I will add to what Vergil said that this has been a slow week in ALL of my games.<br/><br/>I don't know if it's because kids are coming home from summer camp, people are prepping for school, or tourist places are starting to batten down the hatches, or what, but MOST of my games have been at 1/5 or less of their regular posting rate this week.<br/><br/>Lulls happen for many, many reasons.<br/><br/>Additionally, even if you have a few people lose interest (and I'm not convinced that you have), this game has a TON of people in it, and I'd encourage you to either (1) go on with a smaller, more active party or (2) recruit a few more rather than simply putting it down when there are clearly more than a half-dozen interested players left.<br/><br/>Eight people have posted between OOC and IC in the past week. A couple of those have commented on having RL busies. That knocks it down to a half-dozen who could be expected to post IC.<br/><br/>...And that's exactly how many people have posted IC in the past week.<br/><br/>Some of the last-minute posting was apparently people waiting for others (I'm sure IDK was hoping for a few more heals...Who do we have who can channel? Someone asked, but no one answered and right now I'm half-awake and not sure I can go through people's sheets without missing stuff). Others might not have been waiting at all. They might have had a busy week, gotten their post in before the deadline, and thought 'whew! glad I got it up in time' but not posted 'I was busy this week' because they saw they DID get it up in time. Now that's just guesswork on my part, obviously, but I think it's not unreasonable.<br/><br/>I do think that the exploration part might be something that could have made a few people confused, as they would need to carefully read everyone else's explanations of what locations were already explored. In future, putting down some letters on the map so people can say "I explore area D" and then you're able to put in the recap "Areas C, F, and G are still unexplored." would be easier all around. I'm not saying that is what happened...Like I mentioned before, this has been a slow week in ALL of my games...But it's a suggestion for next time we have an explorable area.<br/><br/>If it was me, I'd give it another few weeks and possibly bump a recruitment post and then ask 'Hey, XYZ, are you still interested? Should I have your characters go back to town and call for new recruits?' rather than dropping the game when you still have a larger-than-normal-sized active group of people who are participating.<br/><br/>But it is your game, and it's your call. I just believe that maybe you're viewing a randomly slow week or two in an unnecessarily negative way.<br/><br/>If Elliquiy is like other online RP forums, we're going to have a MUCH slower time during December (most games die in December, be sure to wrap your game in blankets and set up heaters if you think your game may be sensitive to the cold). I'd hope that during slow time periods, you'd try to talk to people, establish who was still interested, and try to bandage and bolster things back into working rather than simply dropping it.<br/><br/>For my own part, I've NEVER seen a system game with this much participation. It feels sort of like 'Oh my gosh, it's going faster than anything ever!' and when it slows down to 'only normal' suddenly that feels like 'why did we stop?' even though we haven't, really...<br/><br/>Provided you are feeling up to it, I would ask that you try to continue for another week or two, and contact idle players to see if anyone has actually dropped out or just become less communicative during a busy week (seems to be a REALLY COMMON thing with online gaming, system or not!), and if needed, then maybe try to recruit a little.<br/><br/>This has been very enjoyable, and while I find some of your reward-the-players-for-activity methods a little bizarre, they have been WORKING REALLY, REALLY WELL up to this point, so hell if I'm gonna criticize!