why it was a failure
 

All right, this thread is for all the rp's that people tried to start that never got off the ground. If you started one that failed, give a short description here, and other people will help you figure out what went wrong.

I tried to start an RP called city of conflict in which people could join a faction and try to take over the city. However, nobody posted anything in it after I did.

What went wrong?

If raiding a city was the entire plot I can see what went wrong. Some people are more interested in RPs with a story involved to make it last longer, otherwise it'd be dead in one post or one thread. If your RP had no story probably people weren't too interested to see where it went because they already knew where it was gonna go and didn't bother playing it out.

If that wasn't the entire plot then I'm not sure what went wrong. Ask people to add links to failed RPs to help them out better.

the point was that you are already in the city, and you are trying to beat out the other groups, but yeah, I can see how a gang war might not have been the best plan.

I started the Kohan RPG and Disciples RPG threads, but apparently no one is interested in it.

I know why Disciples didn't attract anyone, because it's too tedious and complicated. However, Kohan wasn't, and I even thought it was a good game for an RP to be based on(Yes, both Kohan and Disciples are computer games, if you didn't know).

This one I started in my sig.

That wasn't a failure, Elminster, the world just wasn't ready for it yet!

But someday...those pig-dog Hylians will learn the true meaning of Proletariat vengeance! Onward, comrades! :D

I've started two failures and one success. The first failure was quite a while ago, and people just stopped posting... The second, nobody responded to at all. I suppose the second was because there was basically no plot, and I was trying something new that nobody seemed interested in, as for the first I don't know why it failed really, it had been going along quite well.

I am quite pleased with the one that is succeeding though, nobody yet seems to have gotten tired of it. I guess it is simple enough to allow freedom, and complex enough that it isn't totally boring.

If you want a real mystery though, Calvinball... I mean... Really, why that succeeds is beyond me. Though I guess it can be fun once in a while. No, I don't play calvinball!

Calvinball succeeds because the human mind thrives on randomness, and because so many NPF veterans play it.

I think one of the leading causes of failures in an RP is the the number of people involved, and the number of 'new' people involved. Whenever an rp gets over (on average) 7 participants, it's much less likely for it to succeed. This may either be due to just too much to cope with (in the case of the dm stopping) or just too many people having to post before an event can take place (players stop posting). The 'new' people is simply that, when people have just joined, they may not continue with the forums. This isn't always the case, but in rp's with several (3 or more) 'new' people, they rarely succeed. These both come from my experience at starting at least 3 failures (not all here) and one mostly success (Natures Axiom on TWC, and even that died before it finished).

Another problem is signup periods taking too long and/or the RP getting too complicated, like the WoD RP done by FZ.