Good way to attract players to my RP?

[TheOddWord]

Hello, I recently made an RP, an odd sort of semi-nation building affair taking place in an original dark-medieval fantasy world.

At first, I was surprised with the number of responses, two people showed interest within minutes, one had a character written up not half-an-hour later! Soon after that I went to bed. Woke up and, nothing. Not one other player had showed the slightest bit of interest. I didn't think to much of this at first, because it was overnight and most North-Americans would be just getting up or at school. So I waited a few hours, came back and still nothing. I did a quick edit or two of the original post and added a few things / fixed some errors. Then I posted a thread on the "Requesting Players" thread. Hours later, and still nothing.

Am I just impatient? Does it usually take a few days for people to show interest and the players that showed interest quickly were just flukes. Is the concept unpopular? The reason I made the role-play to begin with is because most RP's around here seem very... Meh, in both creativity and quality.

Would anybody have any ideas how to increase interest?

[Modesty]

A few suggestions from a brief look at your roleplay and advertising posts, please understand that these are my personal opinions and this is genre is not my forte:

Advertising

- Make it pretty. It may seem shallow, but if you put effort in the appearance than people will invest an equal amount of effort in correlation... (theoretically).

- Avoid the scary wall-o-text. In hopes of avoiding the tl;dr responses keep key information and summaries on the introductory page, and move details elsewhere. For example, my roleplay uses an Almanac placed in the OOC area that lists races, places, maps, lore, etc. Using bolds for titles, or pictures, will help break up the text and make it more manageable.

- Perhaps advertise the roleplay as something akin to Chess or Risk, or other similar games of intrigue. What you have is a fresh approach to these games, placing them into a roleplaying setting. The idea is neat. Just tweak the presentation a bit and you should be golden. It's clear you have put a lot of effort into the creating of this, which is what players like to see.

- When advertising, state the obvious in the title. Ie: The King of Mecrundyr: Medieval Army Roleplay. Or something to that effect. As well, I find that the whole question / answer aspect to be a bit drab. Tell a story, suck readers in.

- Try placing your character sheet in a code box. ([*code] [*/code] minus the *s)

Etiquette

- Insulting the residents of RPG ("The reason I made the role-play to begin with is because most RP's around here seem very... Meh, in both creativity and quality.") might turn some people off of playing with you.

[ViceVersus]

Hey, there! Modesty did a pretty good job of covering the important stuff. I do have one more little thing to add, though. When you were describing the RP to us, I still don't have any clue what it's about. You were naming genres. I want to know who the story is about, what the characters are, what the conflict is, the goal of the characters, and the consequences for meeting, or failing to meet that goal.

I want to know that you know where we're going, when we embark on this journey. Too often I see roleplays that are essentially a sweeping sandbox. The GM has done a great idea of creating the world and a few key points, but hasn't done a good job of making it clear where within this world we will be going, and why (the oh-so-important question) the player is needed so desperately to help tell this story.

So. To clarify that, a bit, make it clear right off the bat what the players role will be in the story, and where the story is going to take us. A "log-line" of sorts, something that cleanly explains the central conflict. In my signature, you'll see a log-line for a short film I wrote. It conveys character, conflict, goals, that sort of thing.

Hope that helps! Can't wait to see what you think about Modesty's post, in particular.

Cheers!

-VV

[tadum2]

Im having the same problem, I have a really good idea, Though it's only my character. Its called The Russian Wastes. The idea is Russia shuts off from all the continents beside Europe. After such they rebuild Chernobyl as a labor camp, producing a new, harmful radiation. Its overloads, turning the prisoners to mutants and some into super beings. Then it spreads all across Russia. I've tried some advertising, even did a starting post.

[ViceVersus]

tadum2, one thing I noticed about your summary there is I don't know who the people are involved. With a story as broad and sweeping as a nation shutting off from other parts of the world, you have to give us smaller stepping stones as writers to become involved. What does the story centralize around?

The reason I am asking you to think in these terms is because the more you establish (1) the role your potential players will need to step into and, more importantly, (2) the need for that role, the better off you'll bee.

It is difficult for a wayward user who just happens to be reading over the summary of something, to feel as though they are invested, or that they ought to be invested. Commit to a premise and not the plot. This means, figure out what's happening on the small, character level first (is it a story about jealousy? A story about coming-of-age?) before you figure out the details of, well, this army did this, this scientific lab did that ..

.. If you accomplish that goal, it allows you to approach the rest of your story as though the background were a scaffolding, instead of a wireframe that everything must be subjected to.

Let me know if that helps.