Advice/Help What do you think let's an RP stay active?

[Bakuyoshi]

General thing is what the title says, tried to run RPs back in the day but they always flopped about a week in.

Anyone who has been in a long running or running a long running one got any ideas?

 

[nerdy tangents]

Communication and luck.

Luck covers the things that are outside your control like your partners schedules, real life illnesses, clashing personalities, etc.

Sometimes you start an idea with every intention of following through but you realize that you don’t have enough free time, you get sick, or you just don’t mesh with the other person as well as you thought. It’s not anyone’s fault really just the way things happen sometimes.


Now communication covers everything you can control about a roleplay. This means letting your partner know when real life is getting busy, when your feeling burnt out on the roleplay, when you have some minor gripe you want addressed. But it also means getting to know your partner as a person and being patient when real life gets them busy as well.

So yeah I would say there isn’t really a guarantee for making a roleplay last but the two things above help

 

[Idea]

I largely agree with nerdy tangents here, though I would at the very least add 'a basic sense of responsibility'. Truthfully though, I would say luck, players/partner and responsibility are the main factors.

I am using 'responsibility' here in the sense of doing one's due diligence in ensuring the viability of what you want, and I mean it in a very basic level. The most glaring examples to me are GMs who disappear because they started something out of momentary hype that wouldn't last or because they never bothered to check their schedule or availability. There's even been cases where the GM just started playing a game and didn't pay attention to their own RP. There are other things too though, there's been RPs I've been in that have been going great and are suddenly brought to a halt because they were made dependent on something which is can easily come apart, such as one RP where the DM had to individually give results for every post anyone made after each round, meaning no post could proceed if the GM happened to be unavailable. Another example is RPs that are dependent on player pairings being especially vulnerable to stalling whole groups of characters from 1 person not responding.

I largely say 'luck' for the same reasons Nerdy did, but although your player pool would be included in this, I want to specifically highlight it. The kind of players you get, their investment and general attitude, interests, compatibility etc.. will be a major factor in determining if something can stay afloat.

As for communication, I'd distribute that between players and responsibility. Communication is important, but I also think its already covered by those other things.

Edit: Also, I can't say I've been in many long-running RPs. I've run one for a few months, and players were a major factor in even that happening. My longest run one would be 1x1, though that one had major unintentional breaks and it was a combination of having built up interest and trust, and pre-established expectations of posts taking a long time that I think were major components of returning to that RP.