Roleplay Death

[Vulcan 3,254]

If you've been a role player for awhile then you likely know this experience all too well, sometimes the RP dies slowly, the post times get longer and longer until folks just....stop, Other times it happens abruptly, without warning for one reason or another the role players just quit. 

 

Some of us at some point just think that the RP has given us all the entertainment value it could give and would consider the RP death a convenient choice and perhaps it can be a valid choice, as it allows those players more free time to propagate newer RPs with different ideas.

 

I'd like to discuss this.

 

What are your experiences with RP death? 

 

Do you think we should prevent this? do think not?

Edited April 5, 2016 by DefinitelyNot Vulcan

[Gamer_KM 90]

Well....I try to keep up on RPs. But sometimes Life gets in the way. A lot of people get busy at ones. 

 

Nothing you can really do about it. Unless you have a matrix.

[MDLineArt 93]

The core reason I often find is if the RP is worth the time of the writer, and this often times comes down to the entertainment that they receive by it.  Considering it a collaborative writing effort, the trick is to work with the other player with communication In Character and Out Of Character.  Biggest way I try to do this is to 'Sell' (Wrestling Term) by trying to put over the other person's gimmic, and giving them something to put over of my own character.

 

Another issue that happens too often for my tastes is the second someone comes up with a conflict, another person will pull a magic maguffin that suddenly makes it a non-issue, and in doing so doesn't make themselves look any better but does just make any chance of story development to become stagnant because there was no development or character exploration to be had.

 

If the story is no longer engaging because things are not being made to be interesting, then why continue?

 

The other part I find is that many don't play off each other's differences to highlight how the personalities are that vastly different, making each pony feel more like they are separate entity, rather than just a part of the group and in doing so seemingly just another cog in a group-think project.  That's not to say it has to be hostile, but often times I find everyone wants to be the hero, but arn't really that sure how to go about it, and start moving on as they would expect by getting to it and solving it, but don't try to make it seem that dangerous because they could just as easily pass it by.  They seem to be afraid to play off their weaknesses and build up from there.

 

When this is what you are running into with your RPs, why would you want to come in day after day to make a 400-3000 character post to respond to a 200 character post that does this repeatedly?

 

Just my first thoughts on the matter.  I am grateful that this is becoming less of a thing in the RPs I am involved with.

[Guest]

RP death? Plenty. So far, only one RP I'm in has finished it's storyline ( and it's not a 1x1 ).

 

I keep up with RPs to the best of my ability, and I have a lot of ability. I have a different time zone compared to most of the other RPers, which makes me wonder if the RPs are dying because of me.

 

I'm in the middle of making a more detailed guide on how to keep RPs alive, actually, but I'll just drop some short suggestions here.

 

What you can do as a DM

 

1. Post rotation: Severely limits flexibility, but is very useful to prevent people from dropping it due to getting left behind through flooding. I'm experimenting with a variation of this method in one of the RP's in the DM of.

 

2. Dead RPers: if a member stops posting, it's good for you to shoot them a PM. Lot's of RPers just... Stop posting without writing their character out, freezing interactions and can damage the RPs integrity. Shoot them a PM to kindly ask if they're interested. If not, ask them to write themselves out or offer to do it for them.

 

3. Pick your members: This one's a doozy. I actually have a hidden list of sorts that ranks how active/consistent different members of the site are, but I'll keep it hidden. Whether you ask them to promise to stay active or whatever, try to accept RPers only if you know that they will be committed to the RP.

 

4. Be a good DM. This is really general which includes managing bitchy RPers, solving conflict and importantly, keeping the story going/ interesting. I've seen many an RP die due to the story stalling at one part and people drop out due to lack of interest.

 

What you can do as a member:

 

1. Be considerate to other members: this goes above normal manners. Have the sense to stop posting if you realise that someone's gonna feel left out.

 

2. Stay active: this speaks for itself

 

3. Don't join RPs if you know you can't commit: keep note that I said if you KNOW you can't commit. Most of the time things pop out of nowhere and screw you over. This is unavoidable.

 

4. Write yourself out: explained above.

 

 

 

BONUS: RPs with friends are hard to kill. Bangcolt arena is an example of this.