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[Man of Paper]

Note: I'm basing my statements solely off of the experience I've had on b12, which has almost completely consisted of Arms Races. I'm also referring to the reader, not the OP, when I say "you". Lastly, it may seem like I'm promoting my own games here, and I am. Of course I am. Come on now. Nothing like a little advertisement to draw the crowds.

Everything begins, in my opinion, with the GM. People won't stick around for someone that doesn't have gravitas, and a shitty GM will just piss people off. Not everyone can weave a compelling tale, so it's best to find a writing style you're good at and a genre you're comfortable with and work from there. Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Medieval, and Modern settings, just to name a few, can meld with a wide variety of different writing styles. I had "hero" characters in my first Arms Race, Industrialized Warfare, but as time went on I realized the scope of each battle surpassed what any one character would experience, and so when the war switched from minor skirmishes to all-out war my writing style adapted to reflect that. A short-lived game I ran, Blood of Champions, was heavily focused on individuals, and so the style IWAR started with fit much better.

Setting is also very important, though with a skilled GM you could have a game about working in a fast food joint wind up entertaining. When I start any game the first thing I look at is setting saturation. IWAR was set in the WWI-era, but with a science fiction twist, which separated it from the couple of other games set in the same era. There were no gladiatorial arms races when I started work on BoC. My current games, WarBiz and SCP: Containment Race are both based on popular settings among forumgoers here (PlanetSide 2 and SCP Foundation, respectively). While both settings are popular, nobody was currently utilizing them on the forum and so both have not only drawn healthy populations, but they've also pulled in Arms Race newbies. It helps that apparently people liked IWAR and the one and a half turns of BoC, but that just circles us back to the GM part of the equation.

Mechanically I personally try to include some new twist to keep things interesting. People here like to break things so when you give them something new to toy with it can keep them intrigued for a little bit. I roll 2d6 to determine outcomes of design and revision actions in my ARs with 6, 7, and 8 all counting as an Average result. Other games use 1d6, 1d4+1d3-1, 2d4, or even a deck. By doing something different people didn't have preconceived ideas about how it'd work. Every Arms Race past IWAR has included some other major shift in mechanics - BoC was a total overhaul of everything, WarBiz utilizes defined Class Loadouts, and SCP: CR, well, that's still early enough that I'm not gonna spill those beans yet

A lot of what our Hiatus Lord and Savior Nuke said is spot on. Especially when it comes to freedom for the players. Nobody want's to be on-rails for their whole experience. Even the illusion of choice is better than nothing (I'm looking at you, Telltale Games, RIP). One of my favorite things to say to my victims players came from watching Critical Role (a D&D series with a bunch of nerdy-ass voice actors) - "You can certainly try." It's best to have loose parameters and not a strict guideline when it comes to dealing with the infinite capability of a group of human minds to utterly break something.

In regard to rules, a GM should never be afraid to change something up. I had to expand the range of modifiers with my 2d6 system after realizing overly ambitious actions weren't quite punishable enough without going overboard. So long as you are clear and concise about your rule changes there should be minimal issue.

Most importantly, know how to write. This one may seem obvious, but to put it bluntly some people have no right to put written words together. I'm not saying these people are dumb or anything, there are a hundred different reasons for why someone's not that great when working with the English language. It's not everyone's forte, either. But even more importantly than that, you need to enjoy writing. Some of my IWAR updates took 4-6 hours of writing, and I'm the kind of asshole that tries to knock things out in a single session. If I didn't enjoy writing I'd have probably brained myself.

Research is also very, very important. Know your setting. I specifically keep naval stuff out of my games because I have very limited knowledge on the subject and don't feel like dedicating the bazillion hours I'd need to feel confident in my ability to emulate it properly. Likewise, if you're running a game like one of them FEF jawns you should probably have an idea on how Fire Emblem works.

Finally, do drugs and drink alcohol. It totally doesn't impact writing at all.

[RoseHeart]

This is my rash, unmeditated reply, but I want to point to an obvious point.

There are different types of forum games, like word association which have lasted for years, short lived complex games like nomic, and a rainbow, or maybe even tiered rainbow(double rainbow?) of not just popular categories but fundamentally different systems.


...I should also say that just because a game "dies" it is not a failure. I have trudged through lame forum games to the bitter end, those are failures. I have played (and if I may be so egotistical, hosted) forum games that were spectacular, but didn't complete.

Success is fun. Success is growing. Sometimes success is literally just publishing a game that you had to grow to make. Even if it is dead-on-arrival, and no one joins it. I've done those too.


Edit: Added sources. For Authenticity!

[notquitethere]

(Excuse the wall of text)

Nuke

Now I'm thinking about how I could have added threats

Ah I see that you've incorporated this idea into your Candles in the Dark game. I'm glad something constructive could come from this conversation!

Egan

I've failed a lot of times, almost all of which are embarrassing to me. But it doesn't seem to prevent people from being interested in my ideas and participating in my games.

One neat thing about forum games is that's there's little risk in failure. It's not like running a video game where you have wasted assets & code if it fails... text is cheap. This means we can afford to fail and reiterate.

Tiruin

For me, a good forum game is one with communication between  all parties involved.
Also PTW. Nice to see you again NQT :3

Good point and great to see you too Tiruin!

Rockeater

I don't have much to add, but I wonder if shorter/ less eventful but more frequent gm updates last longer, it would make theoretical sense but so is the opposite and I didn't play enough verrity of games to know.

