Okay, so I still want to go through and try to answer some of these questions even though I've never 'started' my own RP. I did take one over for somebody though, and that's kind of been interesting all in itself.
What goes into your mind when you begin to create an idea for your rp?
This one is tricky to answer, since I haven't made my own RP from scratch before.
But, I have thought about it, on a few occasions. I've had two or three RP ideas in the past that may or may not happen sometime in the future, and the first thing that comes to mind when I want to create it is setting and story.
When starting out with the ideas for RP's, I think I definitely just want to treat it like any other piece of literature. It needs to have a beginning and an end, and several events in-between to keep things interesting for everybody. Then I think you just have to make sure it's something that could work with several people coming together and molding the story.
What kind of things inspire you to come up with the ideas that you eventually put into your rp?
I think when planning out things to put in the Roleplay, I want to come up with ideas that people will have fun with. Just trying to come up with an interesting plot point that will re-spark the interest everyone felt when they began.
I think Piercing Light does a fantastic job of this in Persona: Frozen. Everytime we think we know where we're headed, he throws us completely against the wall with awesome plot points. Everyone is at a restaurant preparing for the night ahead, and BAM a boy who went missing bursts into the restaurant almost frozen to death and delirious as they come.
I feel like he easily adapts these plot points to the chaos that can be everyone having their own self-contained stories as well. We all kind of had our own thing going on for a while before we were supposed to meet up at a dojo, and even once we arrived everybody kept on with their own stories. So suddenly our dojo starts freezing over and blasting around ice shards like there is no tomorrow, and we instantly warped to our next story location! He was able to take the reigns and get us back on track just like that.
Are there any factors that lead up to creating an rp?
I almost feel like there are factors that could lead up to
not creating an RP. In my case, with ideas I had before, there is always the time constraints. I'm currently a member of 3 RP's (heading one of them), and I am also a full time student with a part time job. I have to ask myself: If I create a new RP now, will I be able to dedicate myself to it and its members? When the answer is uncertain, I decide I'd rather not just start it up anyway only to leave people in the dust.
Then, there is also the gauge of interest. I haven't actually done this part before, but you really need to find out if people are interested in your RP or not. I've seen several fantastic RP ideas on these forums before, but nothing ever happened with them because not enough people wanted to join. Some of these simply had the idea thrown out there, while others had very lengthy posts with templates and backstory. I feel bad for someone who spends a lot of time working on an RP idea like that for it to end up going nowhere, so you kind of need to make sure people would be down first.
When you have finished writing out the plot and all that follows, do you instantly plan out your arcs of the rp?
I have somewhat done this with the RP I manage. It was kind of different because I took an RP of someone else's creation and had to adapt the story for it from the point they left off on, with no idea where they were heading with it. But I did plan out the entire plot and where we would go, and I was kind of like "Okay, once hit point A of the RP, I can take the plot here. At point B, it would be okay to do this." So in a way, I do think I have some arcs planned out. But really, a lot of the fun also comes from how the other members react to the plot and sometimes things just need to change, so I think leaving room for flexibility is important.
What kinds of characters do you imagine when you're thinking up of your rp? Does it influence your creative process?
I'm probably going to have to pass on this one, since I haven't really had to deal with this yet.