that the more advanced sites and those with more experienced writers have little/no members..

i struggle to find one at my level and end up having to put up with 2 line replies just to RP

some of the more interesting sites seem to lack members, its sad. I've tried to set up my own sites but to no avail.

I find that most literate sites do not have many literate members.

Such as my own, it is still very small, but this one roleplayer and I have long posts every single time, and my other roleplayers don't usually go under three paragraphs. But, my other site is infested with two liners and such. I lock the boards if I see these.

But, I do agree with you.

I don't know.. I find that lots of advanced sites manage to stay alive and active, it just takes a little effort on the part of the admin. It also depends on what you consider advanced as well. The members of my site do between 250 to 500 words on average and we have been open for around 7 months and have about 35 members and we are still small compared to many that I see. I think its just hard to find the rpg that you are searching for no matter what you are looking for. Making an rpg is 25% Creativity, 25% Persistance and 50% Luck!

I think a lot of 'advanced' RPs do themselves in for several reasons. One is that now there's a lot of people in the roleplay world who are skeptical of sites that call themselves advanced. A lot of roleplayers equate repeated use of the word 'advanced' with 'a whole lot of fluff' or purple prose, especially older ones (age-wise).

The second is that a lot of advanced sites seem to have a really condescending tone about them, especially toward new members. Their rules tend to be very negative and admins seem to pick apart applications for very minor things that will probably never be an issue in any roleplay that comes up. Or they seem very controlling about the subplots and characters, telling roleplayers how their characters should be played.

The last issue is a problem that seems to plague RPGs in general nowadays, and that's admins who just up and leave to start another site after a month or so.

It's gone so far that 'advanced' seems to be reaching the same connotation that many 'advanced' roleplayers would equate with 'beginner' or 'one-liner' roleplays.

As a side note, Puppeteer's site is a good site; I can vouch for it!

Just a note, can you please use capitals in your posts? Not everyone's first language is English here. So not using capitals might make it harder for such people to understand (including myself).

Thank you.

I think it's all about "advanced rpgs" knowing out to put themselves out there. I can't think of the word right now but it's all about that. You just need to know how to get yourself out there and advertise as much as possible.

RPGs like "Witchsong" seem to manage just fine with members, they obviously know how to... There's the word... PROMOTE. Promoting is Key.

Promoting and Persistance for sure. I know I went a long time opening an rpg, getting frustrated cause I only had a few members and closing it. Its a little bit of live and learn to. As an admin you gotta find something you are passionate about and will appeal to other people, the more you put into it, the more you get out.

I'm sorry... I'm lazy at times, I shall bear that in mind :)

Well, in fact, my past two RPGs have been advanced, and though the second one doesn't have as many members because it's only for characters over 18, it still has about 35 members, most of who are active. The first one was a high school roleplay, and there were about 80 members, it was very active, and everyone had very long posts except a few. . .

I'm not sure if I can say the following without sounding really conceited, but I don't think anything Roswenth said applies to my RPs, though I have noticed a condescension among other literate RPGs that show the qualities she listed. I think the thing that most separates us is that we didn't pick apart any applications, unless there were really obvious spelling/grammar mistakes, like they were switching tenses or used "he" too much or there was no sentence variety.

Those are just my active advanced RPs. I've had other ones where in the rules it said "be able to write 3+ paragraphs per post," yet when the members posted applications, they were only 2 paragraphs at best. Even though we did have some gems, the overall quality of the RPG suffered because of too much 'intermediate' RP. But with these past two sites, I put "for advanced roleplayers" in the advertisement, and there has only been two applications that weren't up to the standard we set. However, many members have commented, especially in the request section, where they need a character and they say something like, I would say you need to give me a sample post so I can know your skill, but everyone here writes well so I'm not worried. I'd say that was a good testimonial. :]

Advertisement is the key, from my experience, for a successful RPG. You just have to make sure all your promising members know the quality of the RP before starting their application.

