Magic Magnum said
Obviously your RP counts as an exception, that should go without saying. :P
Multiple role plays*. At this point if I feel like making an RP that lasts instead of an experimental one, I can do that
on a whim. I've proved it with Legend of Renalta, its subsequent sequel, and The Last Bastion. I'm not just a one hit wonder... So you might try listening.
Magic Magnum said
But it should be noted that yours started as a table top, not a forum RP which could have helped.
The Last Bastion didn't. None of the current crew of the Legend of Renalta come from my tabletop days. The successes of both come purely from forum progress, not any background.
Magic Magnum said
But yea, I agree that complaining about new people only kills a community. People all too often forget that:1) They all used to be new too2) That as old members leave we need new members to take overIt was never due to say "Newbies" though that an RP I was in died, it was just due to lack of motivation. People were no longer invested and they dropped it. For example, I was in an insanely promising ODST RP last month. The GM just got everything right and got players pumped to play, but then out of the blue life hit the GM and it all screeched to a halt. The RP died in an instant.
Cuz' y'all
let it die. There's no express time limit for when an RP is dead. If everyone is delayed three weeks for posting, that's fine. You just find a way to restart the engine and keep going. Instead, y'all made the presumption that it's dead, and thus, it died.
The only reason it died is because you allowed it to die. That is probably the hardest truth any role player has to face when an RP they are in died. The only reason it died is because they refused to put in the effort. That's not losing motivation, that's simply either acknowledging that you didn't have that much interest in the idea in the first place and you don't understand your own tastes all that well, or that you're lazy.
Just look at my role plays if you want an example. Just look at Legend of Renalta 2. Just look at The Library (Kestrel is the GM). Just look at The Last Bastion. At some point it's not coincidence that the RP's I am in survive for obscenely long periods of time now. You want to know the real secret? Because people keep proclaiming it's because I'm just a fantastic writer: Well, no, not particularly, I'd like to imagine my writing is solid but I'm sure as hell no Asimov or Tolkien. People like to claim it's because of my tabletop roots: Well, no, my tabletop roots have very little to do with my PbPRP experience, the two have little in common beyond both requiring that I have an imagination.
No what drives me completely nutso when people try to attribute my success stories to some arbitrary quality like that is they don't seem to realize that Legend of Renalta has been a success... For Five Years. If you seriously think I was a decent writer five years ago when I was a teenager in high school dealing with serious emotional problems, you're kidding yourself. If you seriously think I was a fantastically experienced forum role player back then, you are kidding yourself. If you seriously think that I had a legion of loyal players back then, you are kidding yourself. I had Tempest, and nobody else.
However, Tempest, was all I needed to get started.
Because, you see, the real, actual success behind my shit? It's having a group of people that I encouraged, and helped to teach, and made constantly excited. Yeah a hell of a lot of people have come and gone, some strangers, some rivals, some friends. I started from essentially nothing, with Tempest, and made something. Not because I was the best, not because I was even particularly smart--I thought a plot of a one thousand year old Popsicle princess defeating gods was original--but because I refused to quit on my idea. When it dropped down to just five players from its original fifteen I refused to quit. When Tempest left three times, I refused to quit. When the world felt like it was collapsing in around me, I refused to quit. When the RP collapsed, the foundation sinking into the Earth and the building falling apart into timber and chunks of drywall, you know what I did?
I grabbed some concrete and rebuilding again. And again. And again. And again. Until it finally stuck.
That is the only trait you need to succeed. The stubbornness of a mule. You could be uglier than sin, your idea could be unoriginal as hell, you could be a writer who uses every cliche in the book, your characters could be cardboard cutouts, your players could all be godmoders--but so long as you all refuse to quit and keep working on yourselves and the idea and keep trying, you will succeed. Period. End of story. It's the only trait I needed. It's why I have such a fantastic core group: Kadaeux, Andrea, Selvi, Sarzu, Gat, Tempest, Jorick, Sora/Alex, Herzinth, Elendra--Really, too many fucking people to name at this point--because I refused to quit and just kept recruiting people, and keeping the ones that wanted to stay, that wanted to see it succeed. Not through words, but through actions: They post regularly, and if a problem erupts in their lives, they let me know so we can work something out without grinding the RP to a halt for everyone else. If I have to skip them, they don't get angry at me for it either, they just get back on the horse that bucked them and keep going later on.
My players are my success story more than my role plays are. Yeah sometimes they argue and sometimes they make me facepalm, and I'm sure sometimes I make them facepalm, but we enjoy ourselves. That's all that we really need to do at the end of the day. We learn, we grow, we prosper, and we don't quit. And that is why we succeed.
So the next person to try and chalk all my successes up to something as retardedly vague as "oh you're just a gewd writer" or "oh yur just lucky", go away. I don't have time for your shit. I had to restart LoR seven times to make it work, and TLB four times. It's not like my ideas instantly work forever all the time. I also have a string of experimental RP's that are all dead. It's not like I don't have RP's that die. I just don't sit on my ass and whine when they do, I stare at the RP and decide whether I want it to flourish or not. I love Renalta, I love the lesbian queens, I love Dean Hansen the knight, I love the Goblin Emperor who makes sand storms, I love the plushies, I love Thane the little marmot furball, I love Draza this little sprite who stops conflicts by giving everybody !@#$ing cookies... So I will keep it going no matter how hard it is or how many attempts it takes. I love Bunker Chicago, I love the philosophical and religious themes, I love the variety of the cast, I love the villainous hyper-patriot pseudo-Americans that literally paint themselves in eagles, I love the nightmare fuel inducing shapeshifters, I love how Jorick's character has a Messiah complex, and I love how Raen's character just wants to survive and get Alyss back in his life. I love Georgia's obsession with sparkly plugs, I love Jenive's overly cheery and optimistic attitude in the face of the post-apocalypse, I love James' near obsession with having the biggest possible explosives the industrial complex can give him...
...Have I made my point clear yet? Have I? Yes, there is a basic set of tools you should know to properly role play in a PbPRP environment. I can summarize them for you.
Players: Understand the action-reaction wheel, communication, character needs a proper motivation, communication, and, uh, oh yeah, communication.
GM's: Understand the above plus basic plots that any junior high student can comprehend. And communication. Did I mention communication?
That's it. That's all you need. You can learn all this information with ease and it comes naturally to most people. My players understand this because I either taught it to them or I recruited them knowing they understood it. The kind of writer you are has utterly nothing to do with how good a role player you are. My role plays abso-fucking-lutely prove this. I have players who could barely manage to be in high school and who are heavily cliched role playing alongside players obviously and easily in university level writing with fantastic, multilayer characters. I have native English speakers alongside people who learned English not even as a second language, but as a third language. I have a player from Indonesia, three from the Netherlands, one who is moving to China right now, a couple from the UK, some Americans and Canadians obviously...
As Kung Fu Panda put it: "There is no magic ingredient." The only magical ingredient is you. Will you let the RP die, or will you keep it going? Only you get to decide that. If the rest of the players leave, go remake it, and keep adding players to your core group, that agree with you, that want to make the idea work even if it takes multiple attempts. That's how you succeed. That is how you win. That is all. That's a wrap.
died 
