That's good advice; getting players invested is definitely key to encouraging longer posts.
Seems most of here are in consensus that post-length doesn't matter, which makes me wonder why there is such a discrepancy between here and other RP forums, where most creators enforce post-length requirements. Perhaps, since so many of us came here through video games rather than through a desire to write, we see the content as more important than the way in which it is delivered? Or perhaps we're simply not blinded by a belief that good writing ought to be deep and lengthy.
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I think it really depends on the roleplay. It's what the OP is going for. I have participated in casual roleplays and intermediate roleplays alike, and they both have their pros and cons. As you know, The College of Althalos was an intermediate roleplay and thus required longer posts, which allowed large amounts of information to be written in a low page count, reflecting a casual roleplay with several more pages. However this also halted the roleplay as since short posts were discouraged many people couldn't figure out what to write about next. On the other hand, another rp I was in called An Island was a much more casual roleplay and allowed quick short posts. The roleplay had an abundance of pages, though if one were to splice all the posts into one document it would probably still be a little short. However, it was more of a success due to the lack of post rules, thus people could choose how much they wished to write. The only problem is the lack of creativity, in the end.
So really I'm not sure if there's a perfect length to go by. It really just depends, I guess.
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I generally agree with Mafi. Long posts are great and all, but forcing people to make them isn't. I myself struggle to flesh out paragraphs, preferring to get straight to the point, though I do find that as I play more D&D and do more RPing in general, I'm able to make far more out of much smaller periods of IC time.
The way I've always done it is simply having standards: if you're clearly putting no effort into your posts, you're out. It's alright to occasionally post something brief just to keep things moving, but continuously failing to do anything of real interest wastes everybody's time.
I fear I'm not being entirely clear, but assume you'll understand my basic point. I'll blame it on my time of writing being 3 AM.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
"The best revenge is to be unlike him who performed the injury." - Marcus Aurelis
We lost too many people over time without gaining enough committed new people to replace all of them. This has been coming for a long, long time. We've basically got 3, maybe 4 active roleplays left: Abandoned, Casandora, Ulti's, and I'm not sure about Eidikos. Ulti's just can't die, Abandoned and Casandora are both fantasy roleplays, which is what this community loves the most. This community is too small to really support anything else. Not enough people are interested in any of the science fiction, historical fiction, horror, or countless other roleplays that used to be suggested, and I think people have kind of given up on trying to get something started.
I think that one of the keys to the success of these three is the diversity allowed by those settings. Ulti's has almost no limits on anything, and Abandoned allows for a wide range of characters with a variety of backstories. Casandora, on the other hand, is fantasy fare, but again with an extreme variety in character options, and an even larger variety in character power. The worlds aren't too strictly defined that players can't impose whatever they want onto those templates. Since roleplayers here are typically very specific with what interests them enough to join, these roleplays which allow for more diversity can attract a wider range of interests. Casandora and Abandoned may have a more defined plot, but the basic principle exists between all three of them: attracting a wide range of roleplayers by allowing for a great diversity in characters.
Anything which is more specific and requires more consistency fails because it cannot attract enough people for long enough. The community is too small.
And the people who aren't interested in these roleplays of extreme diversity lie here, lurking, waiting for something that appeals to us. I get the impression there are a lot of people lurking here, waiting. And I fear we'll be waiting for a while longer.
Abandoned is doing surprisingly well if I may say so myself, it nearly died at least trice but managed to recover every time. Sure, progress is very, very slow but it's still alive and going.
Anyway, I think that there are just too few people still around here. MCF's latest changes haven't made it more popular, and I don't think there's more than 30 people who still want to RP here. I think that's also a reason why no new RPs are being made; potential GMs either know that there are very few people still here or think there are and are thus unlikely to create an RP because they fear that they won't get many participants and then move to another forum instead or just give up on RP'ing or something.
I too plan on moving to another forum in the near future (after Abandoned is finished) in the hopes of finding more potential players to RP with. It has been fun on here but there are just too few people around
Today is my 7th anniversary on MCF, but I think I won't be doing stuff here for much longer.
