Your Longest-Running Role-Play

[Fate Flyer]

I saw this role-play over at Roleplay Gateway that had over thirty pages, filled with exceptionally long, detailed posts by writers that seemed quite devoted to the RP. It was started back in 2008 and is still running today.

That got me thinking. I've never personally had a role-play that ran for that long. The longest-running RP I probably ever had was one called And By Night, They Walked, and it went on for 4 months and 5 pages, which isn't much. What about you though? How long did your longest role-play last?

I wonder why role-plays have this terrible tendency to die out, many times just as they are first starting. It's a world-wide epidemic!

[Mattipus]

Well, this is a kinda hard question for me. See, up until a few weeks ago when I started roleplaying again, I'd always RP'd in an open world setting - i.e. many threads signifying many locations, which the characters can jump between as they wish.

However, on one such occasion I had a character that was keeping another hostage in a tower, pretty much, and though the two characters did venture from said tower a couple of times, they've stayed inside the one thread for the majority of the time. That ran from... April 6th, 2008 until June 14th this year, and we could still pick up from where we left off at any time.

[Deadman - D17]

Longest thread? Oh, jumping over to World of Warcraft here XD

Even Nice Guys, Have Enemies. Started 8/12/08, burned through five threads on the World of Warcraft forums, and is currently still going (and probably will be for a while yet) on its sixth on a seperate Roleplaying site. Not sure how many 'pages'.... a lot? But yeah, that would be the longest-running thread I've been in, and am still in

[Lara]

Hmm, let's see... I think it was "Saetola", a roleplay on Gaia I was in that basically turned into a onexone (on top of only being posted in once or twice a month, if that) so I don't know if that actually counts. It lasted from November 8, 2004 to April 26, 2006.

Then there's the first version of "Butterflies", the only RP I'm currently active in on Gaia right now, which was started on September 11, 2007 and lasted to January 28, 2009. It would have continued even further, but we decided to just restart it a few days later, and like I said, I'm still active in it now.

And technically, the story I'm writing with a friend started as a roleplay back in November of 2003.

[Fate Flyer]

Mattipus -- Ahh, yeah, that would make it a lot more difficult to really tell than how long your RPs went for. That one occasion though was quite long! I'm guessing some interesting things happened in the tower.

Deadman -- Oh, nice! That's awesome that you've had such a long-running one on the WoW forums.

Lara -- Wow, Lara, that is super long! I didn't even realize that role-plays went on for almost a couple of years. What an accomplishment! You have or are involved in some real long-running RPs, it sounds like, so you're definitely very lucky there!

[Shade Yuka]

My longest role play would have to be "And All Her Majesty's Men" 5 pages long, 5 chapters long, and just so happens all the posts but two have been done by me.

[Guest]

Well, other than a private role-play off-site with Ryona Noel, the longest role-play for me would likely be Tkwiget's Tales of Riv'nar: The Chosen. A lot of it is still off-site, from Gaia Online. And I haven't been in the RP for the entire time, so that doesn't really count. But even from where I joined I have been with it the longest.

[Ragter the junior greeter]

Well...I believe I haven't been in one single RP that lasted more then a year, or even a year. On another forum I populate, not Gateway, I was in an RP that might have lasted a year...I know it lasted for quite a while, and surprise, surprise, it actually ended eventually, instead of everyone not posting.

[Kalon Ordona II]

Tales of Inari: Requiem Va'or

I assume this is the RP that Fate found me from.
This is the first role-play I have ever hosted. I waited a long time, until I knew I was ready, to host one of my own, and it seems to have paid off.
Requiem Va'or has been going for 1 year and 1 month (and counting), and is still going strong.

I have learned that as long as I don't abandon the RP, even if other people quit or can't make it anymore, the story can always go on. It's all about dedication, but of course it helps to have a good story, a good group of players, and a good feedback system.

We've currently surpassed the length of The Fellowship of the Ring!! *dies*

All other role-plays I've been in haven't lasted very long. A few months at most.
Except this one that refuses to die despite people not posting for months on end. But I don't really count that one because of the insane lulls it goes through. It just never dies, which is awesome.

Anyway, that's my longest role-play so far. ^_^
I'm trying to prove that it's possible for a role-play to finish.

[Guest]

I only started steadily playing on forums as of May, and had a lot of false starts over on the Guild before I came over here and had another false start or two.

