OngoingWorlds blog

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

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Ideas for future articles

Brainstorming

Hey roleplayer dudes, thank everyone who submitted to our survey that I emailed out to all members. We’ve now collected lots of information and I’ll be using it to improve the site.

One of the questions asked what sort of articles you’d like to see here on the blog, and here are the results:  Read More

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Progress for perks

You might already know that OngoingWorlds has a few unlockable perks (we’ve blogged about them before here), and there’s more being developed soon (can’t tell you much about that right now though).

One of the perks for new members is to be able to unlock formatting options. The change I’ve made this weekend is for these new members to see progress until their next perk.

Progress bar showing personal progress Read More

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Unlockable perk – Social icons

Here’s another option that isn’t available until your game has at least 50 posts. After that you can add social icons to your game’s homepage to a Twitter or Facebook account (if you have one). Read More

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The new “Game Information” tab

long homepage description textApologies if you’ve had a long wait for the OngoingWorlds site to come back online after our transfer to a new hosting provider. But this new move brings you an update, and one which was requested by several users.

The Game Information tab is for more detail about your game

Read More

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Heartbleed doesn’t affect OngoingWorlds, don’t panic

A bug. Maybe roleplay monster?Hi everyone, sorry for the potentially boring blog post about web security, so I’m going to make it up to you by telling a joke at the bottom. Some people have asked me today about how vulnerable the OngoingWorlds website is to this Heartbleed SSL bug that has hit the news.

Short answer, you’ll probably be fine.

Long answer, you’re no more at risk than ever really. OngoingWorlds isn’t affected by the bug, but there’s a chance someone could hack another site you’re a member of, and discover your username/password combination. If you’ve used that same combination on OngoingWorlds, someone could login as you.  Read More

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Way With Worlds: Ecology and Ecologies

This was originally posted by Steven Savage on his blog, but has allowed me to republish it here as I think it’s useful for roleplayers! This is part of Steven’s Way With Worlds series of articles. -David

Futuristic city

So you’ve got the origin of your universe (or perhaps you used our universe as a template, which does save a lot of effort). So now that you know how it all began, it’s time to move things to the next level. Read More

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New chatbox

chat box

Hey dudes, there’s a new update to the chatbox that we use on OngoingWorlds. Read More

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Recent activity feed

Here’s a new feature which I think was first requested by Alex Solvay ages ago, so thanks go to him for the suggestion. Quite simply this shows a feed of game activity which is shown in the left column on all game pages.

recent-activity-aro

Recent activity will also show on your logged-in profile, alongside each game you’re a member of.  Read More

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New game category: Modern fantasy

Fantasy roleplay setting inside urban environmentIt was pointed out to me recently that there’sa gap in the game categories for games that are fantasy themed, but don’t exist in a fantasy setting. The current game categories are vague (deliberately so!), and so if you wanted a game set in a modern setting but where magic exists, like for example Harry Potter, you had to either select “Fantasy” or “Modern”.

Labelling a game “Fantasy” is putting it into a broad category that contains high-fantasy like Lord of the Rings, or Narnia, or wacky worlds like the setting of Dark Crystal or Princess Bride. Read More

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Uploading your own avatar

For a long time OngoingWorlds showed a Gravatar for a user’s avatar, with no option to change it. Until now! By default you’ll get a unique freaky-looking monster, but now you can upload your own. Read More