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They encourage my stupid shenanigans. And then join in.

.... That was evil

Will it be difficult for you to write another post, now that you've reached 69?

My character's partner wrote them a very heartfelt letter. They've been going through an awful rough patch, and it made me bawl to see how the other character was feeling as a result of it.

Jack has severe dyslexia, which sucks for him since no-one in the 1700s knew what that was, and just assumes he is stupid for struggling with reading (even though he is very intelligent).

One of my characters is chronically ill. I intentionally avoided naming it in the application and will continue to do so in game because like with many chronic illnesses, diagnosis can take a lifetime (or never actually happen) and the symptoms often overlap with other illnesses. I have another character that, though I do not put the name to it in the app or in-game, she has Aspergers. High functioning autism can be really difficult to nail down in adult women, but I'm doing my best. Role playing is, for me at least, every bit of a tool as it is a hobby. I'm a writer (even published!) and it's a great way to learn a character type and find what ways work really well and what may not. Plus as someone whose chronically ill and is a touch high functioning, I wanted to see more of those things so thought maybe others did too.

Gotham's Reckoning mentions a good point that needs reiterating... Our perceptions can be way off. I've stated this before when it comes to people claiming forums are dying. But the same logic very much applies here too. The more we hear about an issue the bigger it may seem. And the more it skews perspectives. For an example of what I mean... in the US in 2011 a survey was done asking people what percentage of the US was gay/lesbian. People, on average, replied that 24.6% of the US population was gay/lesbian. In truth? in 2014 the CDC released a report which stated less than 3.5% was gay/lesbian/bisexual. People had heard about the issues so many times they thought it affected significantly more people than it really did. Applied to this situation certain genres may seem to be crowded/popular and influencing perception of roleplay as a whole. So it is something to be careful of. I too would also like to have some actual numbers here to help sort things out properly. It'd be nice to have some kind of data on the community to see how things actually are.

I would have to agree with the general statement in the sense that there are too many Roleplays in the sense that there are roleplays being created every week that people who create them often give up on them really quickly. I see this constantly when I'm doing my advertising linkbacks. They'll post 4 days earlier and then I go to link back and they're suddenly 'Offline' when they've been open less than a month. Nothing is an instant success, it requires time, effort and a lot of work. Member building takes time and depending on the genre/fandom etc the appeal might be small so you'll have to work harder to draw people in. Big member base doesn't always mean success and more members doesn't always mean more activity it's the quality of the members that matters. A big problem I notice among RPers is flakiness, people who join, get so far as to create their character and then never actually post or participate, even when they're being offered multiple threads/opportunities from multiple people. Which holds up characters/plots and essentially the site especially if they take a canon (which in my experience they often do). I just opened a new site myself and I had quite few members who joined the first day took canon roles, made their claims and then literally never came back. That was a month ago. We are active and gradually growing and I'm dedicated to making it succeed but there are SO MANY members like that it's difficult to build a good writing relationship when you're not sure you can trust other members to stick around. Personally, I see sites each and every single day and I don't join any of them because I'm huge on the community aspect. Plot may sound great, it may have 100 registered accounts but I look at actual thread activity, writing quality and member inclusion, I watch how the Admins interact with their members, how members interact with each other. There has to be a level of respect for all or the site is not going to succeed.

Evie has Retinitis pigmentosa (she's mostly blind, in my head she see's light or can kinda see movement in the corners or her eyes but I don't actually write that out because I don't think she would focus on that.) Blanche has Muscular Dystrophy (with a bit of creative license taken). I've got the usual array of depressed and anxious. Zain's missing an eye. It's a recent event so there'll be some writing about how he struggles and learns to work with that to come.

For the discussion question, I left that open ended... Are there some genres which have too many? Feel free to talk specific genres if you want. If you'd rather go with more general then feel free. In the broadest sense, I do think there are too many roleplays now. Yes there are genres which don't get much attention, but they tend to be smaller/niche genres. (Older games/movies/tv shows/books that not as many follow now.) But then there are some which are well past saturation point (more on this in a bit). People get the faintest inkling for an idea and they start making a site. (Those fad sites being an issue for certain.) Or they do the interest check thing and then make a site. They largely don't even look to see if a site exists. There's no compromise at all. It's "I want to make this site" for me. Consider a while ago during the Harry Potter boom. Those sites were all the rage (still are really) and so many opened up simply because people wanted to play <character> or have their preferred ship. They didn't join other sites because the character they wanted was taken or their ship wasn't happening. So they made their own site, for them. And as a result tons of sites opened then failed because they were unsustainable. (Sometimes it was because the admin wasn't a good fit, others it was because they had nothing new/unique to add, others it was simply unrealistic expectations, further still others died because there were just too many choices.) Having choice is good to a point. But then after that point it becomes detrimental. It's very much like Xexes stated... too many options thinned the population down. Why did this happen? I think it happened because the difficulty of opening/running a site dropped. Options like InvisionFree (and later Jcink) became more prevalent and made it easy for anyone to open a site. People didn't need as much specialized knowledge. (Instead of needing to be able to deal with PHP, people could get by on HTML/CSS. And there's a big difference between those languages...) That lowered the bar for entry and suddenly more could start sites. People who previously would either have never tried or would have given up, opened sites. This meant competition rose dramatically. On top of that a wealth of resources (themes, codes, templates, images, etc...) made it much easier to get started. So if someone wanted to start a site they didn't have to design the theme, spend hours making images and putting it all together. Using pre-made resources, someone could essentially get a site up in a few hours. Though one thing I want to make clear... I'm not saying people shouldn't roleplay. What I am saying is not to rush into creating a site just because you can. Instead curb that itch and look for other sites. Help someone else out instead of adding to the pile of competition. Then if you want to get more involved... Become staff on a site. (Goodness knows most sites would love to have the extra help.) But if you really must open a site... ensure that you want to do it, that you have something to add and aren't just going to get bored in a month.