I had an RP on another site several months before that, but it took two months just to cut through the bureaucracy and start, and then I sort of ditched because I got tired of having to go to the committee for everything.

[Igraine]

Longest thread? Oh, jumping over to World of Warcraft here XD

Even Nice Guys, Have Enemies. Started 8/12/08, burned through five threads on the World of Warcraft forums, and is currently still going (and probably will be for a while yet) on its sixth on a seperate Roleplaying site. Not sure how many 'pages'.... a lot? But yeah, that would be the longest-running thread I've been in, and am still in

*high fives* Yuppers, that's the one! *waves at Deadman*

ETA: Oh, here's the link for ENGHE - with all the other links back to the WoW forums. WoW forum threads automatically close and lock (and are preserved) after 25 pages.

[Karali]

The longest RP I've ever had was a 1x1.

I started it in August of '07, and it lasted all the way through '08 until like March... When my partner and I got into an enormous fight and it died. D:

It's like, 950 pages long in Word. Yes, I saved it. 8'<

[Kesteven]

I don't keep much track of time but I think the longest running RP I was involved with wasn't on an RP forum at all, but was a kind of experiment on a very small forum I run, and that went on and off for... wow, a year, looks like. Not sure if it counts because most of the posts were very short, but I guess that's probably why it lasted, nobody ever felt like there was any pressure and just threw a few more lines on there in a lunch break, and nobody was an 'expert' role-player and so didn't really have very high expectations. That and I guess people felt more accountable because literally everyone there knows each other.

After that I moved to RPGateway thinking people would be more inclined to play seriously like I was, but quickly found everything I tried to join withered before my eyes. I think perhaps a lot of people tend to join RPs at the start when they're all exciting and new, and then when they realise the story isn't going anywhere and they actually have to put in effort to propel it forwards, they get bored and join something that seems more exciting. The ones that survive are the ones that start with enough committed players to drag themselves through that initial bump and get enough story momentum going that the active players feel involved in the project and interested in developing the story. Just a theory, though. God knows I'm far enough away from actually finding the Holy Grail of RP longevity, but what I've learned so far suggests to my cynical mind that the vast majority of online role-players are severely defective in enthusiasm.

[Stion Gyas]

I finished the first roleplay I ever hosted. Which happened to have been my first role play ever. 18 pages, and three of us posted in it constantly for a couple months, until we finished the original "plot" and decided not to continue it.

Other than that.... In Second Life I was a member of a Sith group, and roleplayed from November '07 until December '08. Good fun, and I developed the character well.

[Sighlent]

My longest one is actually something that ended about a year ago and started, in believe it or not, '05. Now the details weren't exactly eye snatching but it was still something that a very close friend and me started with just two main character's and then rather over exploiting them continued to add people revolving around those two until we had this crazy little world filled with epic fantasy and weird stuff.

My main character was a cat demon by the name of Kien (please keep in mind how old I actually was when this started lol. And his character's name was actually Morgan but his alias was Demon. Kien had a sister named Ebony who was a back stabbing bitch, and her twin. Demon had this long suppressed second persona who went through about five different names before finally referring to himself as Nyx.

I honestly cannot recall how many people we killed in the process of this RP.

[osacredxo]

4 and a half years. No joke.
It was a roleplaying session I shared with a long-standing online friend. We only stopped playing (2 years ago) due to life developments and time contraints. We were rarely at a loss for ideas...she was my roleplaying soulmate. <3 We say we're going to pick it back up, but I wouldn't be upset if we didn't.

I have often dreamed of publishing it as a book, but alas, most of the saved excerpts from the story has been lost, and I have poor memory. Not to mention...it was more fun to write than to read.

[Game Over1375]

The Longest RP that I took apart of died with the site when it was taken off the internet. It was known as "Dead Man's Dream," and it lasted from, oh, August of 2006 to April of this year. It became the main thing of the site within two months. We were about to end it, but that was when the site was taken off. We stiill have no clue why it was.

My character was known as Xarel Dracois, and I only bring him out any more when I believe someone needs to get pwned like the noobs they are.

Maybe I should bring the RP here...

[Zovo]

On a forum?

Roughly a month I'd say. . . 6 or 7 pages, maybe.

[Fate Flyer]

Ah, not the longest in terms of length, but the longest running one, as in how long it stayed alive for.

