Answering this as an RPer, I would certainly love to see twists and fun things set for the RP or SG that are especially unlike before. I also think this should not just be done by the RP host/owner, but by its participants as well. Good relationships and making characters interact (especially those that have potential plot going on in the future) really helps, and this is evident in novella’s Blue Royalty (special mention Beni-).
So @RPers, what do you think are other ways to keep an RP or SG active for a long time?
Honestly, an rp is only as active as its players.
The host can try and motivate people to a certain extent but if the players don’t participate on their own, then an rp is bound to die.
Its the reason why mystery rp’s are so hard (and kind of frustrating sometimes) to host.
Because the rp is almost 90% the players who move the rp forward.
One of the things that personally make me lose interest is when the time skips are too short on notice and my conversation always end up foced broken.
I think for a host it’s more important to see what the energy of the players does and move with it.
Check posts from time to time and see how you can make a smooth transition.
What I try to do, is see how people are interacting and when I notice the post are getting smaller (meaning they can’t find things to fill their posts with), I know it’s time to do a time skip.
The RP’s flexibility can also take part or help in keeping one active. How much creativity can they pour into it? How much ideas can they generate from the main idea? Though sometimes, an RP can be so limited, but they can also be pulled off by making them just very interesting as it is (the plot, the movement, etc.)
Yeah this is trueee and honestly I’ve been there and it actually annoyed me a lot xD I didn’t have the time and energy to always write words, and I was also in the lowest state of emotions and RPing was just an escape. Timezones are also a thing and it just makes things so inconvenient. It’s understandable that it might be worrying to stall too much and give too much time, but just trust your RPers.
As people have said above, the RPers themselves are a large part of the activity. Without them, you can’t do anything. That being said, it’s important to keep your RPers interested with new events, ideas, or plot points. I think one of the reasons FTD, for example, has done so well is because @/ethereal consults all the players on things that directly affect the outcome. She also allows everyone to do their own thing, so nobody feels like they might be doing something wrong.
Ignore the fact that I’m too obsessed with FTD to know what other RPs do @RPers do you have anything to add?
I think @BlueInferno and @Edelgard could help with some tips as well. The Westeria rp has been going on for a long time and though rn people are less active due to summer break and some people being on vacation, I know we’re all still planning on going to continue for a long time.
@Westerians maybe you guys can tell what it is in the Westeria rp that makes you continue and why everyone voted to just continue on a slow pace instead of taking a break?
For me, it’s the small group aspect with a planned plot all the way through the end. Marie and I knew from the start how every single week was going to happen, what needed to be found out and what adventures had to happen. There is a tangible ending in place, and it’s that level of detail that has assisted us in keeping the story interesting. At the same time, it’s also loosely held, as in, we can sometimes roll unused plots over to the next week or push one back, and the effect will mostly remain unchanged. With a small group RP (say around ten people), it’s a lot easier to manage, and it helps to loop all the conversations together.
You want to make every interaction feel important, and that’s why it’s important to read as many RP posts as possible to incorporate hidden information that characters can sometimes reveal. Marie and I added a few of the plots purely from what we learned from certain exceptional characters Amaranthae, and they’ve done well as more than stand-alone arcs.
Thus said, I like open-world RPs that aren’t confined to, say, a school, because then you can have those differences in where and how characters can interact.
That being said, there is also a luck factor with how active the actual players are.
However, a lot of what I do might just not fit everyone’s playstyle. I’ll accomplish more with smaller groups and stricter plotlines, always expecting a finale of some kind, so it could take more effort to start an RP/SG of that calibre.
