Well, as the title says, I've been having trouble with a few of my campaigns. Trouble as in, the campaigns are slowing down for no reason (that I know of). I have an active group of players, but they don't post as much as they used to. Now I have nothing against my players, and I enjoy playing with everyone of them, but I don't understand why the campaigns are coming to a halt.

The problem seems like its me, as it is happening in more than one campaign, but the groups are almost the same, so not entirely sure. I've tried adding a little encounter to get things running again, but that only worked for five or six posts, and now I'm back where I started. I'm not sure what is causing this, but it is very disheartening as a DM. I have only DMed for a few years, and am not all that experianced, but I try to keep the campaigns flowing, and keep the story going.

Am I doing something wrong? Is it the players? 

Are they PbP campaigns? Is it just social distances/quarantines that have messed up eveeryone's schedules?

You can check in with the people in the campaigns, they might tell you what's up, they might know better than us :)

They are PbP campaigns, and we've been playing fine up until maybe a week ago. I don't know these people THAT well, and didn't want to sound rude asking them, like "hey, why aren't you guys posting?", so I came here first. I guess I'll ask them eventually. 

who are your players? maybe they have too many campaigns that they cant keep up with all of them. i am doing a campaign with Flyingmatthew, DragonDenn and one other and i let them post when they are free as they probably have a lot to do. and your players probably have school work to focus on.

My first guess is they wanted to play their characters one way and you took the campaign in another direction and they are less interested in the options they have before them in the current circumstances.  Good luck. 

Thank you for the answers. I'll try to make sure I keep the campaign running in a way they like. I agree with you A4simar, maybe they are just getting caught up in life :)

Play by post games are rather easy for someone to keep up with but at the same time they tend to drag along so slowly. I tried a PbP game once. It was not for me and seemed it was not for some of my players as well. My game was set up for a once a day posting. Talk to your players in an attempt to see whats going on. I had a player in my group who was unable to post due to lone work hours (my wife). Yet she still found the time to come home and play some lame ass game on her tablet for a while before going to sleep. Using her as an example still. She is in my current weekly Discord game that is now been going for nearly 2 years now. There are no issues. Again, my point is that the PbP games drag along so slow that people often times just get board. Or in the case of my wife she simply did not want to put in the effort and spend a few minuets looking over the posts and posting herself on a regular basis. I had a bud of mine in the group as well. He would over post. Like a lot. I was fine with it to a point. I just did not want the other players to feel left behind in a way. The other 3 players were regular for a while then slowly started to back off with posts before I just dropped the game. Game lasted about 3 months and in PbP time that is nothing really. Maybe change your post times to something like 3 days a week or something. Also you might want to look around and see how others handle encounters because they can really slow down a PbP game when it comes to progress. If you go with fewer posts then there should be some rather significant posts from everyone in the game. In the end just talk with your players and try to work things out that way.      

"Player drift" happens in every game group, but I think it may be worse in PbP because of its very nature (slow responses, inability to make quick decisions). But it is not unique to PbP. Every online game I've played with a guild, has lost members little by little over time. Some (large) guilds can recruit fast enough to replace, but all the guilds I've ever been in, have been small enough that slowly, over time, more people leave than come in, and the guild slowly atrophies.

In-person D&D groups are smaller and may have this happen less often, just because you are all friends and know each other but even there, if I look over the years from 7th grade through college, only one person stuck with me the whole time. Two others we started with in junior high petered out -- one stopped playing D&D; one switched schools and we hardly saw him anymore. Three new people came in, played with us till high school graduation. Then one came back summers in college, two did not. Two new guys came in, stayed for a couple years. One left, a new one came. And so on.

By the end of the cycle, over the course of about 8 years, I am the only one who was part of the group the whole time. The guy who started playing with came back from college in summers to play with me but did not do so during the year (due to distance). Every other person at the end was completely different from the people I started playing D&D/RPGs with. And that is in person... in a small-ish town... with all of us (until college) going to the same school (or a similar school in the same town, for the guy who switched -- he did not move away from town).

Now take that and convert it to strangers, on the internet, playing asynchronously by post whenever someone feels like posting and... you have got to expect there will be "drift." Not to be a pessimist but it is the nature of the beast. The only way it's not going to happen (as much, though it will always happen some in my experience, regardless of platform) is if you personally know the PbP group and this is your chosen method of playing. But if you're just teaming up with strangers from DDB to do PbP... I'd be shocked if you didn't have significant player drift.

I see, this helps. (I asked my players, and they said they were just busy with work/school.) So I started slowing down post to help them catch up, an things are running smoothly again.

Good thinking. Good luck :)

Don't blame on yourself. Years is more than needed for considering yourself an experienced DM