[Zovo]

Like I said, on a forum, about a month.

In a non-forum setting (ie: pen and paper RPGs) then we start counting years.

[Guest]

No Fourm [Pen and Paper] - 3 and a half years.

Forum - A few months.
I have yet to find an epic role play that just grabs my attention and keeps it forever. D: I'm very bad about losing interest and as Gunneh knows, I can get very impatient when I'm into a RP and my partner/other members don't post and I get pushy. That is also a bad thing.

[Kathryn Lacey]

The longest role play of which I have ever been a part lasted roughly six months. It was a journal style role play, and different threads were made between different characters in this one role play setting. It was a panfandom deal, meaning that it had characters from all sorts of different fandoms all thrown together in one world. I played as Katara from Avatar: The Last Airbender for the entire length, but I also played as Yvaine from Stardust toward the middle, but she was dropped before the end.

I have never had a role play in a forum last more than a few months. It's sad. Hopefully that will change here.

[Kalaam]

The longest RP I have ever participated is still going to my horror. It was also on the WoW forums and is on at least its sixth thread of 25 pages. However, the current writers are terrible, and it degenerated into one of the worst experiences of my RP life. So, while it has gone on for over a year, I don't like bringing it up.

The best on I had held up for about three months with a cast of great writers that I think mostly moved to A Writer's Recluse for their forum going activities. I forget the name, but not the topic, nor the character I used.

Miles "The Hammer" Rornhelm is one of my favorite characters to write about. Some of his anger is so strangely rooted, that its kinda hard to make believable without the warcraft world. But, the gist goes something like this. He was lied to, manipulated, and betrayed by his rather zealous organization. The thing he is most angry about is not the betrayal, but the actions he committed under their aegis has forever removed him from becoming a hero.

[Bird of Hermes]

Mine is this role-play: http://arilayna.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=icwidows

It is with a group I have been with since 2005.

[Kaito]

Longest RP I've been in was 7 Pages with 50 posts each.
It lasted a bit more than a month.

It was actually a real fun one, for the first and to date only time I played a wholly evil creature in an RP and brought chaos and fear to everyone

As things go, though, one guy just had to godmode and after a while I didn't feel like continuing and without me, most of the RP didn't get any further and so they ended it shortly after...

[Cypher]

Longest roleplay I've ever been in? Huh...

Counting a singular thread, the longest roleplay I was ever in was probably a crappy Inu-Yasha roleplay from several years ago that lasted around a year with just three or four people. It wasn't high quality, it wasn't stellar writing, but it was my first, and for that I will always hold a special place for it in my heart. No matter how much I don't want it to be in there.

[MetalEgo]

My personal longest, Ever and Before: Embers of the Idle Mind, went for, maybe, eight months and twenty-odd pages. It was pretty recent. The problem with my RPs is that I just get bored with them. =D the posts on that forum are usually only between one and four paragraphs long, too. It's not about skill or inexperience, we just don't care to regurgitate pages upon pages of description. =/ I think they call it McDonalds RPing, lol.

I've been IN RPs that have gone longer, but most of them were those neverending IMRPs. You know how those go. =) Funfun.

[Claymore]

My longest RP is still running and started in september 2007 with me joining in october 2007. Most of the players have busy lives which makes it a bit slow going, but we make up in quality

[Sunwolf007]

Length wise my longest RP was City of Heroes: Rebirth It lasted about 3/4 of a year in time but it was an awesome superhero RP with writers that were good and actually on both sides of the story so there was many character vs character battles that were pretty cool.

Time wise the longest RP I was involved in was Tails in the Black - A firefly based RP which lasted about a year and a half. It was an awesome firefly based RP that all the writers for were really good. I had a lot of fun with my character in that one.

The RP I am involved in now Viemera: The Essence of Deceit will hopefully take both of those spots but that hasn't happened yet. Even though I wasn't involved from the beginning it could still happen (and I hope it does because it is an awesome RP).

[Silvan Arrow]

I'm also in Viemera: The Essence of Deceit, and so far it's the longest RP I've been in, both time-wise and length-wise. It's easily the most high-quality RP I've ever done as well, as each round of posts just gets better and better in terms of story and the quality of writing. I've got high hopes that this one will go to the end instead of dying right out of the gate like all the others I've been in on another site *knocks on wood*

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