Where did all the roleplay go?

[Zydana]

Over the years, I've noticed quite a lot less role play happening on the boards. Why is this?

There are a few who post here and there, but there are no huge discussions or even forum plots/adventures.

I, for one, miss it and would encourage its return.

[Torakhan]

Part of it is that many of us who used to frequent the boards now are in different places in our lives where forum-based RP just isn't entertaining.

I think there's also been discouragement from it because plots that GMs start on the forums rarely get to conclude on the forums--players and GMs alike take too long in their postings and often what was supposed to conclude before the event is often left unfinished when the event starts, making the scene frustrating at best.

As for player-based scenes, the same often seems to happen, if not a worse fate--a stalled scene that never ends.

The final issue is that, on the forums, a player can go into a 30-paragraph tirade of TL;DR that would never be that long in a game setting, and then it almost becomes a dick-measuring contest of who can write the longer post of "blah-blah-blah" (Yeah, I'm apparently guilty of that too.)

So, between players just not wanting/able to put the time/effort into forum RP, a history of scenes that never finished, and a chronic TL;DR epidemic, I think that there just isn't the interest for it.

Now, I'm not going to discourage folks from doing it, and I'm sure there's plenty of good reasons for folks to do it and continue to do it, but those are just my theories as to why others may not, based on my reasons and observations as well.