I don't know. I kind of miss the day when there were so many historical sites out there that you weren't narrowed down to a select few. I ended up joining one that wasn't my thing only because it was the best out there at the time. But I think the best answer I can give for this? People need to stop making 'fad' RP's, like just because there is a TV show about it doesn't mean there needs to be an RP. THAT I feel, really is exhausting to see. If the show only holds your attention for a little bit anyway but suddenly you are inspired to make an RP for it, don't. Go play privately about it. Write a fanfiction. If you are invested in it or invested in the genre THEN put your time and effort into it. So I think that is my take on this topic. There are not too many roleplays out there, just ones that don't have the staying power. If I had a dollar for every GoT inspired site I'd be rich, but can only count on one hand the ones that have been open for a year or more.

I agree. Too many choices leads to sparser populations When you looked for a genre, there used to be 1-2 main ones and a handful of offshoots. There were some very long-running, very big games. You simply got up and running and your audience would find you. There was none of this mass-advertising, posting 50 ads a day hoping to gain a single member or two a week. You posted maybe 5 a week and got just as many new members. Back then all sites had directory-like advertising rules unto themselves because it was powerful, unlike now. Imagine a restaurant. There are only 5 combo meals, right? So the chef cooks five different things, maybe 5 people order each thing a day. Now imagine the owner gets creative and ambitious and there are now 15 different combos. But, the restaurant isn't suddenly going to get more people, they have only the same amount of people (maybe a wee bit more), so instead of 5 people to a dish, it's now 1-2 people per dish because now there are 15 of them. The dishes are sites. Players become too picky With more choices, people have become pickier. I see a lot of "I only join roleplays that advertise with text AND an image". Sometimes it boils down to preferences, sometimes it is just a yearning for something different and novel. But there's a lot of prejudice. A surprising amount. And they can afford it because there are so many choices. I am seeing three different categories for Harry Potter roleplays on many directory sites. Members become too cliquey In turn, sites have become much more clicquey than they were before, groups more tighter knit and less accepting of outsiders because the members they do have are much more conformed to what they represent; there are fewer oddballs. The oddball who was a #13 who hung out with the #5's because that's all there was has now migrated to the #13 leaving the #5 group far less diverse and less understanding. Too much copy-cat There's a lot of hatred towards sameness. This comes from cooks in the kitchen who are not so much cooks as people who see what they can do and decide to do it. We live in a day and age where you don't have to be a pro to do these things (back in the day you either had the skill or knew someone who did), and as a result, everyone is. The same 5 skins make up 50% of all roleplays out there, period, which isn't right. Why this happened I can't say that resource sites are to blame for the too many sites but I can say that they helped. These days anyone can create a website with tools like Wix and Weebly and Wordpress, and maybe it is that movement more than anything of power-enabling that founded this era of too many cooks and not enough indians.

My new job which will be hopefully soon.

I'm looking forward to My stomach calming down after getting sick DC movies ❤️ A weekend away with my sweetie in a few months Camping!!!

Wonder Woman, Justice League (all things DC), Guardians of the Galaxy (my favorite part of Marvel), Logan (because X-Men while marvel is not considered MCU), More stuff on the Harley Quinn Movie, some personal appearance stuff (those that know me know what it is, those that don't, don't worry). Lets see.... Loads of movies this year.

Seeing my sister, nephews and niece in April.

Personally? Because I'm shy and/or lazy. 😰

"Sister Sites". Yes, our affiliates are simple link exchanges but we have sister sites, too. We know the admins, have worked with them, or have some sort of positive relationship. Occasionally, we interact with affiliates, by shooing away guests that aren't a good fit and suggesting the site of the affiliate we like the least. : P

I think that it's easy for affiliates to become just a link exchange, and that if you're not careful that's exactly what most are. For some people that's absolutely fine. I've only affiliated with other games that I am active in, and I was the one to ask them if they wanted to do the link exchange. I know not everyone feels this way, but I feel that if I provide a link on my page, I am saying that the linked game is run by good people, so I only do affiliate links with people I know and trust to run a good game. And that's not to say that people I haven't linked to aren't good people, it just means that I do not have first hand experience to tell me they are, yet.

