Games constantly dying out

So anyone have any idea why all the games around here with rare exception seem to constantly die out? Some start off with some great first posts then the quality drops to nothing. Others move along well for a while then suddenly interest seems to drop off entirely. Sometimes it's the players that just up and disappear without a word, sometimes it's been the GMs. In a few cases the slow down has been explained ahead of time by the GM (Having to move etc) while in many other cases players and GMs alike seem to just disappear, or in other cases post just fine in other games, but not their own.

Now I can understand that there is some slow down due to it being spring, exam time etc. But this has been going on ever since I first started playing on this site and it doesn't appear to be exclusive to any one game but affects most if not all the games on this site. I am however, curious to know what folk think may be the cause. Is it that people just want to get right into the action all the time and not actually have to RP through anything else to do with a run? Is it having to do with the quality of GM posts? The fact that people just need a little more time every week to get a post up?

I've actually been wondering about this as well recently... and hoping it doesn't happen to me (either as GM or player).

Do people overextend? Commit to too many games and just aren't able to keep up?

It is the nature of the beast. Everybody in a pbp community has a different style and different pace. It takes a bit for a game to form with everybody has the same expectations and feels the same about the game through it's entirety. For every one of those long lasting games there are a hundred where something happens to grind the game to a crawl.

Well I know it happens time to time but it always seems to be really bad here compared to some other sites I game on. Then again this place does no have any posting rate rules etc

one thing i found helpful was to actually skip the whole, "meet the Johnson" part of the run. Eliminate the negotiations...I mean its part of the game yes, but as low level runners, you are pretty much at the mercy of the Johnson for pay out anyways. have the run details download to their PDA, have the Johnson be a data-term which they can't question/negotiate with, etc etc...lots of runs stall out of the gate at, or just after the Johnson meet.

This way you can jump right to the meat and bones of the operation. Also, though sometimes hard to do in PBP, that lots of new players don't understand, is that planning, while sometimes necessary, isn't critical. As a GM, I found the players will overcomplicate the run all by themselves without any help whatsoever from me, so I made my runs simple in accordance with K.I.S.S. and as a player I tend to do the same. Was a hard lesson to learn, but I learned it quickly in my first run or two....

Anyways, my two cents...

Regards,

Boombaby

On one hand, I do tend to agree with BoomBaby. The Johnson meeting should be as short as possible. But, having said that, there's also the matter of actually getting into the character. For instance, take Karavan, one of the games I'm playing on. We've got three boards, one for OOC, one for Runs, and one for 'Between Runs'. Frankly, the Between Runs board has been a blessing; It's allowed us to cement our particular positions in the group, as well as try out the character personalities, see if they fit the style we want to play.

Because, honestly, if all we wanted was to play as a stack of stats, there're plenty of MUDs and MMORPGS that do such a thing just fine. WoW comes to mind. So does the Shadowrun FPS for x-box.

Hmm.

I've never actually tried the 'between runs' sort of thing for RP. Though it would have some potential merit. Certainly it gives the option to those that wish to go at a 'quicker pace' to do so with character RP.