Post by Darth Xaos on Nov 26, 2016 0:03:04 GMT
As I'm sure those of you who have stuck around noticed, NSB hasn't exactly been having a banner year. Our active members have been dropping and a lot of important storylines have become hopelessly stalled. And while our community has endured and overcome similar periods in the past this time is different. After the rapid failure of a plan that would've allowed us to move forward we in the LD have come to the conclusion that all real options for fixing the problems involved have been exhausted and the time has come for New Sith Brotherhood to close up shop. Reaver gave a very accurate summary of how this happened (and it was a process that began a couple of years ago, really) in the LD so I'll quote it here for anyone hungry for an explanation of how we've reached this point.
This has become a vicious circle as the increased workload has led to people leaving the site as they no longer enjoyed it, and in doing so the workload on the rest of us has further increased. It has now reached a point that the position has become untenable, I had hoped that we would be able to enlist some of the newer members but alas that effort has failed
This is not a decision the LD has made lightly and we've been discussing it since September 21st. As alluded to above, we even tried to draft some of our more experienced and promising general members into a sort-of sub-LD to divide the work a bit but that idea crashed before it got off the ground. This RP community has been going (with the same general storyline) for nearly twelve years now and it's a sad thing to let something like that end when there was still so much more that could've been done with it but at this point there just doesn't seem to be any other option.
We're not however just going to post this thread and leave it done, several things are going to happen over the next month and beyond that I'll now list:
1. Both this site and the old archive site will remain up. Together these constitute nearly half of the NSB community's history and they will remain accessible for many years to come.
2. Soon I will post in this thread a summary of what I had planned for the site's metaplot. This will cover from where we're leaving off all the way to what I had imagined as the story's finale. And while a list of plot bulletpoints can hardly make up for the years of RPing that could've been, we won't be leaving you with a cliffhanger.
3. NSB's fanon and metaplot are now open source. If anyone wants to take and use characters, plot elements or concepts from NSB and use them for other projects they're not only welcome but encouraged to do so.
4. Several threads will be posted in the Cantina section where we can all talk about NSB stuff one last time. I myself will be starting a What I Made/What Everyone Else Saw/What I Played thread where we can humorously dissect our characters before bidding them farewell. Everyone is welcome to start their own threads as well.
5. There may well still be periodic additions to the Fanon and Fanfic sections in future. Just because the RP is ending doesn't mean we can't still have fun writing for the setting. Personally I'd very much like to complete the Rise of the New Sith Brotherhood fanfic and eventually start work on a couple of others.
6. This is just goodbye to NSB, not goodbye to each other. This site is ending for very specific reasons relating to its organizational paradigm which does not preclude creating something new. Obviously it's still very early days but I hope to start up a new RP site in future and I further hope that lots of people from NSB will join.
For now though, let me just say this. Thank you to everyone who has been involved in the NSB community through its entire decade+ existence. I deeply appreciate the opportunity I've had to build a setting that has been a fun experience for so many people, and I appreciate even more that those people have made their own contributions to expanding and refining the setting. These many years of work and play have left a deep impact on me and given me scores of memories that will never fade; I hope they've given you all even a fraction of that joy.
If the current members can not step up and help out, then there are not enough of us to keep the site running. Many of us have been doing so for a large number of years now, but as the years have passed a number of our more active members who were prepared to GM and run training have left, and those who have replaced them haven't been able or willing to to do as much, and the increasingly few of us have been trying to do more and more to keep the site running.
This has become a vicious circle as the increased workload has led to people leaving the site as they no longer enjoyed it, and in doing so the workload on the rest of us has further increased. It has now reached a point that the position has become untenable, I had hoped that we would be able to enlist some of the newer members but alas that effort has failed
This is not a decision the LD has made lightly and we've been discussing it since September 21st. As alluded to above, we even tried to draft some of our more experienced and promising general members into a sort-of sub-LD to divide the work a bit but that idea crashed before it got off the ground. This RP community has been going (with the same general storyline) for nearly twelve years now and it's a sad thing to let something like that end when there was still so much more that could've been done with it but at this point there just doesn't seem to be any other option.
We're not however just going to post this thread and leave it done, several things are going to happen over the next month and beyond that I'll now list:
1. Both this site and the old archive site will remain up. Together these constitute nearly half of the NSB community's history and they will remain accessible for many years to come.
2. Soon I will post in this thread a summary of what I had planned for the site's metaplot. This will cover from where we're leaving off all the way to what I had imagined as the story's finale. And while a list of plot bulletpoints can hardly make up for the years of RPing that could've been, we won't be leaving you with a cliffhanger.
3. NSB's fanon and metaplot are now open source. If anyone wants to take and use characters, plot elements or concepts from NSB and use them for other projects they're not only welcome but encouraged to do so.
4. Several threads will be posted in the Cantina section where we can all talk about NSB stuff one last time. I myself will be starting a What I Made/What Everyone Else Saw/What I Played thread where we can humorously dissect our characters before bidding them farewell. Everyone is welcome to start their own threads as well.
5. There may well still be periodic additions to the Fanon and Fanfic sections in future. Just because the RP is ending doesn't mean we can't still have fun writing for the setting. Personally I'd very much like to complete the Rise of the New Sith Brotherhood fanfic and eventually start work on a couple of others.
6. This is just goodbye to NSB, not goodbye to each other. This site is ending for very specific reasons relating to its organizational paradigm which does not preclude creating something new. Obviously it's still very early days but I hope to start up a new RP site in future and I further hope that lots of people from NSB will join.
For now though, let me just say this. Thank you to everyone who has been involved in the NSB community through its entire decade+ existence. I deeply appreciate the opportunity I've had to build a setting that has been a fun experience for so many people, and I appreciate even more that those people have made their own contributions to expanding and refining the setting. These many years of work and play have left a deep impact on me and given me scores of memories that will never fade; I hope they've given you all even a fraction of that joy.