Mar
14
If you’re a member of a text-based roleplaying game, or have ever been involved with one, you might have heard of the term God Modder. There’s an article explaining what this means here, but have you ever wondered where the term originated and why we use it in roleplaying games?
This article has been written by SMAndy, who is a GM of Reapers union and HMS Sovereign, and one of the moderators for Blue Dwarf.
Mar
10
Gothic Horror roleplaying game Terrifyingly Yours is the first game on OngoingWorlds to reach over 100 posts. The game is set in the fictional Sweet Dreams Asylum where some patients realise they have special abilities, and that something isn’t right about the asylum.
The game is written in third person and reads like a gripping story that is created by its members.
The game was created by Duri Aspire, who I was able to ask some questions about her game.
Mar
6
You might have seen the mockups that I’ve put on Facebook already, showing a peek at a new feature in OngoingWorlds that allow moderators to give Awards to their most worthy members.
As a GM there are times when you might want to reward your members for some really exceptional storywriting, or maybe some good collaboration with another member, or going above and beyond to help out with a group event or competition. These are the times when you might want to give them something to say thanks.
Feb
28
God Modders can ruin a roleplaying experience for all other players, read my other article about godmodders here. But they’re most frustrating for the GM of a game, as they are the ones who have made the decision to totally ban these offenders, or help mould them into a decent player. The latter taking a lot more effort, and risking annoying every other member in the process.
For this article I’ve been helped out by several roleplaying veterans! Here are 12 tips for dealing with a God Modder:
Feb
25
Zero Sum Game is one of Mack's novels in the Star Trek: Typhon Pact series
I was recently told by Miles Unam from the PBEM group Starbase 118 that he’d managed to get an interview with Star Trek author David Mack.
David Mack is the national bestselling author of more than twenty novels and novellas, including Wildfire, Harbinger, Reap the Whirlwind, Precipice, Road of Bones, Promises Broken, and the Star Trek Destiny trilogy: Gods of Night, Mere Mortals, and Lost Souls. He developed the Star Trek Vanguard series concept with editor Marco Palmieri. His first work of original fiction is the critically acclaimed supernatural thriller The Calling.
In addition to novels, Mr. Mack’s writing credits span several media, including television (for episodes of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine), film, short fiction, magazines, newspapers, comic books, computer games, radio, and the Internet.
Mr. Mack was gracious enough to talk with Tallis Rhul, a member of UFOP: StarBase 118, about his experiences with writing for Star Trek and his advice for aspiring writers. This is the first time I’ve seen a member of a PBEM game get an interview with a professional author, and it’s really interesting to read about how he has created new villain aliens in the Star Trek universe, as well as expanding on existing races, like the Breen, which was a race only barely mentioned in Star Trek: DS9.
You can read the full interview at StarBase 118’s website here
Feb
14
EDIT – This post is old now, so I’ve written a new one with updated instructions and screenshots. You can see it here.
If you’ve got a Facebook fan page for your game (you might have created one from the previous tutorial), you might want to set it to automatically post an update to your page when someone posts in your game on OngoingWorlds.
This can be done by adding an app to your page called RSS Graffiti. To get started, go to the app page here: http://apps.facebook.com/rssgraffiti/
Feb
4
In the previous article I explained how creating a Facebook fan page for your game will help you to get new members. This article will show you how to create a page for your roleplaying game, if you already have a fan page and want to know how to set it to automatically publish a link to your game’s latest post, read this article.
To get started, go to facebook.com/pages and click “create page”.
You’re creating a page that you want to use to post regular information about your game, so you’ll want to create an “Official Page” not a “Community Page”. The latter doesn’t give us the amount of control and customisation we want.
Jan
29
We all want our roleplaying games to be a great experience, to be fun community, and a place where our members express ourselves through their characters. Also we want to read really interesting stories from other members in the group, and it’s really annoying if the game gets filled up with terrible writers.
Not everybody is an award-winning author, not everybody is that great at writing. But it helps to be competent, and come up with good stories that everyone can understand, follow along with, and join in with their own characters.
If you’re the GM of a game, you have to make a decision about who to join your game. You’re under pressure to only let good writers in, otherwise bad writers might ruin everything.
Jan
21
So you’ve got a roleplaying game that’s doing okay, it’s been well thought out and you’ve written a few posts, but what you really need are some more members!
How will people know about your roleplaying game if you don’t tell people about it?! It’s very unlikely that someone is going to stumble on your webpage by chance. I’ve talked before about how you should advertise your game and also listed some good sites to advertise on, but Facebook is also great place to advertise, because it’s a website that so many people use!
Jan
12
You might be confused, you might be cautious, you might feel under pressure that your post isn’t going to be as good as everyone else’s. This is normal when you’re writing your first post in a new roleplaying game, especially if you’ve never roleplayed before. After you’ve made the plunge and submitted your story post, things will get much easier and you’ll get a grasp of what’s going on, and wonder why you were worried in the first place.
