OngoingWorlds blog

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

Jun
20

By

Announcing First Person Fortnight

Category: Competition, Events Tags: 15 Comments

First person fortnight

First Person Fortnight is a 2-week event where writers and roleplayers are encouraged to write a story in first person perspective. Submit your story to us to be judged by a panel of expert writing ninjas! (I’ll post a link to a form where you can submit your story closer to the event).

First person perspective isn’t usually used, in favour of third person perspective, so this will be a good exercise to get inside your character’s head and really get to grasp with how they think, and their outlook on life. If you’re not familiar with writing like this, give it a go, it’s only for 2 weeks! If you write like this all the time, great! You’ll find it even easier!

First person fortnight will take place between the 8th – 22nd of July. If you’re writing in that week, make sure you’re writing first person. Read More

Jun
14

By

Wreckage: A survival roleplaying game

Category: Behind the scenes - running RPGs, Interviews, OngoingWorlds site news, PBEM games, Story summaries Tags: , 1 Comment

Wreckage

David

I’m always glad when I see a new game created on OngoingWorlds, and I especially like the bespoke games with a very stand-alone story. A story created recently that looks extremely promising is Wreckage, created by Mike, who recently wrote some articles for this blog. Stand-alone games (and I mean games that aren’t based on an existing franchise like Harry Potter, Star Trek etc) are often tough to get started because it can be difficult to attract players, but are great because you’ve got complete freedom over the world and characters, and Mike’s game has made a brilliant start at creating a gripping story.

I asked Mike 3 questions about his game, and here’s what he wrote:

Read More

Jun
11

By

Introducing the fly-out character summaries

Category: OngoingWorlds guide, Website Improvements Tags: , 1 Comment

It’s been possible to tag characters in your posts for a while now (see the article where this was introduced here), which gives readers a quick and easy way to view the character profile for a character mentioned in a post. Sometimes this isn’t quick enough and readers might only need a quick recap, rather than to read a character’s full biography and history. That’s why we’ve introduced the character fly-out summary.

Fly-out summary example

Hover over a character tagged in a post and you’ll see a summary bio fly out from the side. This will show the character’s gender, age and character group, and a character summary (if it has one). Read More

Jun
6

By

Creating groups in RP Repository

Category: Advertising your game Tags: , 3 Comments

This article was written by Mike from the game Wreckage, played on OngoingWorlds.

Mike

Mike Krueger

In the last article I explained how players could create a webpage for their OngoingWorlds characters on the RP Repository site.  This not only helps advertise our PbP games on another awesome site dedicated to Roleplay, but allows us to include information and widgets that may not be possible in their OngoingWorlds profile pages.

This time I am going to show players and GMs how to join or create groups for their OngoingWorlds games on the RPR site.  Doing so is a great way to recruit new players for your PbP games as well as show how the characters involved are connected.

So let’s begin by logging into the RPR site. If you have not done so previously, please do sign up for an account, then log in.

Now click on your “Dashboard” link near the top of the page. Again, a page will display showing your characters as well as any groups you have joined. Note, you may need to click the arrow icon next to the headings in order to show them.

Dashboard

Both players who are seeking to join an existing group and GMs preparing to create a new one will now click on the “Join A Group” button toward the middle of the page. Read More

Jun
1

By

Roleplaying Focus – Should a GM Make Player Characters Die?

Category: OngoingWorlds site news Tags: , 4 Comments

Leon Archer, GM of Spellbound

Leon Archer, GM of Spellbound

Hello everyone! I am Leon Archer, also better known as Phantasmagoria on Ongoing Worlds. I’m the creator and GM for the popular game Spellbound as well as a few various other little projects I shall be working on over the next few weeks (Shameless Advertising :D)

Right, I am hoping that this will be one of many articles I will be writing on the Ongoing Worlds’ blog. It’s my little bit I’m calling Roleplaying Focus. Every couple of weeks I’ll be writing up on various techniques used by myself and my fellow roleplayers to create interesting games, creative characters, and entertaining players.

Today’s topic is about death. Not the existence of an afterlife sort, mind. No, I’ll be discussing about killing off player’s characters in-game.

