...some of it will feel like virtue signaling a little bit, but i'm not too concerned about it tbh
not enough people care
this is probably the single biggest reason: most of the people i would want to have join and try this out are already invested in some other big rp, don't like the friction of not using discord, don't like me, or some combination of those and other things. some of these reasons are more valid than others, but that's not the point - i don't think enough people are interested, or interested enough, to actually justify making this happen.
i'm not interested in big rp spaces anymore
casting aside the glaring problems it had for a moment, i didn't find Tales of Celestia to be very fulfilling in the moment, and i still struggle with even small "for fun" rps in the little rp discord server i have set up. the truth is that i just don't find big rps like this as fun as i did however many years ago.
meanwhile, i've been doing some rps with a select few people - you know who you are :) - and that has been very fun, somehow? it's probably the premise of those rps. i'm not entirely sure.
...as an aside, i'm a little worried this will sort of alienate me from some folks even more than i already kind of am. idk, we'll see ig.
anyway, those two things sort of cascade into a bigger reason:
hosting is not free
Tales of Celestia cost money to host. i was paying a monthly fee for the server on which the board was hosted. i had also spent many, many hours getting it to work in the first place, and then to maintain it after that.
the question is simple: why spend money on something i don't think people will use, and that i'm unlikely to find fun to begin with?
some of you might be thinking about free forum hosts like Forumotion. these are certainly free in the sense that they cost no money, but they have other issues:
- they are not guaranteed to keep the forum software up to date.
- in most cases, we can't use our own extensions or styles.
- the fact that it's free is typically a sign that it may have an intrusive privacy policy or have ads or something. i wouldn't be comfortable requiring someone to sign up to a privacy-intrusive service to roleplay - this is sort of the same reason why i didn't want to make a discord rp server to start with, either. (remember, if a service is free, it's likely that you are the product.)
- probably other reasons i don't remember rn
please prove me wrong
i am interested in having someone take over the project.
if you're interested in making a forum rp yourself, i am willing to help with funding and hosting, because i believe this space has lots of potential to become something amazing for fans of PMD and adjacent series. i had many ideas that i just couldn't take full advantage of due to scope creep.
however, while i may provide input on lore and concepts, i am not interested in writing or hosting rp events right now. maybe if i become invested in the rp myself, that will change? who knows.
please contact me, or let me know in already established private channels, if this is the case.