[@Buddha] This is probably going to make everyone mad again but the Guild is intellectually circling around an outside context problem. The universe is expanding faster than it should and nobody knows what dark matter/energy is, basically. Even if you did know you couldn't solve the problem. It's too big and too alien. 

Ultimately [i]I[/i] wouldn't do anything. From my point of view the Guild provides what I need, which is a system in which to PM my friends and a steady supply of 40k group roleplays. The Guild is everything I need it to be. Other sites provide the other types of RP I want (such as romantic 1x1 and shared worlds). I enjoy talking with you guys a bit about the Guild but addressing the problems in a meaningful way is a massive undertaking and I don't think the Guild is in danger of shrinking to the point where I can't find the occasional 40k RP. So I have no incentive to act, and thus won't.

(I suppose I'm an RPG libertarian ;-P [i]gasps of shock and horror from the crowd[/i])

In order to appease the mob I will copy-paste something I said in PM that is like 10% of what the problem is. Some sections have been removed for the privacy of the person I was PMing because I didn't talk to them about this first.

[quote]Hey ********** :-) I would be happy to talk with you about the group RPGs. 
That said this is a really, really broad subject so I hope you will forgive me if I gloss over certain things, don't try to tackle everything at once and occasionally take a really long time to reply.

To me the question is:
A: What causes RPGers to become bored with an RPG.
B: What is the frequency with which these 'boredom inducing events' occur?
C: What is it that other sites do that reduces the rate at which group RPGs fail?
	1: Do they eliminate certain elements that bore RPGers?
	2: Do they reduces the frequency of 'boredom inducing events'?
	3: Do they provide incentives to entice RPGers to stick with an RPG through the boring time?
	4: Do they do something that reduces the effort required to post when you just aren't interested?

My opinion is that all of the above contributes significantly to the Guild's rate of RPG failure. The lengthy introductions are an example of 'boring stuff' that needs to be reduced but the issue is much bigger than that. 

In my opinion most Guild group roleplays are MVPs. Minimum Viable Products. They have only what they need to be successful in the beginning. That sounds pretty insulting to the Guild's many hard working DMs which I regret; I like a lot of the Guild's DMs and have a great one right now in a 40k RPG. But it is true. The minimum product here is an interest check, an IC/OOC thread, character sheets and a description of what the RP is going to be about in the interest check and OOC thread as well as a OP by the DM. 

And honestly that can be a lot of work. So it doesn't sound fair to accuse DM's of doing the least possible work. But it is true. The structure of roleplays here on the Guild places nearly all of the work onto the shoulders of a DM. The players contribute characters and posts and the DM must do everything else. So the DM does the minimum work required to make the RPG happen, simply because it is so much work and they need to do almost all of it. It is like a startup with just one guy. Whatever you make has to be pretty small.

What are the things that a DM would need to provide in order to make the ultimate group RPG? 

	[b]Persistence:[/b] This one is a big one. On the Guild when you join an RPG you know that your work in that RPG won't have any repercussions outside of that RPG. Compare this to sites with a 'shared world' where characters travel through RPGs instead of ending with the RPG. By sticking with a boring RPG until the end you can go into the next RPG with the events of the last RPG added to your backstory.

This is strongly related to the DM's having to carry a massive workload just to launch an RP. The world a DM creates rarely persists. Canon rarely persists. Thus every time a DM creates something they have to do all the work from scratch. If there was more canon persistence than a DM wouldn't need to do so much work every time. 

Imagine if you had a world that had been running for several years. Ten thousand posts or so. Over that time certain things within the shared world would acquire an importance all of their own. A city might become a valuable to players. A landmark or technology might acquire importance. Then, rather than creating a whole new world all at once and trying to motivate players to enter this world and care about the stakes you could take players that already knew the world and give them something they already cared about as the 'stakes' in the RPG. Protect X city (that they had RPed in and already cared about) from being destroyed. Or whatever. 

And persistence builds on persistence. Their actions influence other players who didn't even participate in the RP and create further opportunities.

	[b]Progression:[/b] This is tied to persistence. By having a character that travels through multiple RPGs you can lay claim to character growth that extends across years instead of weeks or months. A character can grow from no one into a legendary figure or tell a story that the writer finds moving through persistence; providing motivation to persist. 

	[b]Intrinsic Rewards:[/b] What sort of intrinsic rewards do you receive from sticking through a RPG that is in a boring patch? The satisfaction of completing the RPG I suppose and perhaps the acclimation of your peers. But clearly that isn't as so many RPGs fail. In a situation where a character's canon isn't isolated to a single RPG a character can become famous across an entire board or roleplaying community. I haven't heard a single character named by name in OOC chat in my time here on the Guild. Once you cross the boundary of that specific RPG's IC/OOC threads that universe ends. When you finish an RP on the Guild it is as if it never happened. Like it never existed. I truly cannot see how that is suppose to be motivating!

	[b]Extrinsic Rewards:[/b] Some sites have a stat, gear and skills system where a character gains power, wealth and ability as time goes on. Usually this is tied to number of IC posts and/or judges which assign a score based on their opinion of a posts quality. Honestly, I don't really like this method. That said I can certainly see how it works and why a fair number of sites use it. It provides an additional reward for posting even when things get boring. It isn't for me but it clearly works for a fair number of people.

Obviously this is leading to the conclusion that shared worlds produce more successful group RPGs because there are more rewards for posting. That certainly meshes with my personal experience as well. Sites like the Guild have hundreds, if not thousands of group RPGs that die every single year. Meanwhile on the site I come from (ComicVine) I could make a group RPG that recieved a hundred or more posts in a couple of weeks and I could do it consistently. That isn't because I am an amazing DM or anything but because the shared world gave me so many tools to entice players and did so much of the heavy lifting for me that it was like playing Call of Duty on easy mode where on the Guild DM's are playing Dark Souls on the highest difficulty. 

Alright. This is like a tenth of what I think the problem is but I'm out of typing gas lol. I hope it gave you what you were looking for :-)[/quote]

Anyway this is just the basics of the shared world stuff. In my experience shared worlds have a lot more completed RPs and people don't quit as much. Because group RPs seem to be the majority of the site it seems logical to me that increasing the viability of the largest portion of the site would bring the largest gains.

Will this happen? Heck no lol. Like I said above, it is an outside context problem. The amount of evidence I would have to provide to convince the community this would work is immense. The amount of work that would need to be done to create a couple of successful shared worlds would be likewise massive. The problems that would then arise, and thus have to be solved, would be significant. 

Anyway. The Guild might be going through a slow period but it's good enough. Changing group RPs is such a huge endeavor I wouldn't even attempt it. I get what I need out of group.