I've been following the RP community for a long time, and have been noticing a decline on 1x1s in favor of people looking more for group RPs. I'm curious as to why this is happening, is the RP 'industry' dying? Or am I just not looking in the right places? Are people getting busier these days that they don't have time to RP? Are veteran RPers finally retiring? These are some questions I've been thinking about. I'm personally a fan of 1x1 RPs and I'm not finding a lot of people asking for those, and when I do they usually die quickly which makes me sad.

Pretty sure group RPs are just here since you can't really RP one on one in the forums. Though it might also keep a topic going if more people take part. Also sMail is limiting so that is a turn off for some too.

I personally prefer 1x1 myself, but haven't actively looked for new people in... ouch 9+ years. Course lots of people have moved to Discord which I find to be a nice place to RP at personally speaking from experience. Course this is just my two cents, I am curious to see what others think.

the rp subforum is pretty dead so that’s probably not a good place to look for an rp haha. i don’t know if people are retiring, but i’m one of those who moved to discord. it’s rrly good to keep all your potential ships in one place! plus it’s wayyy faster. i’m a veteran rper, but i only stick with my partners i’ve had for years and years lol! maybe people just got comfortable with their rp partners.

When I first started to do RP people were moving off of websites like this and going to Skype or e-mail, and these days people are moving to Discord like Virus said.

But from what I've noticed it's not just a Subeta thing in terms of RP dying out so to speak, it seems to be happening all over. One of my favorite long-time roleplay sites shut down a year or so ago and the few others I stick around on and check in on from time to time are heading the same way because they aren't getting enough ad revenue and are a pool of a few hundred regulars with issues drawing in new people and the regulars are barely pulling together enough money to keep the sites going.

Honestly I think this is just because the veterans or people who have been doing RP for a long time (like me, sitting over here with 15+ years under my belt) have become adults, and with adulthood comes responsibility. Jobs, starting families of their own, whatever that leaves less and less time for things that aren't integral for running life. Every RP partner I've had has fallen off the map pretty much for this reason, sadly. And the younger generations don't seem as interested for reasons that are still a total mystery to me.

In terms of Subeta, I think it's a mix of a lot of things. This site seems to only have a trickle of new people and people not sticking around long for a lot of reasons, which means the pool of RP people is very limiting. The forums and sMail are just not the most suitable means of RP and while we can advertise for off site that's a bit of a crap shoot, you know? Honestly I've been contemplating asking here for some since most of mine have died off, but the fact that I see so many asks and so few responses has also kind of scared me off of it so I don't think it's unreasonable to think some others might feel the same.

This is what I mean. Most are busy with their lives now, or lost interest/settled, and a lot of places I used to see with RP asks are dying. My own RP partners left and I feel like I'm the only one left who still wants to RP and such.

Younger people ARE interested, but since they're just starting out...they're not that great. Plus I've met many younger RPers who are super entitled and don't think they're wrong, and refuse to accept constructive criticism. Seems to be the case with most of the recent generation's RPers.

Yeah, I get that too sometimes. It's mostly intruding into the D&D spaces I play in online, I'm all for newbies and kids but it just feels like they are exactly what you described. We also use the term 'chaotic stupid' for those kinds of people who come in with chaotic neutral characters and think that means running amok with no consequences and derailing the game every two minutes which, unsurprisingly, is overwhelmingly the players in their mid-late teens and early 20's. I also found they don't like to be told no or be corrected about anything and it's an instant hissy fit.

Of course I'm being hypocritical in that manner because I know the generation above us thinks the same about us and looking back at teen me I was an entitled snot bag that now me would probably see as similar to the people I so often complain about so I think it's just something that happens.

Looking around, though, I realized in the list of discord servers there are lots of RP based ones and that makes sense. Why run a crappy free website (because let's face it, all the free ones are very crappy and very limiting) or pay for one out of your own pocket because you know the players won't pony up and ad revenue (if you can get it) won't pay for it all when you can just do things through discord? Have all your people right in one place for free that isn't crap and with no restrictions other than what is set upon it by the server owners and if you don't like that it's really easy to look elsewhere, you know?

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