I’m an admin for a small but active book club forum that’s been around for about three years, and lately I’ve noticed our regulars are posting less while new members sign up and then go silent within a week. I’ve been digging through forum guides and subreddits looking for creative forum games to increase engagement, but most ideas feel too generic—like “word association” or “caption this photo”—and they don’t really fit a community built around discussing fantasy and sci-fi novels. With summer coming and people having more free time, I want to launch something fresh before we lose momentum entirely.
So far I’ve tried a “guess the character from a single quote” thread, which got about 15 replies in the first day and then died. I also spent two weekends setting up a low-stakes roleplay thread where people could write short scenes as their favorite characters from the books we read last month, but only three people participated, and two of them were me. The most expensive thing I tried was a monthly themed writing contest with a $20 gift card as the prize—$20 might not sound like much, but it’s tight for our budget—and while that did get five entries, the same three members won every time and the others just stopped entering. Actually, I think part of the problem is that our community is small, so competitive games might feel unfair or intimidating.
What kind of playful, low-commitment forum games have you seen work in niche communities where everyone knows each other’s handles, and how did you get people to actually stick with them past the first week without turning it into a chore?
So far I’ve tried a “guess the character from a single quote” thread, which got about 15 replies in the first day and then died. I also spent two weekends setting up a low-stakes roleplay thread where people could write short scenes as their favorite characters from the books we read last month, but only three people participated, and two of them were me. The most expensive thing I tried was a monthly themed writing contest with a $20 gift card as the prize—$20 might not sound like much, but it’s tight for our budget—and while that did get five entries, the same three members won every time and the others just stopped entering. Actually, I think part of the problem is that our community is small, so competitive games might feel unfair or intimidating.
What kind of playful, low-commitment forum games have you seen work in niche communities where everyone knows each other’s handles, and how did you get people to actually stick with them past the first week without turning it into a chore?
