What I will say about starting an RPG is how it seems to help a lot to build the initial concept/idea with other people. When the Tavern RPG started, we knew absolutely nothing about the story or even its genre. We just exchanged ideas and slowly agreed upon a genre, world setting, tone, lore (like the magic system) and made characters from there. I'm pretty sure this process alone took days of discussion that I remember would last hours at a time.
This was a pretty important element to the game's longevity. The story has a piece of something every players like because it was put there by the very player. If anyone would bother doing an analysis, it'd be rather easy to link back pieces of the story from players based on their tastes and what they typically write. That sort of collective structure fuels interest and motivation.
I imagine it will be harder to get interest on an RPG that has an initial concept and ideas from one person. You'll have to find people who actually like what you created and are eager to expand it. It's possible, but probably harder than starting from nothing and building something as a group. I'm not sure how much harder though.
It also doesn't help that there isn't really much visibility in that forum. Your Ashen Marches threads keep getting buried because of the activity of existing RPGs. It might be beneficial to create a fourth forum node that's dedicated to the discussion of creating new RPGs to prevent this problem. It should be pretty easy to do. What do you think of that,
@Louanne Learning ?
It might also help to give an incentive to members so they are more likely to visit that area. Medals help with the forum contests, so what if something similar is done for the RPG forum? Groups that put substantial (and provable) amount of effort in an RPG story and reach the end get some kind of award badge. Those would also provide forum-wide visibility.
Either way, hope you succeed with Ashen Marches,
@Username: required !
