OngoingWorlds blog

News & articles about play-by-post games, for roleplayers & writers

Oct
7

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4 ways how attending FallFest will help your role play

Category: Events, Roleplaying community Tags: Leave a Comment

Image by James Drysdale

Image by James Drysdale

For anyone who hasn’t yet heard, FallFest ’13 is happening this Friday, October 11th.  We’ll kick things off with the opening ceremony at 1:45 PM Eastern Standard Time / 6:45 PM British Summer Time.  After that, we’ll continue with six whole hours of interactive discussions, dynamic chat role plays, and multiple trivia games that’ll be packed into two chat rooms.  We’ll also have an audio feed with a live DJ throughout.

We’re fortunate enough to have Diego Herrera of UFOP: StarBase 118 as our chairman this year. Diego and the entire team at SB118 have put together a fantastic lineup of events that will be published sometime on Wednesday. Read More

Aug
23

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Applications now being accepted for FallFest ’13 host & chair

Category: Events, Roleplay-related projects, Roleplaying community Tags: , 8 Comments

2012 FallFest logo

That’s right, host/chair applications are now being accepted for the biggest simming event of the year: FallFest 2013!  That statement immediately begs two questions:

First, what is FallFest?

FallFest is short for the Simming Fall Festival.  It’s an annual one-day extravaganza sponsored by Ongoing Worlds that’s dedicated to everything about or relating to online simming and role playing.  It takes place over the course of several hours in IRC chatrooms and will feature chat role plays, interactive games, and topical discussions & workshops.  Participants get to meet other role players from around the globe, learn more about their craft, and have fun all at the same time. Read More

Apr
27

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Glass houses & roleplay copyright

Category: Behind the scenes - running RPGs Tags: 7 Comments

Copyright

Written by Charles Star and Jonathan Swift from Independence Fleet.

A disturbing trend developed during 2012. First, in May, an unidentified party filed a Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) complaint against the Simming Encyclopedia (SimEnc). Later that summer, at least three individuals filed similar DMCA complaints against our home club, Independence Fleet. Read More

Mar
2

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Announcing the Squiddie awards – The winners

Category: Awards, Events Tags: , , , 7 Comments

Squiddie award for superior online roleplaying

Now that the Oscars are out of the way, it’s time to present the real awards, the Squiddies! The Squiddies (officially the OngoingWorlds medal for superior online roleplaying) are our own award for roleplaying excellence, where we invite all roleplayers to nominate their games, clubs and fellow roleplayers for an award. Nominations were given to us by a form on an article published back in January (we postponed our event to not conflict with SimEnc’s Simming Prize). We announced the nominations last week, and our judges have been working diligently to reach a consensus on the winners.

The competition was fierce as we received nominations for 19 individuals, nine sims/games, and six clubs. Read More

Jan
19

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Announcing the Ongoing Worlds Medal for Superior Online Role Playing

Category: Awards, Events, OngoingWorlds site news Tags: 1 Comment

Ongoing Worlds Medal for Superior Online Role Playing

Ongoing Worlds Medal for Superior Online Role Playing

That’s right, we’re now accepting nominations for the Ongoing Worlds Medal for Superior Online Role Playing (also known as the Squiddie Award).  What is this new award, you might ask?  Simply put, it is the pinnacle award presented by our organization.  Each year it will be bestowed upon three different entities: one person, one sim/game, and one club.  They will then be entitled to use the honorific Superior Online Role Playing Laureate (or Squiddie Laureate).

Squiddies will be presented for exemplifying one or more of the following characteristics, primarily during the previous calendar year:

  • Excellence in role playing
  • Originality and innovation
  • Facilitating the community experience

Nominations may be made by anyone (self nominations are permitted).  Each nomination should include a write-up of why the person, sim, or club is deserving.  The write-up should focus on one or more of the three areas mentioned above and not exceed 250 words. Read More

Jan
17

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The 3rd Community Honor goes to…

Category: Awards, OngoingWorlds site news Tags: , , , , 1 Comment

The OWCH awardI’m proud to announce that Ongoing Worlds‘ third Community Honor (OWCH) is hereby officially presented to Leon Archer of Spellbound for his enthusiastic leadership and outstanding contributions to the Ongoing Worlds Blog.  Congratulations, Leon!

