There has been, is, and likely always will be a certain concern on Hyrule Castle and sites like it. It can be summarized like this: you're actively posting in a role-play thread, and then suddenly your role-play partner(s) begin to post too infrequently, or just completely stop altogether. For this situation, I've always had by own little guidelines as for what to do. I've noticed however, that others do not. Some have even implied to me that they think it's a rule that you can't post out of order, or go off an do your own thing. Some may consider it an unspoken rule, but it is not an official rule of Hyrule Castle and there is nothing force you to abide by it. Following post order, cooperating, and not abruptly abandoning your role-play partner(s) is a courtesy. It's expected and nice course of action, but it isn't required. I pose to you this question: if someone is being rude to you, why be courteous to them? If someone abruptly stops posting, especially without warning, there is no need for you to stop role-playing on their behalf. If you want to continue without your partner or group, it is feasible for your character to leave them behind. In doing so, however, I suggest you make a separate thread. Your adventure could continue in this separate thread without upsetting theirs too much, should they suddenly return and want to continue it. All that said, none of this is official, and not a single thing I've said here is a rule of Hyrule Castle. These are just my personal guidelines I follow, which have been announced at the request of an anonymous member of HC. This thread will probably only remain an announcement for a short while, before I convert it to a regular post in Role-Play Discussion. Feel free to reply here if you have anything to say.
Speaking just from personal experience, I've found a lot of the time the real killer isn't that it's impossible to move forward; it's the fact that by the time you give up waiting for someone, everyone's lost momentum. Maybe after two weeks you actually decide to go, "Yeah, we can't keep waiting for him, let's start again" but once one person's infected, it usually takes out the entire group. While generally laziness has a fair amount to do with this, the most common reason I've seen for people apathetically falling off from roleplaying is none of their characters are interesting to actually roleplay. Instead people just never roleplay and make 8 new characters they touch for half a thread. When they, or someone they're roleplaying with, drops out from a thread and it dies, it seems more common for people to just start over (or wait two months until they get some dramatic, interesting idea). I completely agree with you that dropping a roleplayer in favor of finishing (and hopefully enjoying) a thread is almost always the best way to handle it, but I wonder if there's more to be said about the matter as a whole.