  • Is it a bad thing or a good thing?
  • Should players ever die as a consequence of their actions?
  • Can killing a player be used a powerful storytelling tool? Read More

May
30

By

Announcing the new OOC update

Category: Website Improvements Leave a Comment

OOC t-shirtLast April the game Blue Dwarf had been running for 12 years, the game HMS Sovereign has been running for a year an a half, and next month the game What will be will be… will be 1 year old.

Half of the battle of keeping a successful play-by-post game going for a long time is communicating with other members, and many people have told me that it’s the community around a game that keeps them interested. Read More

May
28

By

Update to character groups

Category: Website Improvements Tags: , Leave a Comment

Some updates to a website take a long time and a lot of effort, but there’s not always something obvious when it’s done. This is one of those changes that’s taken a long time, and the advantage isn’t totally obvious straight away. I’ll start by explaining the problem.

Character groups for the game 'What will be'

Characters can be organised into groups

OngoingWorlds allows you to list all characters on a game’s character page in groups. By default there was a maximum of 10 groups, which wasn’t enough for all games. Another problem was that the order of groups could not be changed, which I’ve now solved by a nice easy drag and drop interface. Read More

May
26

By

The Truth About Having A Truly Character-Driven Roleplay

Category: non-PBP roleplaying Tags: , 1 Comment

DavidI spotted this article on RPG-Directory written by Drae from the roleplaying forum Sizael, which hits upon some home truths that resonated with me. I got permission to repost it here for your pleasure and education 🙂

As a few guys and girls might know, I run/own/painstakingly-work-on Sizael, which is an original fantasy WRPG that’s been online for a good few years. Since running it, I’ve been asked a few times how I go about running a character-action driven board. Those whom I advise or who join Sizael then attempt it themselves seem to think it’s a piece of cake, and as nice as the rewards are, a board reliant on character actions is heavy in admin-work and is in constant threat of dying. What’s worse? You’ll be getting a bad reputation because of those other sites that say they’re character driven but are actually linear and/or plot driven.

1. Character Actions are Needed, but not Always Found
I’m not sure if people are simply intimidated by the amount of information Sizael provides about its world (it’s not the biggest in lore but neither is it the smallest), and I know its current version’s guidebook (V1.9) can be confusing. However, even when it is encouraged that members not be afraid to affect the storyline, to purposely pursue an attempt to affect it, there are many members who will shy away from it or roleplay actions that though they’re not shying away, don’t really affect the storyline. Read More

May
20

By

Updating the default character groups

Category: Website Improvements Tags: , 4 Comments

Cats in a boxI’m currently working on changing the character groups in a game, if you don’t know what these are, look at the character list of any game on OngoingWorlds (for example this one). See how the characters are grouped together? Those are character groups.

Groups will be different for each game, which is why if you create a new scifi game you’ll get a different set of character groups than if you created a fantasy game, although you’ll be able to change these if they’re not suitable to whatever you want.

If you think these default character groups aren’t appropriate or you think they might need changing, now is actually a good chance to speak up and give me some suggestions. This won’t affect existing games, only ones that will be created from now on.

Read More

May
16

By

Using RP Repository to showcase your characters

Category: Behind the scenes - running RPGs Tags: , 2 Comments

DavidOne of the biggest challenges of running a roleplaying game is getting other members to sign-up and play, and I’ve seen so many fail quite early on because the GM can’t get enough players together. Advertising your game is important, and in this article Mike explains how you can use a website called RPG Repository to showcase your characters to other roleplayers.

Mike

Mike Krueger (MnMike on OngoingWorlds)

Most of us know that the key to recruiting new players for our PbP games is to network with others who are already interested in Roleplaying. Some games have turned to Facebook with great success, but there are other options available to us online.

One such option, and the subject of this article, is the relatively new RP Repository. (http://www.rprepository.com)

The RP Repository (hereafter referred to simply as RPR) just celebrated its second “birthday” and has grown to host pages for over 4000 registered members. That is quite impressive for a site that has been advertised almost entirely by word of mouth.

Read More

« Older Posts
Newer Posts »