Not only is Leon one of the leaders within the Ongoing Worlds game The Walking Dead, but he’s also the GM of two games that he founded, XCOM and Spellbound.  A quick review of any one of his three games will reveal an infectious enthusiasm for role playing that quickly spreads to the game’s other members and beyond.  His leadership, both in and out of story, is a model for us all to follow in creating and maintaining fresh and dynamic role play games.

Over the past few months, Leon has also written several articles covering an array of different simming and role play topics.  His posts are always interesting and provide greats points for us to think about and apply to our games.  These articles have contributed not only to our network here, but to the collective knowledge of our entire community.  If you haven’t yet read one of his articles, check them out!

You can see some of Leon’s other awards here.

Well done, Leon!

Jan
1

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Introducing the 2012 Simulation Cup Winners…

Category: Awards, Competition, Events, OngoingWorlds site news Tags: , , , 1 Comment

The Simulation Cup

The Simulation Cup

It gives me great pleasure to introduce the winners of the 2012 Simulation Cup!  But before I get into that, I’d like to briefly explain what the Simulation Cup is and how it works.  Filling in this year for the annual Tournament of Simulations, the Sim Cup is a one-time competition allowing role play games of various clubs and genres to compete against each other in a friendly manner for several awards.  Each participating sim first submits one mission/episode/thread/chat session that was completed during 2012.  Next, each sim’s submission is evaluated by two judges on a specific criteria set.  The games receiving the highest marks are then recognized.

Evaluating sims will always be subjective and this is especially true for the Simulation Cup.  We’re not here to identify the best sim or sims as this is impossible.  Instead, we recognize what we think are the best sims in our opinions.  A different set of judges may very well chose a completely different set of winners.  And that’s fine.  As said earlier, each participating game was graded by two different judges. Read More

Dec
16

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2012 Simulation Cup

Category: Awards, Competition Tags: , , , Leave a Comment

The Simulation Cup

It gives me great pleasure to announce that the Simulation Cup is hereby officially open for entrants!  What is the Simulation Cup you might ask?  It’s a one-time competition where sims and role play games have the opportunity to showcase their excellence and compete against each other in a friendly manner to win various prizes.  And here’s how it works…

How to Enter

The sim’s host (or the host’s representative) will submit the following short entry form along with a sample of their role play activity.  Our judges will then rate that sample in several different areas. Once all sims have been evaluated, we’ll announce winners in various categories across the different genres. Sims that do not place will not be named. So if you’d like to enter your sim, please email Charles Star at star.idf@gmail.com with the following information: Read More

Oct
21

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Awarding the 1st Community Honor to…

Category: Awards Tags: , , 2 Comments

The OWCH awardIt gives me great pleasure to present the first OngoingWorlds Community Honor Medal (OWCH) to Jonathan Swift of the USS Asimov for his service as chair of the 2012 Simming Fall Festival. Congratulations, Jonathan!

For those who attended FallFest last month, you saw first-hand what can happen when role players from different clubs and backgrounds come together to celebrate their craft and share ideas. In fact, I had an absolute blast! There were multiple trivia games (and the winners received free CDs!), live chat sims of different genres, and my favorite events: discussions on important topics within our community. Some of of the most talented role players on the web led workshops on character development, advertising and recruiting, and how to be a more effective host.

It’s safe to say that everyone who attended came out a better simmer and leader than when they entered. All in all, a great mix of fun and development. Jonathan’s set the bar high for next year’s FallFest chair. Read More

Oct
12

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The Age-Old Debate: Quality vs. Quantity

Category: Behind the scenes - running RPGs, Play-by-post discussion Tags: 6 Comments

Rolls Royce vs average cars

So Which Is It?

In all my years of simming I don’t think any single issue has been more divisive in the play by e-mail/post/board worlds than the question of quality vs. quantity.  Unfortunately, since no one conducts scientific studies of online role playing or its participants, we’re forced to rely on basic observation and our own experiences, which can be very deceiving at times.  Nevertheless, I can recall multiple instances when a quality vs. quantity discussion blew up into a full-scale battle, sometimes splitting sims, and even clubs on occasion.  I bet you remember similar episodes too!  So what is it?  Which attribute is more important for the success of a sim?  Is it quality?  Or is it quantity?  Answer that question in your head right now.  Better yet, write it down on a scrap sheet of paper. Read More

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