I've been looking at other forums too, for a few months now. This place had a great atmosphere for roleplaying, once, but with the loss of so many people, it's lost the ability to sustain that atmosphere.
That said, if there ever seems to be a revival, I suspect that I'll be back here fairly quickly.
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Welp, I'm only back to merge MCF and Twitch accounts.
Nice to see there's still a presence of old roleplayers here, if not a little disheartening, especially since no one else really seems to use this place. I mean, we're pretty much fossils to whatever people are here today.
It's pretty sad to see there's not much activity it seems. Probably has to do with the initial success of Minecraft, people coming on forums and finding this place, roleplaying for a good while through terrible though yet workable English (in fact if you dig deep enough you'll find basically whole stories and world-building with global warfare and politics). Then, well... people mature and grow up. English has improved for sure but kids are now teenagers and adults, now they have obligations and duties so they don't have time or feel like roleplaying. The few that remain find there's fewer roleplays and people around, which just causes more attrition and loss. If that weren't enough, any curious people coming in are long gone since Minecraft suddenly isn't the biggest trendy thing anymore. Now you have games like Fortnite who will likely have their forums with roleplaying sections, and then they too will experience the rise and fall of basically what I've written.
Of course there are many other theories as to why forum roleplaying just isn't anymore, and I don't mean to sound holier-than-thou. Minecraft could just be less popular now so fewer people come onto the forums, and most forums tend to have a life and death cycle. Social media's a bigger presence than before (like Reddit, or even Discord channels dedicated to RPs so forum RPing is seen as sluggish). Games and media change over time; there were a lot of Pokemon and high school roleplays, but fewer people play Pokemon or imagine highschool now that reality's kicking in.
In any case, despite rambling on (I could get to the heat death of the universe if I continue)... I don't think the magic's coming back, not for a while. I hope I'm wrong, but Notch/Microsoft aren't releasing Minecraft 2 anytime soon.
I'm not sure what MCF's policy is on, uh, discussing other websites, but if you're wanting to find where Dinh and a bunch of other guys have gone or just want to find a good RP more easily then feel free to send a PM.
Welp, I'm only back to merge MCF and Twitch accounts.
Nice to see there's still a presence of old roleplayers here, if not a little disheartening, especially since no one else really seems to use this place. I mean, we're pretty much fossils to whatever people are here today.
Hey, welcome back.
Do not believe, Valkon, Dinh, Darthrafael or others have gone.
It's pretty sad to see there's not much activity it seems. Probably has to do with the initial success of Minecraft, people coming on forums and finding this place, roleplaying for a good while through terrible though yet workable English (in fact if you dig deep enough you'll find basically whole stories and world-building with global warfare and politics). Then, well... people mature and grow up. English has improved for sure but kids are now teenagers and adults, now they have obligations and duties so they don't have time or feel like roleplaying. The few that remain find there's fewer roleplays and people around, which just causes more attrition and loss. If that weren't enough, any curious people coming in are long gone since Minecraft suddenly isn't the biggest trendy thing anymore. Now you have games like Fortnite who will likely have their forums with roleplaying sections, and then they too will experience the rise and fall of basically what I've written.
Minecraft is not dead, but the forums.
I know that years ago I was an OTter, but I do not even remember what the account was called.
In fact, I remember that in 2015, there were about 100 posts per hour and in 2013 many more.
Everything does not last forever. Fornite dies (try to see popular games that stopped being), Reddit will die, but it can happen that Forum Roleplaying returns to be popular.
The future is a blank page ...
In any case, despite rambling on (I could get to the heat death of the universe if I continue)... I don't think the magic's coming back, not for a while. I hope I'm wrong, but Notch/Microsoft aren't releasing Minecraft 2 anytime soon.
I'm not sure what MCF's policy is on, uh, discussing other websites, but if you're wanting to find where Dinh and a bunch of other guys have gone or just want to find a good RP more easily then feel free to send a PM.
I'm sorry for telling you this, but when I registered with this account, Dinh left (this is his last post).
