OngoingWorlds blog

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

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Halloween story competition!

Pumpkins

Please note this competition has finished. You can see the winning entry here.

After the success of the Flashback week competition in August, we decided it’s time to run another competition!

Halloween is just around the corner, and many roleplaying games take advantage of the event to run a spooky story in their play-by-ghost, er sorry, play-by-post games. Even if this isn’t tradition for your game, you might want to think about writing a short story using the characters in your roleplaying game. Read More

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Interview with Izzy and her game 'What will be, will be…'

With all the fuss over Flashback week, and judging the competition, I didn’t notice that the roleplaying game What will be, will be… has now surpassed 100 posts, only the 3rd game on OngoingWorlds that has reached this landmark (see the interview with Duri from Terrifyingly Yours whose game surpassed 100 posts in march). So I interviewed Izzy, who started the game in June and asked her about the game and where it’s going next.

What inspired you to create a roleplaying game?

IzzyI’ve always enjoyed writing fiction and such like for fun, and when I discovered OngoingWorlds I thought it would be awesome to create a game and see what people thought of the idea and what they would do with the story.

I set my game in a school as I am currently still in High School, and as I bore in several lessons I often start day dreaming about things that would make my school day more interesting. I thought it would be fun in some way to go through the lives of both teachers and students in a school and remind everyone that what you see isn’t always the full story, whether its an awkward school girl, or an annoying teacher.

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Flashbacks help character building

someone sleeping on bench

Only a few days to go now until the start of Flashback week, and already the response has been positive! I’ve chatted to a few GMs of roleplaying games, who’ve told me they’ve spread word to their members about the Flashback week competition, and even planned their own smaller, in-game competitions. A great way to do this is if your game is on OngoingWorlds is to use the awards, that’s what they were created for!

But Flashback week isn’t just about winning the competition, there’s also a decent reason for using flashbacks in your story; it helps develop your character.

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Flashback week competition

Flashback week - write and roleplay about your characters past

This competition is now closed. See the announcement about the winners here.
Flashback week is a great opportunity to write some back-story for your character (more details here), but more than that it’s a chance to enter your stories into a competition! Simply write your flashback story and then send it to us, for a chance to win! But you should get cracking, flashback week has already started and you only have until the 21st August, which is when the competition closes!

Who will judge the competition?

We’ve chosen a panel of 6 roleplaying professionals to judge these stories. Each is a veteran of a different roleplaying game, so there shouldn’t be any favouritism or bias. Just so there’s no lobbying going on, the identity of the judges will be kept secret!

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Why flashbacks are important

Flashback week is a week-long writing event where writers and roleplayers are encouraged to think about something that happened in their characters past, and write it as a flashback. Flashback week is the 2nd week in August, starting Sunday the 14th. I’ve been spreading the word, to encourage writers and roleplayers to all write flashbacks together in that week. Here’s an article written by Mike, GM of Wizards Inc on why he thinks flashbacks are important.

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Interview: Forever Searching

Forever Searching creepy houseIf you counted up all the play-by-post games that are currently being played across the world today I imagine that a huge proportion of them are spin-offs from Star Trek or Star Wars, and many more based on popular TV series and films. When I first created OngoingWorlds for a place to roleplay, I imagined lots of people creating Star Trek games and only a small proportion of games set around a unique idea.

I was very wrong! Looking at the current games, many of them are rich and imaginative stories based around a unique idea, and such great ideas too! I’ve already done an article about the games Terrifyingly Yours and Zombie Apocalypse 2, which were really interesting. This article is going to be all about a new game called Forever Searching, which is an ongoing mystery set in a creepy fictional town called Moonfall Valley where weird things start to happen.

Forever Searching was created last month by Izzy (see her profile here). I asked Izzy a few questions about her game.

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Valuable things learned about play-by-post games

Things learned about play-by-post roleplaying games

The popularity of OngoingWorlds as a place to roleplay is growing, with more games being setup this month than ever before. Unfortunately some of these games are badly conceived and don’t get popular, but the good ones stand out and it’s clear they’re being played by experienced roleplayers and great writers. One of these great games is Colony World, and the member MnMike emailed me with these great lessons he’s learned from play-by-post games.

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Give awards to your members in OngoingWorlds

Squid holding trophy

In my article “Rewarding your members with awards” I introduced the idea of giving awards to members in your OngoingWorlds game. I’ll explain how this works in this article.

Users who signed up early will be able to use this feature now, but others will have to wait a little while.

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Interview: Zombie Apocalypse 2

Zombie apocalypse

Zombies as a genre are extremely popular, in films and especially videos games. They’re multi faceted and can appeal to wide audiences all who might like something different about the genre. It suits horror fans, as zombie movies promise buckets of gore and blood, and it also appeals to people on a deeper level when you start to think about Human survival and the downfall of society. Each zombie film take a different approach and shows us a different angle to zombies and the way that Humankind is trying to save themselves from them.

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Terrifyingly Yours RP reaches 100 posts

Terrifyingly yoursGothic 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.

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