I've seen a lot of PbP games die in the last month, and wonder whether it is an artifact of the time of year. So, I'm curious. When did a game (or games) of yours fold?

Never played PbP, but I wonder if it's more of a "in the 6th month", regardless of which calendar month it really was.

Most of my PbP games tend to die after a week, or month, unless I GM. Often shortly before or after meeting the Johnson. No real tie to any particular calendar month, as far as I can tell.

November and December are death for ALL role-playing games whether it's PbP, tabletop, MMORPGs...

The holidays force you to miss sessions. That coupled with getting new toys over the holidays make you lose interest in the old game...

I'd agree that there is little correlation, except for the Christmas season. GMs could be hot and heavy during the summer, but when school starts (for those that are in school) the game shuts down. Or, they could be hot and heavy in the winter when they have nothing else to do, but when the weather gets warmer, they want to get out and do something.

I think the biggest falsehood about GMing a PbP game is that its less work. I contend that its actually more work than planning a tabletop game. The time between posts, the likelihood that you'll have to replenish players and just the lack of any quick and easy tool to help players visualize a game map, make GMing an uphill battle.

One really has to be ready to devote a lot of time to their game and get lucky in selecting reliable players...

I just played in my first PbP ever this year. It was very exciting and was really getting into it. We made it through character submission and our first meeting with Johnson. At the time things really started to get exciting the GM disappeared. I even sent a PM to see if how things were going. It was close to Thanksgiving, so I understand if life was a little busy, but didn't get a response from my GM. After talking with one of the players, I soon learned (to my disappointment) this was pretty common.

I had a PbP game running on my website from 1994 until about 2002-2003... then the players and I all seemed to mutually lose interest...

My guess is for every testimonial like this, there's a 100 that ended within a month.

I've run a loooong game (well, two, spanning probably about 7 years). The schedule is almost always as such:

Game starts in the summer - too much free time. Things move along nicely, then hiccup as it falls into a routine.

September kids go to school. For two weeks, a lot of players disappear or post erratically. Some drop off altogether and have to be replaced.

Late November things start to get wonky. December gets really rough. People disappear, posting becomes erratic or goes silent altogether. By this time of year, USUALLY it's silent. Students go into winter break and generally fall off the face of the Earth. Don't replace them though, they'll be back.

Late January/early February you've got confusion. People come back, but not always ALL of them, so you don't know who to wait on. I tend to do a lot of one-shots, small-group stuff for the present players over winter break, but now it's tough to tell if you shouldbe wrapping other players in again or not.

By March things should be settled. March-May is really the sweet spot. Things run beautifully and fast. Don't let them outpace themselves.

May/June swing around. People disappear again. Into July it gets more confusiong. Some people post a LOT more. Some people come on and off and are distracted. Some disappear. *HOPEFULLY* they'll settle themselves pretty early and you can have a good summer. Likely you'll have one or two stragglers you'll just have to put aside (because everyone else is roaring at the bit). Move on as best you're able. Go to September and repeat.

I haven't run a PBP game, yet, but I have played in quite a few. I think things slow down around the holidays, and pick up when school is out, but I wouldn't say that the holidays kill a game. I would agree with the posters who says their games tend to fall apart in a few months. In my experience, things tend to grind to a halt during the legwork section, right after the Johnson pitches the run, and the players accept. I'm not sure if it is because they now have a million options about how to approach the job, and are paralyzed by indecision, or if it is just that they are past the part where they are introducing their shiny new character concept to everyone else, or what. I've been in a few games that made it past that point, and they went great, but it seems like once you lose a couple of players, the other players have to slow down to give the stragglers a chance to post once in a while, and then things snowball until everyone else has found something else to do. I have been in games where the GM has disappeared on us, too, but I would say that is not the case with most of them.

Every PBP game I've ever played never made it past a major holiday break (Christmas and Summer being the two biggest killers with Easter being a distant third). The more time you have between replays, the more likely the campaign is going to stall, and the more the campaign stalls, the less likely it is going to survive.

I just hope my Google Wave campaign will be different as the GM won't have to collaborate all the actions and re-email them to everyone. Anything that can speed up the transfer of information will allow the game to move on, and the more it can more on, the better chance it has to survive.

My Games fail whenever I get busy at work, which does turn out to be at 6 month periods for some reason. I need more free time.