etc. etc.

I think an important thing when something like that happens is to deal with the problem as quickly as possible, within reason. If one player is stuck because the player of a character they were interacting with left, get them back on a new post and explain away the disappearance as quickly as possible just so they don't feel trapped doing nothing. This is of course much more difficult when people leave without notice, because there's always the hope they might come back unannounced, too. That's why I think communication is something that really helps halt the potential deaths of a lot of RPs - the paramedics who manage to get there in time and pick the dandelion seeds out of the throat wound... maybe I'm going a little far with the silly joke. Maybe not far enough - is anyone hyped for a Deadly Dandy RP?