Forums » RP Discussion » What happened to feral RP?

My friend owns a feral RP dream on Furcadia, and we're having trouble getting RPers in.

What can we do to get people in?

Is there a reason people don't roleplay ferals anymore?

Did your friend make an ad for it?

Like on Furcadia, or here on RPR?

Well I assumed you meant on here since this was the first time Furcadia was brought up. I assume you are talking about Furcadia Ferals now?

Yes, her feral dream is on Furcadia. I will edit my post to mention that. Sorry.

Unfortunately, feral RP isn’t nearly as popular as it used to be. I got started roleplaying back in early 2007 on furcadia. Back then, feral was huge. Dreams like Yellowstone and Wolves Moon Heaven had hundreds of players. I roleplayed wolves for many years until I was a senior in college. But the feral RP community has been on a steady decline since about 2016. It’s virtually nonexistent on furcadia these days and I’m not sure any amount of advertising is going to change that. I’ve found there’s a somewhat active feral community on discord. There are various feral RP servers advertised on disboard, if you’re familiar with that website. But something else I’ve noticed is that the feral RP community these days is very young, like, most players are under 18 years old. TLDR; I don’t know why people lost interest in feral RP, but there are some active feral RP servers on discord if you guys are willing to change platforms.

Everything that Miarup said here is dead on accurate. Feral is where I started back in 2002 and I was just entering junior high. Dreams like BBA (Black Blood Alliance), Swift Kill's Den of the Elite, Glade of the Wolf, WMH, and Yellow Stone all had their run but eventually vanished. Something I correlate with feral RP is that a lot of people grew out of it. Many people back then were around the same age as me or a little older. As we got older many people who had the interest left Furcadia or moved on to more adult or anthro related rp. Something that Furcadia has not done well is advertising and with that it hasn't reached a ton of new people. Most of the people then were pretty young and I think that if you want feral rp you need to gather a younger audience again who like the idea of just playing a quadrupedal wolf or animal.

It's still hugely popular on Roblox - I hate to say it, but the niche has moved platforms to there now.

With how centered Roblox is as a children's platform, I wouldn't necessarily be comfortable saying that's where the feral roleplay community has gone without going back to the major caveat of the feral community is overall very young. Regardless of whatever way you want to cut it - anyone who has grown up on Roblox, has made content for Roblox, etc. knows the main audience is children with a smaller focus on teens. In my experience (less furry, more just warrior cats / wolf kid, but same dif), yeah the feral roleplayers on Roblox have always been pretty big, but predominantly children for obvious reasons. I wouldn't recommend adults looking for feral roleplay settling there to find stories or anything because that is a space that should be reserved for young writers. I say this only because I was a child interested in MLP during the height of Brony culture and am an adult hesitantly watching the rise of Bluey amongst other adults - sometimes, we destroy spaces meant for kids.

I know know warrior cat forums are still a thing. I'm currently apart of WCRPG. Its Discord has well over 500 members, with limited activity - I regularly see maybe 50 or so people. Our age range is 13+ and there's a lot of adults because being mixed-age is an established part of the sites identity - unlike Roblox necessarily. Because of that, its monitored to make sure we all behave. It's around 5 years old, and a lot of long-time folks there are from places like FeralFront. I joined WCRPG for the nostalgia of warrior cats, but also because it was really loose in realism and limitations compared to other warrior cat forums in the past. I think something that can cause ideas to fail is a lack of goal/identity, sometimes? And these things are always small enough that a community is crucial - somewhere for people to just chat if they want, like a Discord, seems to make or break things imo. People hear about WCRPG through their friends, or because they were looking for something warrior cats-related, or because they happened to find one of our admins' Picrews inviting players to the site. If your site doesn't have a big name fandom to back it up, it may just take some time and some community building to get it going, + maybe some advertising in places that have similar interests.

I agree that establishing something feral-centered - especially feral without a fandom to back it up - may require acknowledging a younger audience, or just being generally really eye catching to adults. The caveat with children, obviously, is that you need to be really mindful of your content and keep a closer eye on things than you might need to an adult-centered website [side-eyes the rumors I've heard about feralfront lol.]

This. Furcadia, in general, isn’t nearly as popular as it used to be. They haven’t spent a dime on advertising in years (I think maybe they had some adverts up in the 90s?) and are doing themselves a disservice. With such a steady decline in players, RP options are limited and I personally stopped using the platform about two years ago. These days, I exclusively RP on discord, and I know this is true of many other longtime furc users.

I remember roleplaying Feral. It was really one of my first serious settings. I used to roleplay in a dream called Animal Anarchy on Furcadia years and years ago. I am talking about around 2008ish maybe. It was fun. I roleplayed mainly in the wolf pack on there as Aaliyah Wolfbane I believe her name was.

I'm not sure why feral roleplay decrease so much. I personally don't do it anymore.

Sorry didn't really have anything to add to the discussion just remembering the past.

Although real life feral animals seem to not be as popular as they once were I will say that "closed species" feral characters, such as ARPGs on Deviantart seem to be incredibly popular and active. (And also highly lucrative if you're a popular artist within that community).

Oh for sure. I think it kinda goes back to having a draw. People like art, animals, weird things - something closed species usually combine. I think developing a community that supports art and fosters some sort of sense of community identity is huge.

Her dream does have a discord, and the website is here on RPR. How can she build the community on these platforms? Is it even worth the effort?

Course - if it matters to the both of you. If not, you could always just join someone else's. But if there's an idea you like, then do it. People are out there, you just have to be reach them and still be there when they reach back. These communities aren't dead, they're just smaller.

If you guys are passionate about it, it’s worth the effort. But I’ll be honest, I’m just not sure there’s enough interest on furcadia for it to be “popular.” You might want to consider doing some kind of hybrid community. If you already have a discord for it, great. Maybe offer RP via the discord and have the furcadia dream as an option for those who still use furcadia. I would start by advertising here and on disboard. I regularly browse disboard adverts for feral RP. If you get interest and folks join the discord, they might be willing to download furcadia. Just an idea! I’ve noticed that the younger, newer feral community has no idea what furcadia is, but I think a lot of people would be open to joining if they did.

If you link the discord here or DM me, I’ll join.

Here's the Discord invite: https://discord.com/invite/kafXVuk

For some reason I misread Furcadia as Fur Arcadia and got it confused with Fur Affinity (STRICTLY 18+ gallery, last i knew, though it has those 'hide nsfw content' filters that are easy to use)

and had to reread this whole thread, because what are you talking about there are feral OCs ALL OVER THE PLACE in FA, wow

starter rp technique on devantart wasn't so much a forum experience as it was searching, specifically, for OC content and following the breadcrumbs to people who were drawing for their roleplays (and drawing for yours to 'advertise' that you do roleplays in whatever genres with whatever characters) -- probably that'd work the same on FA, and you'd get as many filters as you want or need to navigate as an adult in an adult space (if you're not an adult, definitely don't visit, the content is spicy like in the way that we could technically consider pepper spray as a curry condiment?)