@Sparky Muse I don't think that we are archaic or the world is moving too fast for us. I certainly believe that we are still a staple in life because we create together. I will say as I get older there are things in the text based that you see more. I've been roleplaying for 20 years. Things aren't the same as when I started. Things I am happy are gone, like 12 paragraphs equaled an advanced roleplay and how one liners are the devil. I love a good one liner now and loathe something that is 12 paragraphs with nothing in it to get me moving forward. Obviously we've lost some of our closeness, I feel like the RP world is bigger now than it used to be. It's something I hope my children get involved in when they are old enough and move forward with things. I feel that the fact that you can write collaboratively is fabulous! I personally wouldn't give it up for the world.

It feels like, with the way MMO's have been growing or changing, and the type of mobile games people can play, the number of members in our writing world tends to go down every year. I have no basis in saying this, but it seems like a lot of people I meet are getting older, or trying to keep their board together by either trying to get guests to join or chasing them off so as not to "shark" them. I think with things like Pokemon Go, and other mobile games or more modern games like Overwatch, as things get more and more advanced in the glitz-and-glamour of video games, we're, in some ways, an "endangered" brood. Then again, it's often been said I live in a cultural wasteland, which I can't entirely disagree with, since where I live when it comes to gaming it's either shooters or sports or 3ds mmo's/grinding games or phone/tablet games like Pokemon Go. There are, as far as I know, no other text-based roleplayers anywhere within a 50+ mile radius of me. The ones I know online, they use chat services like Discord to play games together online or to play DnD together. It seems and feels like sometimes like most forums outside of the "what's popular" archetypes like "warriors cats" or "once upon a time" or "harry potter" or all those "mainstream" ones are essentially competing with each other in a way or they all try and follow the same idea/design. While I don't think forum roleplay is going to stop within the next few years, I think it's past its golden age, and now it's just, "loyalty to the site". I've said it before, and I still feel the same: i think this world is changing too fast lately. Not all of it is bad, but it's certainly hard to keep up, and it feels like it's creating a lot of displaced people, who are losing a place to fit in with the world. At least, where I am, anyways.

Back in the hay-day when people put links to the sites that their members/friends ran, it was great. It felt like branches of a community. But now its really just a link exchange, to be perfectly honest.

I like the concept of being closer with our affiliates and it's what is hoped for in our 'sister site' section. However, I do wonder if it is only a static advertising tool now and/or a means to lure regular RP types to another site. We had one affiliate that was of similar genre and initially we were happy to support them. Unfortunately, the manner of the admins toward guests in the cbox and a few other elements about that site left a lot to be desired.

Years ago, I was a member of a Star Wars site which allowed people to have their own forums on it (mainly for fan fiction, a personal, blog-type forum before blogs were invented and if you had a fan site, you could have your own board for that too.) It had a great sense of community while the prequels were being made, members helped each other out by making graphics for each other and affiliating with each others' sites. That is what I consider a proper affiliate. There was also a time when I would be very enthusiastic about sharing my fan sites with forums on the appropriate fan sites because I thought that forum members would enjoy them, but although some sites were nice and accommodating, others weren't and the moderators would treat you as a spammer even if you contributed a lot of good things to the forum. I also used to do fanlistings (mainly joining them, sometimes making fanlisting sites) and again, sharing my fansites with them. However, I found that some people in that community would be nasty and accuse people of copying layouts or refuse to add your site link (I would understand the latter if they were squeamish about mature content, but the site had nothing like that on it.) This kind of behavour made me weary of interacting with the admins behind sites. Sometimes, instead of liking what other people do, and supporting them, whether it be fansites, fanlistings or rp sites some people like to shoot others down. I think that sometimes admins are very invested in getting their own site to work, and don't have the time to visit/interact on other forums. If that is why an admin keep their distance from other sites, I don't mind it, but I just hope it doesn't happen because people see other forums as rivals to their own. Sadly, Morrigan is right to say that it now only appears to be a link exchange. I try to affiliate with forums of fandoms/subjects that I like, so there is the possibility I might join them, but it would depend on if I had the time for the site, or if the time era, etc, of the board interests me.

I've had affiliates do it in the past and I pop into their Cboxes and give them hell now and then. I like chatting them up and making friends. I'll consider joining a longtime affiliate long before one that just opened. @Blackjack Bart and I started as affiliates and now we're weird The Initiative buddies.

I have joined a few sites I'm affiliates with. Though the last time I went to the site unaffiliated with us so I decided not to join afterall. Time before that the site I was eyeing closed before I had my character ready to post. (Like I had started writing the character on a Friday, stopped due to work, came back to the character on Monday and went to visit the site and it was gone... replaced with a standard "We're closed" message.) I'd like to offer more, some kind of real reason to affiliate but I have no idea what it would be. Possibly a static ad on our site or something? But I have no idea for certain.