Sei

It's not just you. I'd say our RPs end up having two issues. First, we tend towards grandepic kinds of RP plots: big, sweeping, save the world, that kind of stuff. The problem with these is pretty inherent: they're just massive, and running something like that is immensely difficult. Naturally, that kind of thing also leads to player counts being higher, and that either overworks the GM or leads to dual GMing, which has all its own problems...

So there's that. And then there's momentum. We also like detailed RPs: do every conversation verbatim, do battles blow by blow, long posts... But since we do that, we end up always stretching out the opening portion of RPs, and when combined with post rates, this often means people get tired of nothing significant happening before the meat of the RP becomes evident.

*coughEXTRAcough* No harm meant, Leo, just messing with ya. :P

Which reminds me: I ought to update SoL RP. And Sei should post in it!

@Five
I'll post.

Once you update. :P

@Leo
I agree with you, for the most part.

Dual GMing, to me, is problematic because, in most cases, you end up with a person with a lot of "power" who isn't really involved in the making of the work itself. I've seen a decent number of RPs spiral downwards because of GMs getting bored and/or abusing this power to entertain themselves or "add something" to the work. :/

Now, I don't think it's a bad thing, but I think the respective GMs need to have a lot of compatibility in order to work together effectively. Otherwise you'll end up with conflicts of interests or a respectful GM who's basically just a buffed player.

And of course posting speeds will always be a problem, but you can't make people do anything. Not unless you want to antagonize them anyways.

You're also forgetting the problem of people playing important characters just totally up and disappearing. Fate/Heaven's Gate kind of couldn't progress, in multiple ways, due to a certain poster's utter, stubborn inability to actually get their character's actions in, which sucked.

Perhaps some regulation of RPs is in order, in the sense of "sign up only if you think you'll be able to get this in on a timely manner," with consequences if you don't, up to and including removal from the RP (especially if there's someone who wants to take over the role) if that's what it takes.

Well, people failing to post regularly is not exactly uncommon in an RP. As I recall, Heaven's Gate had a substantial number of people who were slow to post.

As for "regulation" of the RP (in that sense, anyway), surely that's up to the GM. If they think people are being too slow, then they can impose "consequences" accordingly. It shouldn't be up to the mods to deal with such things. Also, sometimes it's not plausible to simply "remove" people from the RP, and certainly not to replace them (Heaven's Gate was an example of that).

Nah, you don't need mod regulation for slow posters, because we just know who the slow posters are anyways and quietly shun them. :3

Heaven's Cage, however, is getting back into the groove. :P