I think frequent updates are necessary to keep a game feeling alive, but the mod shouldn't be in a position where they're posting more frequently and enthusiastically than the players.

Monkey

Tho I do recommend updates be at least 24 hours apart so everyone who could see it can if they want.

Definitely this. Also, structuring the games so that they're easy for players to drop back into helps keep up intake. Otherwise you get a diminishing player-pool over time.

Whisperling

A less drastic way to iterate is to recycle mechanics from past games. If something you've used in the past suits the game you're making now, you can generally just transplant it.

This is why we see the d6 mechanic from RTDs pop up all over the place. We can also borrow from boardgames, tabletop roleplaying games, videogames mechanics and so on.

Man of Paper

I roll 2d6 to determine outcomes of design and revision actions in my ARs with 6, 7, and 8 all counting as an Average result.

Interestingly enough, a lot of modern roleplaying games take the same 2d6 approach. You get an actual probability curve this way which you don't get from a single d6.

roseheart

...I should also say that just because a game "dies" it is not a failure.

Absolutely! My thinking here is really that the majority of forum games just splutter out. And that can be fine, for the reasons people here have made well. But I also think we can design our games for greater success too. It respects players more that way too. I've lost count of the games I've joined that disappeared in under three rounds.

[Outsider]

Forum games dying could also be something the players are doing. I'd wager a key culprit is no socialization. 99% of games just have the votes and that's it, and the few ones that do have more to say than A, B or C have a silly/memetic vote. That might demoralize the GM and contribute to a flatline thread. Surprised no one brought this up.

[MonkeyMarkMario]

Forum games dying could also be something the players are doing. I'd wager a key culprit is no socialization. 99% of games just have the votes and that's it, and the few ones that do have more to say than A, B or C have a silly/memetic vote. That might demoralize the GM and contribute to a flatline thread. Surprised no one brought this up.

Honestly I am fine with just the votes, tho I do see your point as most people like the social aspect.

[Haspen]

Forum games dying could also be something the players are doing. I'd wager a key culprit is no socialization. 99% of games just have the votes and that's it, and the few ones that do have more to say than A, B or C have a silly/memetic vote. That might demoralize the GM and contribute to a flatline thread. Surprised no one brought this up.

Excuse me, having lots of people post only votes is the spirit of highly-popular SPAMKINGDOM; exactly because instead of having to write out long posts, they can participate by simply casting a vote.

(Plus, I would be glad if you would pay attention to Game of Three Kingdoms - you already missed a turn.)

[Outsider]

Excuse me, having lots of people post only votes is the spirit of highly-popular SPAMKINGDOM; exactly because instead of having to write out long posts, they can participate by simply casting a vote.

I should have put the GOOD forum games disclaimer in my post. With it, your post mentioning spamwhatever is rather irrelevant. So my fault on that one.

[notquitethere]

I'd wager a key culprit is no socialization.

What would you say was a good way to encourage players to interact more with one another?

[IndigoFenix]

I'd wager a key culprit is no socialization.

What would you say was a good way to encourage players to interact more with one another?

Maybe offering in-game bonuses to players who interact, like letting them use combination abilities.

[notquitethere]

On thing I'm trying in the exploration rpg I'm running is giving joint-xp to players when they explore a new place together. To encourage a bit of co-ordination with one another. Having proper conversations is pretty difficult in a forum setting, as players are often not online at the same time.

[NJW2000]

It's pretty hard to tell what will and won't provoke communication between players. While giving them problems that are best solved through coordination can help, I think it mostly depends on the player combinations. A silly RTD I started on a whim that barely survived a dozen updates ended up lasting fifty pages despite poor GMing, just because certain players/characters had a tendency to RP with one another.

[Naturegirl1999]

It's pretty hard to tell what will and won't provoke communication between players. While giving them problems that are best solved through coordination can help, I think it mostly depends on the player combinations. A silly RTD I started on a whim that barely survived a dozen updates ended up lasting fifty pages despite poor GMing, just because certain players/characters had a tendency to RP with one another.

What was the game?

[NJW2000]

It's pretty hard to tell what will and won't provoke communication between players. While giving them problems that are best solved through coordination can help, I think it mostly depends on the player combinations. A silly RTD I started on a whim that barely survived a dozen updates ended up lasting fifty pages despite poor GMing, just because certain players/characters had a tendency to RP with one another.

What was the game?

This. Turns out it was only thirty pages, but anyway, point stands. I had no idea that certain characters were going to RP. But it turned out that they did, and they did it a lot.

So player interaction can definitely thrive on poor GM-ing, and falter with seemingly excellent GM-ing.

This suggests a wider truth: the players make a good forum game.

[notquitethere]

This suggests a wider truth: the players make a good forum game.

You can lead a horse to water but you can't make it post regular quality content.

[NUKE9.13]

This suggests a wider truth: the players make a good forum game.

Uh... gonna have to disagree with you here. I mean, it's not a non-existent factor, but it is by no means the only or main factor.
I suppose to some extent it depends on what kind of game it is; if it's one that calls for high amounts of interaction from the players, then it's gonna be a significant factor. But for a suggestion game, it's a very minor factor.
As a corollary, one should not throw out bad games by the dozens and hope that the players will do the work needed to make it great. 

You can lead a horse to water but you can't make it post regular quality content.

Metaphorically speaking, maybe the water doesn't taste very good. Or maybe the horse has had enough water, and would prefer some hay. Horses aren't suicidal, they'll drink if they're thirsty.