Originally for the GMs Wanted thread:
Its not that we need more GMs, its that we need players that will actually RP. Its easy to say that you'll participate until you realize how active life is getting, that's why I'm saying that I'm on the update schedule of: "Whenever the hell I get to it."
And also the reason why I'm going to stop saying, "OH YES! THE UPDATE WILL BE OUT BY TOMORROW!" When I should say, "It might be out sometime soon." Everyone seems busy, which is why I've been doing the streaming thing, you can just put my screaming, accent making, BS on in the background until I run out of energy and gusto, or until I finally call it quits and head to bed. Its a lot easier than posting up a 5 paragraph long essay with descriptions of environments, how your beans and pork tasted, and how you just wasted the 12 guys in a couple of dice rolls.
That and most of the players aren't really in the mood to RP with a new setting unless there's enough there and you actually have a plotline to go with it. I've realized why The Highway is so popular, its because at the base level, the plot is just about a road trip, everything else just adds to that or fleshes everything out a bit more. It acts as an anchor and as a main goal for the players, so when things get batshit silly and they ask, "Wait what were we doing again?" They can just remember, "Oh right were going to Sacramento for some plot-important muguffin."
Among Gods failed because there wasn't a basic plot, and despite what the poll said, no one really did anything with it. It was a few sentence posts and BAM! It was over before it even started.
Terminal is going the same route as well with the lack of any real updates for everyone, even though only two of the players are actively doing something that requires a GM to post something. The players are free to do their thing, I mean you can go chat with other players or make up impromptu dialogue. The only reason I was pissed about players doing their own thing, during the meltdown, was mainly due to GTAGUY trying to fucking break something again; so I kinda got pissed and tore into everyone.
But from what I've learned, you need to take a simple concept and expand around that. I was planning on doing a Mafia inspired RP until I thought about it, no one's going to play it, sure they can talk, talk, talk all they want. But when it comes down to it, if they don't have a plot to go with their character or enough silly shit to mess with, its pointless to write it.
I love everyone here, but the RP stuff is mostly lacking due to players, GMs, and the forum alike not giving enough shit to put forth the effort. The players don't get, or get a lackluster update. So they post something lackluster and barely thought out. So the GM gets discouraged by the lack of good posts from people, so they start playing favorites by giving the good effort put forth updates to the people that put forth the effort. Until they write themselves into a corner.
Everyone is tired, busy, and writing is most likely more a chore then something fun. I love writing for The Highway, but sometimes I miss waking up and finding 5 new pages added to The Highway because some of the players were up late at night and decided to talk amongst each other about what is going on, speculating on what items do, and generally fleshing out their characters so that we actually give a damn about them.
You have to treat the RPs like D&D without rules here, its just the way the community is. You have to give them a "quest", some end goal to actively work towards, they may or may not know what it is, but they'll constantly shoot for getting to there, and with each post they get a little bit closer. It could be as simple as, "Go graverobbing in this tomb" And then have it spiral out of control, or something more complex like, "Survive WW1 in any way you can." Allowing them to just pop into existence with or without some background text, and then you write some situations for them to last a couple of months until you call it quits or you move on.
And honestly, I might update Clearer Pines for the sole reason of what happened being the craziest fucking thing ever. It went from tracking down some commies and shooting them, to the blank slate becoming some delusional creep with a fetish for putting his shit in little baggies made of organs, skin, and bunny rabbits. I might just rewrite most of it for the character to go all Rambo First Blood and hold off waves of "commie sympathizers" and actual Commie spies.
And everyone is getting bummed out with their shit due to lack of feedback on anything. Like a simple, "Yes I read this chapter, and you had a misspelling at page 8." would be fine. But no one wants to read anything, hell I don't even read anything. I forced myself to read Furaotics PULP and ended up liking it. We've just kinda fallen into a slump of wanting everyone to solely look at our shit, but when the time comes for someone to hop up and write something, no one wants to read it.
Like I said I'm guilty of this too, but I'm trying to figure out when we went from being a community that supported each other, to one that just kinda exists. Tomorrow (along with everything else I gotta get done) I'll sit down and read your guys's things and see what could be improved, whats really good, and what should be changed... if at all possible. But we really need to start showing support for each other through the medium of simple communication.