I don't mind the "certain number" of paragraphs per post because then I know the expectations and if I can't do it I won't join. But from some of the rpgs I've seen the majority of the members do post long ones amongst each other. I'm not too crazy about some rpgs that do word counting that - in my opinion is nitpicking. I avoid those. I don't know how successful these advanced rpgs are but they do look kinda busy.

-edit- I've also seen some admins nitpick people's profiles...now it depends on what the nitpicking is about..maybe they want to know more of the character's history..etc etc..ok...I suppose it's HOW they ask..sometimes they have this rather "snooty" tone in their posts.

I admit that I sometimes nit pick on people. Mostly when I am an Admin and they are posting an application. It is useually on thier History or Physical description. I just really hate it when people post things like:
"I grew up here, these are my parents, nothing happen in my life"
for their history or :
"I am hot, I look liek Angelina Jolie cause that is the celeb I am using"
for their physical description.
I am overly exagerating on the history but I have really had someone do a physical description like that.
Other than that I like to leave the board rules fairly loose. I find it adds more to the drama of the board.

Well, just to give an example of nitpicking....at one site I was at quite awhile ago, I wrote about 4 paragraphs in the description, and the admin said she didn't want to accept it because I didn't describe the shape of the face or how the hands looked. And basically gave this rant about how they were an 'advanced' site and 'non-advanced' writers who couldn't write 'good descriptions' were most certainly not welcome. That's nitpicking.

I believe that same site was where I posted in the OOC forum before my application was accepted, and got about 10 people pm'ing me and posting about what a stupid newbie (and that was mild language comparatively) I was for posting in the OOC section before I was accepted. BTW, the rule about that was in their ART FORUM, not in their main ruleset. I immediately rescinded my application and never went back.

yeah that is just a bit too much.
I would never be that ahrsh. I just hate when people are obviously lazy. But there is a limit to me being a b****.

I can appreciate how RPing with people who don't put thought into their work can be frustrating. I do a lot of it myself and I roll my eyes every time, but as has been stated millions of times on this site, post length does not presuppose thought or effort, nor is the reverse true.

I have RPed with my current partner for more than a year now and have yet to have "nothing" to reply to. And some of her very best posts are extremely short. In fact, one notably beautiful one was four words long. As I suggested to another of my partners the other day, three words is just fine, as long as they are the right three words for that moment, and have been thought out.

I would simply hazard to suggest that locking boards for short posts is a rather drastic step. If a certain member isn't putting forth the appropriate effort, I suggest talking to that member before "getting tough" like that.

I also agree with this. It's hard to find literate roleplayers nowadays

I think all an rpg really needs is two people, if they have chemistry (the players) it can stay active forever. Adding new people is so much fun but it's hard because rules start developing as people slack off and start two liners. I belive in happy mediums in a BIG way. We just strive for substance, you MUST leave something for the other person to react/reply to. We usually stick around 2 parapgraphs, sometimes 5 or more, every so often, especially at, like, midnight we get down to one paragraph :p

Well, first the definition of "advanced" is...well...it seems pretty broad. I mean, I was just looking over this site earlier today, actually, that on just about every paged told you how "advanced" they were, how high their expectations were; and they had several pages on what they specifically expected. So I read about their expectations. In their sample post, this is the first sentence:

Ergh?

Part of why it's so hard to actually find really good, "literate" sites is that even the standard of "advanced" is apparently...well, not that high.

The other issue is that good sites are afraid to promote their sites in the typical ways, because they don't want to get people who talk in chat speak and have childrens' parents getting killed right and left so the majority of characters can have nice emo pasts. I personally have found that my actual advertising has largely gotten me members I could have done without.

The other problem is there aren't really a lot of good ways to advertise. You have to know where to look first to really find RPG sites. Most of the top site listings suck (typically three quarters of the sites listed are dead). And, as has been said, the ones with the greatest number of members are 'the not-so-literate' ones so they have the most members voting for the site and advertising it everywhere...

In short...it just ain't fair.