Yeah, I was being a bit pretentious when describing how things seem. I don't really get what you mean by Dinh being inactive and such, he's most definitely still around in other places (believe me when I say I've seen him).
Now, why the heck did they bring back the chat thread? Citricsquid closed it down last I saw, to which people migrated to an off-site version of the chat thread. Now it's been back for two years now, and I only just noticed.
I hope that in the future Roleplaying can come back. I wasn't the best roleplayer back in the day, but I still have fond memories here. Maybe one day that can happen again here.
That's good advice; getting players invested is definitely key to encouraging longer posts.
Seems most of here are in consensus that post-length doesn't matter, which makes me wonder why there is such a discrepancy between here and other RP forums, where most creators enforce post-length requirements. Perhaps, since so many of us came here through video games rather than through a desire to write, we see the content as more important than the way in which it is delivered? Or perhaps we're simply not blinded by a belief that good writing ought to be deep and lengthy.
I think it really depends on the roleplay. It's what the OP is going for. I have participated in casual roleplays and intermediate roleplays alike, and they both have their pros and cons. As you know, The College of Althalos was an intermediate roleplay and thus required longer posts, which allowed large amounts of information to be written in a low page count, reflecting a casual roleplay with several more pages. However this also halted the roleplay as since short posts were discouraged many people couldn't figure out what to write about next. On the other hand, another rp I was in called An Island was a much more casual roleplay and allowed quick short posts. The roleplay had an abundance of pages, though if one were to splice all the posts into one document it would probably still be a little short. However, it was more of a success due to the lack of post rules, thus people could choose how much they wished to write. The only problem is the lack of creativity, in the end.
So really I'm not sure if there's a perfect length to go by. It really just depends, I guess.
I generally agree with Mafi. Long posts are great and all, but forcing people to make them isn't. I myself struggle to flesh out paragraphs, preferring to get straight to the point, though I do find that as I play more D&D and do more RPing in general, I'm able to make far more out of much smaller periods of IC time.
The way I've always done it is simply having standards: if you're clearly putting no effort into your posts, you're out. It's alright to occasionally post something brief just to keep things moving, but continuously failing to do anything of real interest wastes everybody's time.
I fear I'm not being entirely clear, but assume you'll understand my basic point. I'll blame it on my time of writing being 3 AM.
"The best revenge is to be unlike him who performed the injury." - Marcus Aurelis
Real talk, where the HELL did everyone on this forum go
Like I went a month w/o checking this section and when I came back there was basically nothing new
What the hell happened here
We lost too many people over time without gaining enough committed new people to replace all of them. This has been coming for a long, long time. We've basically got 3, maybe 4 active roleplays left: Abandoned, Casandora, Ulti's, and I'm not sure about Eidikos. Ulti's just can't die, Abandoned and Casandora are both fantasy roleplays, which is what this community loves the most. This community is too small to really support anything else. Not enough people are interested in any of the science fiction, historical fiction, horror, or countless other roleplays that used to be suggested, and I think people have kind of given up on trying to get something started.
I think that one of the keys to the success of these three is the diversity allowed by those settings. Ulti's has almost no limits on anything, and Abandoned allows for a wide range of characters with a variety of backstories. Casandora, on the other hand, is fantasy fare, but again with an extreme variety in character options, and an even larger variety in character power. The worlds aren't too strictly defined that players can't impose whatever they want onto those templates. Since roleplayers here are typically very specific with what interests them enough to join, these roleplays which allow for more diversity can attract a wider range of interests. Casandora and Abandoned may have a more defined plot, but the basic principle exists between all three of them: attracting a wide range of roleplayers by allowing for a great diversity in characters.
Anything which is more specific and requires more consistency fails because it cannot attract enough people for long enough. The community is too small.
And the people who aren't interested in these roleplays of extreme diversity lie here, lurking, waiting for something that appeals to us. I get the impression there are a lot of people lurking here, waiting. And I fear we'll be waiting for a while longer.
