I've probably covered this before, but an update never hurts, because a lot of people ask this. We all want our RPGs to last a long time when we begin them! Yet most don't survive the 6 month mark let alone see their first birthday. What goes wrong?
It has nothing to do with your forum host. You can pick a free forum {Highly recommended when starting out, as if it fails, you won't be out any cash} or a paid one, this will not affect the outcome. Most RPGs begin on free hosts like Proboards and Invisionfree. There are many more, I would shop around.
Assuming that you set it up adequately and market your RPG, it will go through a couple of initial phases. The first one being the initial "burst" with a handful of members signing up all right at the start. They want to be in on your brand new game at a time when they can grab popular canon characters {if this is a fan game} or just help establish the initial parts of the game and/or become your staff should you be needing a mod or two to help you out. Also, many people like to get in on a new game because it has no history to have to worry about reading into, other than what you put as the backstory in your rules area.
The RPG goes along like this until around 4 to 12 weeks, depending on how large that initial burst was. You may start to see some slacking off of activity at this point, but this is often partly because advertising has also slacked off. You cannot put your feet up! Advertising is VERY important at this phase, because you're not "shiny new" anymore yet don't have the "proven" age of older games. At this point you aim to hold your activity up over about 10 members on daily. If you get less than this, people may fail to sign up as often because they perceive that your site is not active enough--even if it is. Sites that get fewer than this on daily are also at risk of dying out because you never know when your members will have to leave. You need to keep them flowing in regularly. if your RPG is of a rarer niche {Not a really popular one} you will have to work a lot harder. My Warrior Cats game is of a popular genre, and Harry Potter, Twilight, high school, anime, wolves, horses and dogs are some other popular genres. These sorts of genres may cause some eye-rolling by some but they're easier to get members for. So just be prepared that while you CAN create a very successful real life World War 1 RPG, you got your work cut out for you and it may never be enormous.
A game will be much more stable if you can keep the daily logon and participation {Actually posting!} at least 20 members or so on daily and preferably no less than 10. The more the better in this case. You should see growth throughout the year, gradually although you will reach a point where growth tapers off and then flutuates mildly from thereon. As long as this level is above critical you should be okay. The challenge is to keep it up, and this should be done by making your member base as happy as possible, listening to what they want and ask for {Within reason!} and keeping up the marketing. All the while doing what you can to keep the site fresh. Offer new things once in a while. Even if they don't take off, they show that the site offers new perks sometimes and some of them will take off.
Once your site has gone a couple of years and is still thriving, you know you've got what it takes. The trick is to just keep doing it! Congratulations. You're now the owner of a long running RPG and you've figured out a system that works.
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