OngoingWorlds blog

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

Oct
21

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USS Providence, a chat-based sim

Category: non-PBP roleplaying, PBEM games, Play-by-post discussion Tags: , , 3 Comments

USS ProvidenceContinuing our theme of Star Trek sims (we’ll stop and cover a different genre soon, I promise!) here’s an interview with Josh from USS Providence, part of the FSF (Federation Sim Fleet). Fleets seem very popular with Star Trek sims, it’s easy to unite games when they stare the same theme and same universe. Like I’ve already mentioned in the article about Star Trek Freedom, the sense of community in fleets can make it a great experience, which is probably why many Star Trek sims seem to have existed for a very long time.

The USS Providence sim began February 22nd, 2003. It has run continuously since then. I chatted with Josh Hrach, who is the GM for the USS Providence. Read More

Oct
14

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Starbase 118 – serious Star Trek simming

Category: Interviews, non-PBP roleplaying Tags: , 1 Comment

Federation Starbase

Star Trek is one of the most popular genres of play-by-post games, some having been played way back since the 80’s when PBEM games really started. If you want to roleplay in the same universe as Captain Kirk, and Captain Picard, you’ve got plenty of choice of games to join. Many of these Star Trek games have organised themselves together over the last few decades into fleets, allowing many games to be run in parallel sharing the same resources, members and sometimes sharing the same stories.

One of these fleets is UFOP: Starbase 118, which is a fleet of 7 games, each game set aboard a different starship or starbase, and one set on a planet.

I interviewed Miles Unum from Starbase 118, asking him about the fleet. Read More

Oct
10

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The importance of community in Star Trek Freedom

Category: PBEM games, Play-by-post discussion Tags: , , 5 Comments

Star Trek FreedomSome roleplaying games have the staying power to stay around for many years, while some lose their members and close just after a few weeks. A roleplaying game isn’t just about roleplaying, it’s also a community. To find out how important a sense of community is to a roleplaying group I asked Anthony Keen, CO of roleplaying community Star Trek Freedom. When I last interviewed Anthony Keen, it was clear that they’re taking it very seriously and put a lot of effort into both the game and the community. Star Trek Freedom has been around for over 13 years, so they’re definitely doing something right to make their players stick around. They’re really active as a community and socialise together using email, forums, Twitter and Facebook.

PR (Public Relations) is very important to us as its the sense of community and family that holds our game together.

Anthony Keen, Star Trek Freedom

Many roleplaying games focus on the characters in the game, and not so much about their players. It’s common to see a character biography on many roleplaying websites, but Star Trek Freedom also has a personal biography for all players too. You can also see a gallery of player photos here.

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Oct
5

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Welcoming Blue Dwarf to OngoingWorlds

Category: OngoingWorlds site news, PBEM games Tags: 5 Comments

Blue Dwarf

Last week a new game was created on OngoingWorlds that is a big deal for me. It’s technically not a new game at all, it’s a game that’s over 11 years old, a game I created and have been running for over 11 years.

The Blue Dwarf is a game based on a comedy scifi TV show called Red Dwarf which has been a favourite of mine since I was a teenager. I wanted to extend the world of the show, but knew I didn’t want to involve the small number of original characters because we’d never be able to write them as well as the original writers. There was a lot of scope in Red Dwarf’s universe, mostly because it was hardly explored which meant that anything we wrote couldn’t be proved wrong. Mainly it was the spirit of Red Dwarf that I wanted to continue, even if it wasn’t about the original characters.

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Oct
1

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Halloween story competition!

Category: OngoingWorlds site news Tags: , 4 Comments

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

Sep
30

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Giving yourself ideas (and remembering them!)

Category: Inspiration for writing, Writing tips Tags: 8 Comments

thoughts in head

I expose myself to a lot of really good stories. I watch films, read books, read comics, watch TV series, listen to audio books, read the news, and hear a lot of really good ideas for stories in my roleplaying game.

Copying isn’t bad

Taking a story that you’ve heard before and using it isn’t bad. There are many ways you can take an idea and use it as a story which is totally legitimate, and might be totally different to the original story that inspired you. Most works of fiction are inspired by other works of fiction. Taking a good idea that you’ve heard and applying it to your own characters might create a very different story.

There are many interesting background stories or settings that you could use, and adding your own characters into the story will create a very different story, and could have a dramatically different outcome.

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Sep
23

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Should a character’s “thing” be unique?

Category: Inspiration for writing Tags: , 7 Comments

Jack Harkness in Torchwood Miracle dayI just finished watching the latest series of Torchwood. Despite its many flaws, it’s a fun series. The final cliffhanger of the series though has left me asking a question that applies to other TV series, roleplaying games, and any ongoing stories. Read More

Sep
20

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Don't be afraid of your characters failing

Category: Play-by-post discussion Tags: , 3 Comments

Detective Jayden from Heavy rainI’m writing this after playing Heavy Rain on PS3, which is not a roleplaying game in the sense we’ve come to use the term today. But it’s definitely a game where you assume the role of different characters. The game is like a film, each scene you assume the role of a different character who has their own story, and each story overlaps with every other. The way this game is a bit different to other games I’ve played is that each character can die, and the game continues. The story is just dramatically altered because you can’t ever see the continuation of that character’s story, and any scene that includes them from that point will be different.

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Sep
13

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New feature: Rating member posts

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

Here’s a new feature that we’ve recently added to OngoingWorlds. There’s nothing better than receiving feedback to help you improve your writing. We’ve added a new feature that allows you to rate other posts to let the author know how good it was.

How to rate posts

When you read through posts in your game written by other members you’ll see 5 stars at the bottom. These will show the current rating for the post, showing the average rating that everyone else has given.

Rate posts

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Sep
8

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What do you do with characters from members who have left your game?

Category: Play-by-post discussion Tags: 2 Comments

a man leaving his character behindIt’s very likely that people who joined your roleplaying game will choose to leave at some point, and sometimes (or often perhaps) these people will just leave and give no explanation of why. There can be many reasons why people leave, usually they just can’t commit enough time, sometimes they’re lazy, sometimes they have arguments with other members of the game. But the question really is what should you do with their characters once they’ve left?

It might seem too harsh to kill their characters off, what if perhaps the member wants to re-join at a later date? If you do kill them, do you build a story about it? Should you make your existing characters react to the death like any real person would? Or maybe you should just neglect to mention them until the characters disappear into obscurity as if they never existed?

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