Dec
8
Here’s the story that came third place in our WBWW competition. It’s the tale of a cowboy called Alex Solvay in the American old west, being told to his great grandson, also called Alex. Alex is a character in the game Blue Dwarf played on OngoingWorlds.
The story is written by Jack Tennant, who has even recorded this story to audio, which you can listen to through the YouTube video below, or read the story underneath.
Dec
7
Here’s the story that came 2nd place in our WBWW competition. Empty Skies Over Tokyo written by Marissa Jeffrey from USS Victory, part of UFOP: Starbase 118.
This story got a lot of praise from one of our judges, Aimee the winner of this year’s First Person Fortnight competition.
The strengths of the story that spoke to me most, aside from the expected “good grammar/punctuation/understanding of storytelling”:
1) Great demonstration of “Show, don’t tell.” It’s probably the only story that didn’t do this to a fault. It was narrating but it was describing what the characters were doing and how they were interacting with their environment and thus communicating “this is good/exciting/something I’m proud of” to the reader.
2) A clear format made to show the intended style; well-chosen names of places and dates. Very striking in their military/future origin, but not over-explained.
3) It comes full circle and leaves this reader with a simple feeling of family identity and pride in one’s place in the world, but doesn’t get more complicated than that. Vocabulary is tight and story feels focused.
4) Mature and sophisticated world outlook and a writing style to match it.
I also liked the detail that the “ancestor” was from 2003. 🙂 That makes great sci-fi.
Here’s the story in full.
Dec
7
The judges have spoken! I’ve added up all the votes for each of our WBWW stories, and we have a winner! I want to first thank everyone who took part in WBWW, and whether you submitted your story or not, you’ve helped inspire others to do something just a little bit different, and that’s what life’s all about isn’t it?
I absolutely want to thank the judges who have read each story and had the difficult task of deciding which is their favourites. We chose judges from different roleplaying games and genres, for a broad range of tastes.
So here’s the top 3 winners. Read More
Dec
5
Written by Kim from RP Repository
Drama destroys gaming groups. It happens all the time.
There’s a popular wisdom that would have us think that this is because “nerds” or “geeks” aren’t the most socially apt, but in fact, petty conflict breeds misery all over the world. From school rooms to board rooms, from church groups to hockey teams, tough talks are still tough talks, and even the most well-adjusted individuals don’t enjoy rocking the boat. EVEN if they don’t like the boat!
Over on the RP Repository, the social network for Roleplay Gamers and their characters, we’d like to propose a different theory:
1) Gaming is only genuine fun when you’re playing with people who you like, and who like you back
2) Most damaged relationships can be repaired, with a bit of work
3) Most people, nerd, geek or normal, want to be friends and are willing to make changes if they know what they are Read More
Dec
1
I received an email the other week letting me know that the space-opera MUSH OtherSpace is starting a new story arc, and they’re asking for money contributions to help out with funding their hosting, marketing expenses and production costs. You might have heard of OtherSpace, we hosted an article about them earlier this year interviewing Wes, the creator (you can see it here).
Whilst OtherSpace is a bit different to the types of roleplaying games ran on OngoingWorlds, they’re remarkably close and still have members who contribute to an ongoing story, just like our play-by-post games. I interviewed Wes again, asking some questions about his new story arc called “Broken Web”. Read More
Nov
29
I hope you’re enjoying Way Back When Week! If you’ve not heard of it yet, see here.
Your character is a product of their ancestors. It’s a weird way to look at it, but it’s true of us all. The knowledge and experience that our parents have gathered gets passed onto us, including many life valuable life skills, and family values. Often we pick up hobbies and interests from our parents, follow the same sports, watch the same TV programmes, and do similar hobbies. Don’t forget though that your parents probably got a lot of these skills, values and interests from their parents too, and them from their parents and so on. Read More
Nov
23
One of the most complicated aspects of writing for a roleplay online is one that I’ve actually never heard many people discuss, although every game and group probably has their own interpretation of how it should be handled. What I’m talking about is time.
Time is more or less constant (unless you ask an astrophysicist of course). And often days or weeks can go past between writing your roleplay post, and you often don’t want time to have elapsed since your last post, which means time goes slower in your roleplay. Read More
Nov
14
Way Back When Week is a great opportunity to really get to know the background of your character, why they have a certain trait or family experience by telling it in the form of an extreme flashback to the event that first developed it, but more than that it’s a chance to enter your stories into a competition! Simply write your story and then send it to us, for a chance to win! The final date for competition entries is the 1st of December. Read More
Nov
12
Leon Archer, GM of Spellbound
Hello, and welcome to another Roleplaying Focus.
Today, I’d like to talk about various genres people play in their games, and why they play that particular genre. For this I’m going to need a some of the OngoingWorlds players to join in!
Leon Archer, GM of Spellbound
Spellbound is a high fantasy game involving students at the mage academy of Aetherion.
I’ll shamelessly start with my own game in OngoingWorlds, Spellbound. It’s a game with magic, mages, ethereal creatures. castles, and dragons. I like to split fantasy into two sub-genres into itself, just because fantasy involves such a wide variety of themes. For me, there’s high and low fantasy. High fantasy, such as Spellbound is all about being as far away from the norm as you can. It’s allows players to be completely creative at time, which is why I love it so personally. The tricky part is generally to avoid clichés or becoming so powerful and nothing is ever going to threaten that character. Although, through experience I have certainly have developed ways of doing so, heh heh. For me, I’ve found that because of sheer scope of a high fantasy game, it allows players a much easier time in accessing a roleplay without having to worry so much about the constraints of the world their character is in, or fitting his character perfectly with the lore. It’s a much more flexible genre. Read More
Nov
6
Ongoing Worlds will be having an extravaganza known as Way Back When Week from November 25 to December 1 2012. For this week, we invite the simming community to write posts in the format of extreme flashbacks to past generations to show their character’s family and backgrounds in a new light.
Read More
