Jul
3
It wasn’t widely announced, but Monday was Moderator appreciation day. I completely forgot until the night before, so didn’t make much of a big deal about the day itself apart from a meek message on our Facebook & Twitter.
Kim from RPRepository put up a fantastic message, thanking all forum moderators. She’d even baked a cake, which she proceeded to stick her face into. Seriously! Watch this:
Jul
2
I noticed recently that this blog gets a lot of viewers (I assume all cool roleplayers & writers like yourself), but not many actually subscribe, which would make it a whole lot easier for you. Subscribing by email means you’ll get a friendly email reminder when we publish a new blog. Read More
Jun
30
This article was written by Amy Drysdale who plays Greir Reinard from Starbase 118
The roleplaying games that stand the test of time are those that can maintain a creative atmosphere and keep their players inspired. There are times when a mission seems to stall for one reason or another and posting rates seem to drop. If left unchecked the game’s players will start to get bored and eventually leave. There are several things that can be done in-game and as a group to keep players interested and inspired in the long term.
It all begins with mission planning and looking at the crew and the strengths they have. By thinking hard about players’ capabilities it is possible to find more creative and interesting ways to include them in missions. Read More
Jun
28
I had an idea yesterday when I saw this cool photo that Sabrina Pandora had uploaded to Facebook of her desk (Sabrina is a roleplayer in Independence Fleet, and the winner from last year’s WBWW competition).
I started to wonder what everyone else’s writing desk looks like. Sabrina’s filled hers with some amazingly geeky collectables, I can only assume this is to give her maximum inspiration when she writes. But what does your desk look like? Is it cluttered? Is it clean? Do you surround yourself with inspiration? Do you even write at a desk at all, or do you write somewhere else?
Share a photo of where you do your writing on our Facebook timeline & we’ll share it, if we get loads I’ll also publish a blog article here with the best 🙂
Jun
27
Nathan Fillion (image: Gage Skidmore)
Blame Nathan Fillion. That’s what I do.
I’ve created a good number of sims for my club (Phoenix Roleplaying) and elsewhere over the years; including some original concepts that I have covered in a previous article.
In this post, I will be covering some more general points about sim creation, focussing in particular on Kvant, the Simulation Cup winning Firefly sim that I created for Phoenix in 2011. I’ll give you a description of that sim to help you get the idea:
The Eagles of Warsaw are an elite mercenary group who travel the ‘Verse, tackling ruthless pirates, vicious Reavers… and rabid music fans. Read More
Jun
25
David Ball
This is a just a very small article to let you know that the creator of Ongoing Worlds, David Ball (that’s me, hello!) was interviewed recently by Steven Savage from Seventh Sanctum. If you’ve never heard of Seventh Sanctum you should – it’s an excellent website full of automatic generators of character names, alien species names, world names, equipment names, tavern names, disease names, etc etc anyway, you get the picture. There’s loads of really useful stuff there for writers and roleplayers, especially when you’re feeling lazy and need to come up with a realistic name for an NPC or gadget. Read More
Jun
24
The name Operation Chocolate Digestive was a name I made up about 3 minutes before I sent an email to all OngoingWorlds members announcing this new feature, just to make it sound more interesting than it actually was! It also helps because I can use an interesting image above. Read More
May
21
Mark writes useful alien & story ideas at ScifiIdeas.com (This isn’t Mark BTW, it’s an alien idea called an “Ancari”)
This article was written by Mark Ball, who blogs at SciFi ideas.com.
As a science fiction writer, and as somebody who tries to pass himself off as an “ideas guy”, I know all too well how difficult it can be to think up new and original ideas.
Science fiction thrives on originality and creativity, and I’ve been told time and time again that coming up with something that has “never been done before” is incredibly important. I’ve also been repeatedly told that “there is no such thing as a new idea these days”, and while I don’t think that is any more true today than it was when the first science fiction stories started to emerge over a hundred years ago, it only goes to show that coming up with that all-important original idea really isn’t easy. Read More
May
17
So I was on RPG-Directory a few weeks ago, which is a great social network for roleplayers (and a good place to advertise your game!) and I noticed something called “Kickstart”, a service to support roleplayers that have created a new roleplaying game, and need to get it started. And we all know this is the most difficult time for any roleplay, getting off the ground can be difficult. I asked user Xexes more about Kickstart. Here’s what he wrote for us:
User Xexes on RPG-D
What’s Kickstart?
Kickstart is a community effort to help roleplays get going, for roleplayers, by roleplayers. It’s hard to start and keep a roleplay going, and kickstart is meant to be that one last push. Read More
