OngoingWorlds blog

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

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Happy Valentines Day!

Valentines Screenshot

Did you notice anything about the monster on Valentines day? Maybe he’s in love, or maybe he’s ripped the still beating heart out of the chest of a mortal – damn, I should have made the heart more realistic and drip with animated blood!

If you’re running a special valentines day story in your roleplaying game, let us know in the comments below. One of my favourite and fun storylines in a RP started out as a joke on valentines day. A member posted about a “love virus” spreading among the crew and suddenly everyone was falling in love, it got funny, and creepy, and gross.

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Nominate the best for a Simming Prize!

Simming prizeKnow a game or an individual that stands out above the rest? A true gem that represents the best in online role-playing over the past year? Nominate them for a Simming Prize.

Each year, up to five Simming Prizes are awarded to honor the best in our gaming community. Making a nomination is simple, just fill out the info boxes below and submit by Saturday the 18th. Read More

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Big Ideas Week – Preview

With their ‘Big Ideas Week’ just around the corner (beginning Feb 20th), the website SciFi Ideas have released a preview of their upcoming content. They’re hoping that it will inspire writers to share some of their ideas.

Here’s a snippet of one of the many science fiction ideas that SciFi Ideas will be sharing during Big Ideas Week…

The memories of celebrities are available for public download.

John Turner is an internet sensation. His first marriage was a best-seller and over 2 million people subscribe to his daily live feed. But when a false memory is implanted into his feed, the memory of a murder being committed, John finds himself on the run.

John must prove his innocence. But with the police watching his every move, as his experiences are transmitted directly from his brain, a two minute delay in transmission is his only advantage. That and his millions of loyal fans.

Also coming up in Big Ideas Week… Read More

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OngoingWorlds is the new Communique

Simming League

This article is written by Tigra Tigress who claims she has been “roleplaying since the beginning” and wrote about her history in roleplaying on this blog here. Tigra will be joining this blog as a regular writer, as well as Chas Hammer, which will effectively merge the Simming League with OngoingWorlds. Tigra explains: Read More

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Big Ideas Week on SciFi Ideas

Big Ideas Week - SciFi IdeasThe website SciFi Ideas (www.scifiideas.com) is planning a special event this February. “Big Ideas Week” will celebrate the website’s 1-year anniversary by posting lots of new ideas and articles, and encouraging readers to take part.

I caught up with the creator of SciFi Ideas, Mark Ball. Here’s what he had to say…

What is SciFi Ideas?

The idea behind SciFi Ideas is simple. Too many great ideas go to waste. Sometimes they come to you in the middle of the night and you forget to write them down. Sometimes they stay in your head for months and eventually transform into something too big and unwieldy to use. Perhaps you just have so many great ideas that you don’t have time to use them all. We want to rescue these unused ideas and use them to inspire other writers. Read More

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Spotlight on Pure White Moon's character: Piper Keller

Piper KellerPure White Moon is a roleplaying game set in a parallel London, where Vampires and Werewolves prowl the streets at night. But the twist is, that these are the good guys, killing only the true madmen lurking the streets and keeping the population safe. However, people known as “The Hunters” are hunting down these immortal creatures.

Players of this game are encouraged to create a character as either a Vampire, Werewolf or Hunter. So far the game has been going since October. I asked Izzy, a member of Pure White Moon who plays Piper Keller, a trained Hunter who doesn’t understand the immortals, and wants only one thing – to destroy them all. Read More

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How to give awards to members of your game

Award trophyWhy not reward the members in your game for taking part, and writing great posts? Some players work really hard to create an interesting storyline, and write great dialogue between characters. It’s time you gave them a little something for their effort!

We’ve been testing a new awards feature that has previously only been available for a very small amount of games. To have the ability to give awards to your members you had to sign up for it here (but now they’re available to everyone! Read More

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Streamlining the games list

Streamlined trainI bet you’ve seen hundreds of websites claiming to be an awesome play-by-post game, and you might have even got excited about the game and wanted to join – but then realised the game stopped running 5 years ago (or maybe even longer in some cases!).

Some play-by-post games fail, it’s a fact that we have to live with. Some are fun for a while but then go stale and close due to inactivity, maybe the members had an argument, maybe they all went on holiday or moved house and forgot about the game until it was just a distant memory. Or maybe the game just wasn’t attracting members, maybe it was too complicated, or maybe it wasn’t advertised enough to new members. Read More

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Using social media for your roleplaying game

Social Media

Social media is a massive thing at the moment, and it seems like everyone is using either Facebook or Twitter. TV programmes, radio stations, companies, products, and even your local gym will want you to either follow them on Twitter, or ‘like’ their page on Facebook. Here you will get a best kicksta review to generate a traffic to your social media platform.

You might hate social media, but you’ve got to admit it’s damn useful! Using Twitter or Facebook is a way that you can easily talk to people, and that’s great, but the most obvious value to your roleplaying game is that it makes it easier for people to find and talk to YOU!

Recruiting new members to your roleplaying game is difficult, and you want to make sure you’re doing everything you can to help people to join. Think about how someone will find out about your roleplaying game. If you’re using a forum website, or OngoingWorlds, think about how someone will find you. Many people believe that if you create a website, you’ll automatically be seen by hundreds of visitors – but this is like building a shop in the middle of the desert – who will go there, unless they know it exists? Read More

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Welcoming Blue Dwarf to OngoingWorlds

Blue Dwarf

Last week a new game was created on OngoingWorlds that is a big deal for me. It’s technically not a new game at all, it’s a game that’s over 11 years old, a game I created and have been running for over 11 years.

The Blue Dwarf is a game based on a comedy scifi TV show called Red Dwarf which has been a favourite of mine since I was a teenager. I wanted to extend the world of the show, but knew I didn’t want to involve the small number of original characters because we’d never be able to write them as well as the original writers. There was a lot of scope in Red Dwarf’s universe, mostly because it was hardly explored which meant that anything we wrote couldn’t be proved wrong. Mainly it was the spirit of Red Dwarf that I wanted to continue, even if it wasn’t about the original characters.

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