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Curse PremiumAbandoned is doing surprisingly well if I may say so myself, it nearly died at least trice but managed to recover every time. Sure, progress is very, very slow but it's still alive and going.
Anyway, I think that there are just too few people still around here. MCF's latest changes haven't made it more popular, and I don't think there's more than 30 people who still want to RP here. I think that's also a reason why no new RPs are being made; potential GMs either know that there are very few people still here or think there are and are thus unlikely to create an RP because they fear that they won't get many participants and then move to another forum instead or just give up on RP'ing or something.
I too plan on moving to another forum in the near future (after Abandoned is finished) in the hopes of finding more potential players to RP with. It has been fun on here but there are just too few people around
Today is my 7th anniversary on MCF, but I think I won't be doing stuff here for much longer.
I've been looking at other forums too, for a few months now. This place had a great atmosphere for roleplaying, once, but with the loss of so many people, it's lost the ability to sustain that atmosphere.
That said, if there ever seems to be a revival, I suspect that I'll be back here fairly quickly.
Welp, I'm only back to merge MCF and Twitch accounts.
Nice to see there's still a presence of old roleplayers here, if not a little disheartening, especially since no one else really seems to use this place. I mean, we're pretty much fossils to whatever people are here today.
It's pretty sad to see there's not much activity it seems. Probably has to do with the initial success of Minecraft, people coming on forums and finding this place, roleplaying for a good while through terrible though yet workable English (in fact if you dig deep enough you'll find basically whole stories and world-building with global warfare and politics). Then, well... people mature and grow up. English has improved for sure but kids are now teenagers and adults, now they have obligations and duties so they don't have time or feel like roleplaying. The few that remain find there's fewer roleplays and people around, which just causes more attrition and loss. If that weren't enough, any curious people coming in are long gone since Minecraft suddenly isn't the biggest trendy thing anymore. Now you have games like Fortnite who will likely have their forums with roleplaying sections, and then they too will experience the rise and fall of basically what I've written.
Of course there are many other theories as to why forum roleplaying just isn't anymore, and I don't mean to sound holier-than-thou. Minecraft could just be less popular now so fewer people come onto the forums, and most forums tend to have a life and death cycle. Social media's a bigger presence than before (like Reddit, or even Discord channels dedicated to RPs so forum RPing is seen as sluggish). Games and media change over time; there were a lot of Pokemon and high school roleplays, but fewer people play Pokemon or imagine highschool now that reality's kicking in.
In any case, despite rambling on (I could get to the heat death of the universe if I continue)... I don't think the magic's coming back, not for a while. I hope I'm wrong, but Notch/Microsoft aren't releasing Minecraft 2 anytime soon.
I'm not sure what MCF's policy is on, uh, discussing other websites, but if you're wanting to find where Dinh and a bunch of other guys have gone or just want to find a good RP more easily then feel free to send a PM.
Hey, welcome back.
Do not believe, Valkon, Dinh, Darthrafael or others have gone.
Minecraft is not dead, but the forums.
I know that years ago I was an OTter, but I do not even remember what the account was called.
In fact, I remember that in 2015, there were about 100 posts per hour and in 2013 many more.
Everything does not last forever. Fornite dies (try to see popular games that stopped being), Reddit will die, but it can happen that Forum Roleplaying returns to be popular.
The future is a blank page ...
I'm sorry for telling you this, but when I registered with this account, Dinh left (this is his last post).
But OT during certain dates of 2016 or 2017 was being active by this thread: https://www.minecraftforum.net/forums/off-topic/general-off-topic/2713054-official-chat-thread-new-beginnings
I hope you find someone you like.
Yeah, I was being a bit pretentious when describing how things seem. I don't really get what you mean by Dinh being inactive and such, he's most definitely still around in other places (believe me when I say I've seen him).
Now, why the heck did they bring back the chat thread? Citricsquid closed it down last I saw, to which people migrated to an off-site version of the chat thread. Now it's been back for two years now, and I only just noticed.
I hope that in the future Roleplaying can come back. I wasn't the best roleplayer back in the day, but I still have fond memories here. Maybe one day that can happen again here.