Any advice

So it's been a while since I made a forum rp, now I've started more RPG's then I could realistically sustain. I also have one game where the players just aren't posting, and I'm not sure what to do. On the not posting one I left room for the players to respond and they didn't and another I've started it but no player (despite having three signed up is doing anything. I have another game that ai just want to close as the idea itself isn't sustainable as it was based on one ideacrhat didn't really pan out.

In all honesty I have been where you are. I would say most people on this board have been or are. Pbp has the inherent flaw of being slow to develop. With the game I am currently running it took almost a week to even get any interest. A few days longer to even get players and even now only two out of four players are active. Due to this slow nature many of us get involved in a lot of games but before long it ends up being too much even at the slow pace. You can see many people commenting about being involved in too much. I personally left this site for more than a year after burning out. I closed games I was running and dropped out of games I was in. I was involved is far less than you too. Now that I am back all I am doing is running one games.

My advice to your main problem is to reduce what you are involved in. Close all games that havent started or that are inactive or not working. If you are overwhelmed now it will only be worse if they take off. They also are causing you undo stress because they arent flowering. Two stop starting new projects. Three drop out of games that are going slow or no where.

I really recommend not running more than one game, especially once they get started it can become a lot of work.
I also recommend only playing in up to three, if you can commit to posting in them everyday or so.

As to the problem of not getting players or getting inactive ones all you can do is be patient. Wait for players to join, post updates in your recruiting thread occasionally to remind people it is there, and make your forums public so people can see what it is all about. Deal with inactive players quickly especially if they havent even made a char and dont respond to ooc posts and pma. Remove them so others can join, especially if the game is full. It may take tike but you will get some good active players soon. Another thing to note is that D&D and all of its spin offs and clones seem to reign supreme. Be extra patient if trying to run something else, especially if it is obscure. I hope some of this helps and best of luck!

All good advice and definitely worth taking in mind.

Sorry to see you leave from my game DKDBSD. And I'm looking forward to whatever game you next startup.

That would be Dark Heresy. : 3

I get where you are coming from. I have pushed myself a bit too much too. I think I have some strategies to simplify. Hopefully it makes it easier for me.

This isn't a solution for being over committed but it may help with keeping people involved.

We haven't started actual play yet, but I just started using an off forum application to kind of keep things up - specifically, I created a team on Slack and invited the players. Since it goes at the pace of IMing, it hopefully will help keep up the pace. Obviously this is contingent on players feeling comfortable giving out email addresses. I have the advantage of my players being my friends, so I already had their email addresses to send out the Slack invites.

We're still in char gen and Session Intro as the char gen for the game I'm running is pretty interactive, with a variety of side discussions as opposed to one main dialogue. I use Slack to
- let players know when different threads need input from a particular character to proceed, along with a link to that thread
- as a central repository for files (right now kept in Google Drive, put I will be pinning a picture web of PCs relationships, rules exerpts for char gen, and the blank character sheets)

Once the game starts, I plan to use it more for
- managing scenes where characters are in different locations and so monitoring different threads
- a place for side chatter/ooc stuff

Interesting, I'm not familiar with Slack though.

I wasn't either. It's co-opting fancy business IMing for gaming! It's essentially free web-based inter-company messaging to organize by team. Supposedly it's more efficient than emailing in a communication heavy environment, but that's a bit unimportant for my purposes. There's a desktop and mobile app, so you don't have to occupy a browser tab. I was introduced to it by a friend who uses just uses Google Docs for pbp, and Slack for organizing and OOC.

It's pretty easy, and you can invite "bots" as well as team members which basically add functionality. I don't know much about how deep that rabbit hole goes. I'm still puttering around on the surface. :)

So far I've used it to tag people so they know you're posting to them, star posts so they don't get lost in the thread (obviously, keep it to important stuff, and unstar things as they are accomplished or become irrelevant), and host files like play aids and character sheets. And we're not posting game stuff. We're posting that we've updated so things keep moving, and when our posts require anybody else's particular input to follow on.