OngoingWorlds blog

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

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Using OOC to instruct other members

Punch and Judy

Sometimes it's time to put your characters down and speak as yourself

OOC is an acronym for “out of character”. It is usually used in a PBP or PBEM game to indicate that the following text is written by the author, and not intended as speech from the point of view of the writer’s character.

If you see this in a post, it usually means that the following paragraph has been written by the member as something intended to communicate to other members, like an instruction or comment. The member is making it clear that this is something they are saying, and not the character they are writing about.

When is it used?

Use an OOC comment at the start of your post, or at the end to either comment on the post, or at the end to give a suggestion or instruction about what the reader should do next.

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Delete your abandoned games

There are many websites where you can advertise your PBEM/PBP game. It’s unfortunate though that so many of these types of site aren’t updated regularly enough. In today’s world of social media, Twitter, Facebook, etc, many of us check websites regularly, and if we see that nothing has been updated we’ll check back less frequently, and eventually we’ll not check back at all.

There are many websites where you can create a PBEM/PBP game. Often these will be on forums, or Yahoo! Groups, or other such hosted solutions. It’s also pretty easy to setup a PBEM game using each of these ideas, all you need is something to type with and an imagination. The choice of places to host the game also means that if the game isn’t working, it’s not hard to setup somewhere else, and because all of these solutions are free – it doesn’t matter to users if they abandon a game without even making clear that it’s closed.

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Tagging at the end of your post

Children playing tag

Children playing tag

There might be many different words for what I’m writing this article about, but I’ve always known it as “tagging”. The word presumably comes from the game you play as a kid called “tag” where one person has to chase everyone else, and “tags” them (or we also used to say “tig”). The other person would then be “it” and responsible for catching and tagging someone else. The person who was “it” was the sole person who could move the game on.

So it’s this thinking why we use the word “tag” on the end of our posts, to signify that it’s another person’s turn to continue the game.

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Interview with Mike Bullen, GM of Wizards Inc PBEM

Wizards Inc office building

Wizards Inc is about Wizards in a modern day office block

Many many role playing games are set in a fantasy world, each with their differences in how you use magic. Fantasy is a staple of Play-by-post games too, and it allows the member’s characters to live their lives in a rich and exciting world where the only limits are our own imaginations.

Mike Bullen has created his own play-by-post game where the characters are Wizards. What is most unusual is that instead of being set in a typical Dungeons and Dragons type world, this one is set in our own world. Wizards Inc is a game about some Wizards who work in an office block in England. They solve problems for clients using their magic, but try to keep their wizardry secret from normal people.

I’ve known Mike since he joined up for my Blue Dwarf play-by-post game, and is a fun writer. I’ve asked him a few questions about his Wizards Inc game.

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PBEM terminology: "Post"

I wanted to do an article explaining the basic terminology used in a PBEM/PBP game, as it might not always be clear. This article starts right from the basics with the word:

Post

A post is an item of the story that a member submits. A post will continue the story that has been told so far, usually from the point of view of the character of the member who has written the post.

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Interview with Anthony Keen from the Star Trek Freedom PBEM

Star Trek Freedom

Star Trek Freedom

Star Trek PBEM games on the web

Star Trek makes up a vast amount of PBEM games, mainly due massive scifi universe in which it is set, giving the chance to have an unlimited number of possibilities for different starships, and an infinite amount of locations your characters can explore.

Star Trek Freedom

Star Trek Freedom , a network of PBEM games which all take place in the Star Trek universe.

There are many Star Trek PBEM games around, but Star Trek Freedom stands out for two reasons, it has a very detailed website (http://www.startrekfreedom.com) which is always kept up to date, and a strict training process before you’re even allowed to join a ship.

Star Trek Freedom has five ships, with an average of ten people onboard each. The ships make up the “52nd Fleet”

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You can now add character photos

The OngoingWorlds website has now been updated so that you can add photos to your character profiles. The photos will show when you view the individual character pages, as well as on the “Characters” page for each game.

All games have been upgraded, and any new games which are created will have this functionality as standard.

Add a photo for your character

To add a photo for your character, view the character’s profile, and click “Edit Character” (note: you can only edit characters that you own, or if you’re a Moderator in the game you can edit all characters in your game).

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Original PBEM games on OngoingWorlds

This blog was created initially so that I could chart the progress of the creation of the OngoingWorlds website, with a few articles to help people out when creating their own PBEM games. Also I’ve used it to talk about new features, and how I should progress with creating certain features of the site – as I want to make sure I’m creating something that will be really useful for GMs.

But now as the website has launched, I’m going to use this blog to also report on the progress of the PBEM games that people have created on the website. So far there have been two major games created on the website, these are Wizards Inc, and Omega 7.

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Give your character some believable character traits

So you’re playing a PBEM/PBP game and you want your character to be as believable as possible. The reason why you want this is so that other members of the game will read your posts  and really feel like your character is a real person. They will also respect you as a writer.

womans facial expressions

Inventing some character traits will mean people can understand your character's personality

Other writers may use your character

There will also come a time when other characters will want to write about your character, this might be when they want their character to interact with your character, or perhaps someone is writing an *Action* post which involves your character, and it’s important that they easily get to grips with your character. It’s really handy for them to be able to assume how your character will talk, and how s/he will react to certain situations (or they might leave this part up to you). But if your character (lets call him “John”) has a French accent, is a vegetarian, and is really afraid of scissors, then it’s important for other members to know about these things so that when they mention your character they don’t mention John going to the butchers on his way to the hairdressers.

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Should story posts be private?

Private sign

Some PBP/PBEM games can be set to private so that you can’t see their messages but what have they got to hide? There are some disadvantages of a private game

Edit: At the end of the post I say that OngoingWorlds doesn’t have a feature to make games private. This changed in September 2014 when private games were introduced

Play-by-email and play-by-post games have in the past been either private or public, and in this article we’re going to look at the advantages and disadvantages of each, and see why people might want their games to be public or private.

What is public or private?

Traditional play-by-email games (PBEM) were stories told by users who sent emails to each other, always keeping every member in the group cc’d into the email, or every member was part of a “newsgroup”, where emailing one email address distributed the email to all members of the group. Doing this meant that the posts that you sent to each other were only ever seen by other members of the group.

Games played on a public forum, or Yahoo groups are often public. This means they can be seen by anyone who has navigated to the website, and doesn’t have to be a member to view all posts in the story so far. In both forums and a Yahoo group, you have the option to make all posts private if you need to. This means that only members will be able to see the posts, retaining your privacy.

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