I've been in two from memory, although both were prior to my arrival here. Both were also in the same series. I've been trying to make it work again here with the sequel but it has been slow going.

The first had a pretty open ended conclusion. We had an idea for a ending arc involving a really strong human army coming and ruining our day, but in the end we didn't do that. Instead, in the conclusion of an epic 5-army battle between two teams of our demi-god evil overlords, one of us self-destructed, essentially nuking the battlefield and killing all of us. But that was still a satisfying end, for it was undoubtedly an end.

The sequel to that also reached its conclusion. The gist of it was this: our 'Keepers' found these strange runes. The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse then went around trying to acquire as many of those runes as possible. Turned out they were necessary to power an artefact which would drain the power from the imprisoned form of the granddaddy of all Keepers and start the Apocalypse. A bit of skirmishing here and there, a few characters succumbed to their own plot arcs, then when the time was right we time-skipped to the final battle, with everyone present. It was another sort of two-team thing, one trying to start the Apocalypse and one trying to prevent it, with a few free agents sowing chaos. Ultimately, after an absolutely epic battle, where a whole bunch of characters died, the Apocalypse was caused, just, spelling the destruction of that world. The survivors hopped through a makeshift portal to take them to whatever sequels they would go to. It's nice to finish something. Glorious victory, or glorious defeat as the case was for my participating character.

I've been trying to get the sequel to work, through numerous remakes. None have made it far yet. It has been a powerful yet sometimes discouraging learning experience doing that. I think the key is player interaction, preferably right from the start, and getting that to happen in an open world RP can be tricky.

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> I guess the best way to think of it is you've got to pan a whooooole lot of sand to find that gold, but believe me, it's well worth it when you do!

I also agree with this. Perhaps the most important factor in the longevity of an RP is a good, dedicated player base of appropriate size. Finding players like that is indeed gold. With the Dungeon Keepers, because we've been through so much, we've managed to form a nice dedicated core group. Although perhaps a few more people might help it pass critical mass.

The other RP I'm in, it hasn't finished, but it is carrying on at a nice pace, thanks to a good set of players. The OOC culture is quite friendly, and we do frequent collaborative posts (using external collaborative document writers), which means we are all on friendly terms and we are all involved in the action, and that is good for the health of the RP.