[quote=@vancexentan]

I'll give an example: In my fate/stay roleplay we all start off with one simple goal: Have the characters meet up in the church for 'important news everyone!' in regard to their end goals. They all meet and some can plan. Big battle ensues some distance away. You can leave, or go to the fight. Then the roleplay dies because a third of the people leave and no one wants to post because 'gotta wait for people to post' which quickly grinds things to a halt. 

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So you create a space where EVERYONE needs to arrive before the RP starts, and then you leave progression in the hands of the clueless players? I'm being dramatic, but you need that mindset when dealing with players. I'm not going to sugar coat it, I HATE group scenes. Someone can give you ten paragraphs of backstory about their character, but very few players are willing to make choices that affect the rps direction.

Firstly, I'd have started off everyone in the church, save you from having to wait for everyone to make their "I'm ariving!" post. It also enables you to post again without everyone writing their introductions. After that, you're the GM. Nothing quite rocks a player's socks like seeing the GM post out of turn.

Example: My Danganronpa rp. I had eight players (close to 12-14 characters) in a room, and my character was like "So who wants to go exploring?" that week, ONE of the people posted "Sure! I'll go!" Now most people have this perceived idea of a turn order, but communication with 8 people is kinda hard on a forum. The RP should have died right there. But instead, I just wrote my character getting annoyed glares from everyone (My character is a HUGE ass hole) and so they left with just that one person to go exploring. Then magically everyone started posting again. There were discussions in the OOC about who was going to post next, people reminding others to post, it was beautiful. But none of that would have happened if I begrudgingly waited for someone else to post.

I don't like starting out rps with fights, but some options for you would have been to bring the fight to the church, or simply post out of turn like I did. But like I said before, some RPs just die regardless of what you do. I was lucky. I don't think that would have worked if everyone wasn't eager to post.