May
30
Last April the game Blue Dwarf had been running for 12 years, the game HMS Sovereign has been running for a year an a half, and next month the game What will be will be… will be 1 year old.
Half of the battle of keeping a successful play-by-post game going for a long time is communicating with other members, and many people have told me that it’s the community around a game that keeps them interested. Read More
May
28
Some updates to a website take a long time and a lot of effort, but there’s not always something obvious when it’s done. This is one of those changes that’s taken a long time, and the advantage isn’t totally obvious straight away. I’ll start by explaining the problem.
Characters can be organised into groups
OngoingWorlds allows you to list all characters on a game’s character page in groups. By default there was a maximum of 10 groups, which wasn’t enough for all games. Another problem was that the order of groups could not be changed, which I’ve now solved by a nice easy drag and drop interface. Read More
May
26
I spotted this article on RPG-Directory written by Drae from the roleplaying forum Sizael, which hits upon some home truths that resonated with me. I got permission to repost it here for your pleasure and education 🙂
As a few guys and girls might know, I run/own/painstakingly-work-on Sizael, which is an original fantasy WRPG that’s been online for a good few years. Since running it, I’ve been asked a few times how I go about running a character-action driven board. Those whom I advise or who join Sizael then attempt it themselves seem to think it’s a piece of cake, and as nice as the rewards are, a board reliant on character actions is heavy in admin-work and is in constant threat of dying. What’s worse? You’ll be getting a bad reputation because of those other sites that say they’re character driven but are actually linear and/or plot driven.
1. Character Actions are Needed, but not Always Found
I’m not sure if people are simply intimidated by the amount of information Sizael provides about its world (it’s not the biggest in lore but neither is it the smallest), and I know its current version’s guidebook (V1.9) can be confusing. However, even when it is encouraged that members not be afraid to affect the storyline, to purposely pursue an attempt to affect it, there are many members who will shy away from it or roleplay actions that though they’re not shying away, don’t really affect the storyline. Read More
May
20
I’m currently working on changing the character groups in a game, if you don’t know what these are, look at the character list of any game on OngoingWorlds (for example this one). See how the characters are grouped together? Those are character groups.
Groups will be different for each game, which is why if you create a new scifi game you’ll get a different set of character groups than if you created a fantasy game, although you’ll be able to change these if they’re not suitable to whatever you want.
If you think these default character groups aren’t appropriate or you think they might need changing, now is actually a good chance to speak up and give me some suggestions. This won’t affect existing games, only ones that will be created from now on.
May
16
Mike Krueger (MnMike on OngoingWorlds)
Most of us know that the key to recruiting new players for our PbP games is to network with others who are already interested in Roleplaying. Some games have turned to Facebook with great success, but there are other options available to us online.
One such option, and the subject of this article, is the relatively new RP Repository. (http://www.rprepository.com)
The RP Repository (hereafter referred to simply as RPR) just celebrated its second “birthday” and has grown to host pages for over 4000 registered members. That is quite impressive for a site that has been advertised almost entirely by word of mouth.
May
11
As promised, there will be continuing coverage of the events of SciWorld…last night in the opening ceremony, David Ball and Tigra Tigress were awarded the Ongoing Worlds Distinguished Service Medals for their work in simming.
May
10
SciWorld is an online convention for roleplayers, taking place in a chatroom. There are two main rooms, each with a different topic of conversation. You can see the full schedule here.
Chat room #1: Click here to open
Chat room #2: Click here to open
I’m a bit of an IRC novice, it all seemed a bit weird and old-fashioned to me until I gave it a try recently. If you’re experienced with IRC then you can probably ignore this instructions. But if you’re a beginner (like me tbh!) I’ve listed some of the most important things here. Read More
May
10
SciWorld 2012 begins tonight at 7:30 pm, EST and as such at the time of this writing is 12 hours away. After several hard long months of planning all we are waiting for is time to count down. During the event, we will work hard to provide you continuing coverage here (and maybe Facebook). This is about having fun so go out, take a friend or two with you and make some new ones as well as we have the festivities that we are proud to call SciWorld 2012, the tenth SciWorld in history.
May
9
Don’t forget about SciWorld, the online chat convention for roleplayers starts thursday (tomorrow) at 23:30 GMT (7:30pm EDT).
The opening ceremony will be hosted by Chas Hammer, followed by hour-long chat events.
SciWorld is spread across 3 nights, Thursday, Friday and Saturday, each starting at different times so make sure you see the schedule so you don’t miss your favourite events.
The events range from chats about TV shows, specific topics about roleplaying and actual roleplaying sessions. Read More
May
5
One of the games I keep noticing pop up on the homepage occasionally is Spellbound, a fantasy game created last November, and had a very popular time over December and January. Spellbound has a good compliment of character,s each with a consistent Japanese anime style image. The game’s pace unfortunately slowed over February- March but made a comeback in April and has been on the homepage (or not far away) ever since.
I spoke to the creator of the game Phantasmagoria and asked him about Spellbound.
I regularly play a few play-by-post games on-line – we usually use special forums such as Myth Weavers to play. Since they are designed to play games this way, and contain a load of features that make a game easy to manage and play for both the game master and the players themselves. Most of the games I play I usually tend to be the game master. I like having that ability to create a world. It’s where my user name comes from. Phantasmagoria could be described as a magical illusion of changing imagery, and considering with each new play-by-post game is a different world and changing story, I think this suits rather well! Read More
