First, we'll start by comparing how many reports we got in each different game; then we'll go over the amount of chit-chat each game had (our primary source for this will be the OOC Room, for reasons I'll explain later); and then I'll make a conclusion based on the data gathered.
Since NUF's games were alive for much longer than Scribbly's however, the comparison would be very very unfair if we used raw numbers, so we'll instead look at them from a relative perspective of reports/week and chat/day.
The games in question we'll be using are the following:
AG V1: The original Adventurer's Guild from NUF, that kinda created this model we're using now... Which I think is pretty unique for RPs in General.
MA: Magic Association was another RP from NUF that used a similar system, I think it will also make a good counterpoint.
AG V2: The reboot of AG that I GM'd last year. It didn't last nearly as long as the original version, but I think it's also a good counterpoint.
Without further ado, let's get started.
Reports:
In Scribbly's AG, In roughly 3 weeks, we got 54 pages of reports in the Receptionist's Desk, with 1/2 of them being appraisals, meaning we got roughly 9 pages of reports per week.
In comparison, Magic Association got about 8 pages in one month, which averages 1 page of reports per week.
As another Comparison, AG V2 got 46 pages in roughly 4 months, which averages to 1.5 pages of reports per week.
AG V1 is harder to get numbers on as there was a lot of chit chat in the receptionist's desk back in those days, so any comparison at that point would inevitably be flawed as I'd be unable to grasp the proper number of reports/page.
I can tell you though, that the Desk in AG V1 got to 54 pages in about 1 week.
Even after the game was reorganized and some control started being enforced to control the amount of chit-chatter in the Receptionist's Desk, there was still plenty of random chatter there... But in that era, it took them 2 weeks to reach 54 pages.
This probably means that Scribbly's AG is actually the most popular roleplay in the history of both forums if we judge on amount of reports/week in its initial stages. But once again, it's hard to make a definitive statement.
Chit-Chat:
We have 188 pages in about 3 weeks. Or roughly 9.5 pages per day.
MA had 650 pages in about 4 months. Or roughly 5.5 pages per day.
AG V2 had 600 pages in about 3 and a 1/2 month. Or roughly 5 pages per day.
AG V1 did not have an OOC Room, it instead had a Tavern that Mixed both IC and OOC together in a very weird and confusing mix. In order to make an appropriate comparison, we need to add our total number of OOC posts and IC Tavern posts and compare to their tavern.
Counting our OOC + Tavern posts, we got 223 pages of "Tavern" in 3 weeks, or roughly 11 pages per day.
AG V1 had a grand total of 8075 pages over 2 and a 1/2 years... That amounts to roughly 9 pages per day.
However, that number also counts a number of months in which the game was basically dead and did not really have any real conversation going on. So in order to get a more accurate measurement, I'll add two different measurements to try making a more appropriate comparison.
The first one will be how long it took for AG V1 to get to 223 pages of Tavern, which would show how quickly it grew in random chatter back at its starting days... The caveat here, is that much of that random chatter was also spread across multiple threads, including registration, quest board and registration, so this number, just like the Receptionist's Desk, won't be as reliable as we'd want to.
Nonetheless, it took AG V1 roughly 5 weeks to get to 223 pages, averaging roughly 6.5 pages of chatter per day.
Our second comparison will be to how much chatter we're getting when compared to AG V1 over its lifetime, including its "golden ages" where people were actively talking like crazy all the time, with some days getting over 40 pages in one go.
Since it's hard to measure where exactly those days ended, we'll go with page 7000 as our cutline, as that is definitely a long time before the game entered its decline and activity essentially died.
This is also a much more accurate number than the previous one because by that point in time all the random chatter had already been redirected to the Tavern and was basically non-existent in the other threads. So even though the lost random chatter for the first two or three months still exists, it will have a marginal influence in the final result due to the many other months that were spent with all chat confined in the appropriate thread.
At page 7000, the game had been going for about 15 months, which averages to roughly... 46 pages/day? WTH? I don't remember it growing this much.
*redoes math* *coughs* Okay, so... 15 months don't have 150 days people, please remember elementary school math, alright?
Anyways, with 7000 pages spread across 15 months, the average growth per day is of about 15.5 pages/day of random chatter. Topping off our 11 pages/day number.
Conclusion:
Of the 3 major Roleplays that existed in NUF's history that followed a similar system to this one, the only one that had any chance of comparing to Scribbly's AG is the Original AG of NUF.
While the data is not 100% accurate, it is safe to assume that Scribbly's AG is the most popular RP in terms of reports/week, but falls short of the original AG in terms of chit-chat/day.
While we can't give an accurate reason behind those phenomenons, I can at least raise up some plausible theories.
1) Lack of RP environment creates a boom of activity for any new Roleplay. The first similarity that I can point out between NUF's original AG and Scribbly's AG is that both were the first major RPs of their respective forums. This made pretty much everyone that wanted to have any form of Roleplaying within those forums to instantly flock to said roleplay as they were the only option available.
Meanwhile, when the other NUF Roleplays were made, the community there had already had their share of Roleplaying Games and didn't feel that compelled to join it as it wasn't necessarily something new and shiny... It was just... A new version of something that was already there before, and that already died before.
While making a new roleplay in a community that people already roleplayed in does have the benefit of luring veterans that still wanted to RP in, I doubt these numbers can compare to the flood of active newbies that joined both the Original AG and Scribbly's AG at first.
2) The Extreme lax environment increases the talkativeness and engagement of the playerbase. This is the biggest similarity between AG V1 and Scribbly's AG IMO. It's very very lax and much of it is left to the players themselves. I think the absurd amount of freedom and the amount non-existent barrier of entry provided a much more appealing game to many of the more casual forum users, which made them decide to give the game a try even if they weren't that interested in Roleplaying in the first place. I think this is a major plus for both games.
In comparison, AG V2 and MA tried to have a more solidified lore and less internal contradictions by preparing in advance the world, how magic worked, key locations and a few other things in order to have a more well-established game and avoid some issues that AG V1 ran into after the game went on for a long time...
While I don't think those initiatives were bad per se, the fact that they made the initial OPs of both threads very very long and filled with information that restricted what people could do to a certain extent (in all honesty, both games still gave a lot of freedom to people, but you had to actually read through those long OPs to realize that), made many people much less interested in actually going through the initial posts, which decreased the overall amount of players that joined, and therefore limited the amount of activity those games could have in a given period of time.
3) NUF having more people than Scribblehub helped AG V1's chit-chat potential. While Scribbly's main site is growing at a very good pace right now, the forum is definitely not. NUF OTOH had always had a very active forum.
It should come as no surprise that the forum with more people, when having two similarly popular roleplays, was the one with more chit-chat throughout the history of the thread.
4) Scribbly's writer-focused site helped Scribbly's AG's report potential. While NUF is definitely the most popular forum, it is primarily focused on readers, and the audience of said forum is primarily there to chat. While there are of course authors and translators there, they aren't the majority.
Meanwhile, Scribbly is made for writers, so many more people that frequent these forums actually want to Write... And a roleplaying game like AG is an outlet as good as any other for our writing needs. (I mean, there's a fair number of users here that also have stories that they're currently writing in Scribbly's main site after all)
And well, in the forum for writers, more people write. So it really shouldn't surprise anyone that we have more reports than NUF's version of AG.
