OngoingWorlds blog

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

Nov
23

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50 Years in the Vortex: Roleplaying in the worlds of ‘Doctor Who’

Category: Inspiration for writing, PBEM games Tags: , 6 Comments

TARDIS

“Let me get this straight. A thing that looks like a police box, standing in a junkyard, it can move anywhere in time and space?”

Ian Chesterton, Doctor Who “An Unearthly Child” (23 November 1963)

On 23 November 2013, Doctor Who, the world’s longest running sci-fi show, turns 50, with a spectacular special episode airing in 70 countries at the same time.

With 800 episodes to the end of this year with more to come and hundreds of expanded universe works, the multiverse of the show is a hugely developed one with lots of ideas for roleplaying.

Are you sitting comfortably? Then we’ll begin. Read More

Nov
16

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6 reasons why you should create a Dr Who play-by-post game

Category: Inspiration for writing, Play-by-post discussion Tags: , 16 Comments

dalek from dr whoRunning for over 50 years, I wanted to give a few reasons why I think the universe of Dr Who has great potential for roleplaying in.

Dr Who roleplaying games have been tried before, and we’ve even had one or two on OngoingWorlds, but for some reason they’ve not lasted too long. I personally thing the reason for this is someone inevitably wants to play the Doctor, who is always going to be more knowledgeable, and powerful than any other character. How can any other character compete with that? Read More

Feb
7

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British TV series that would make great play-by-post games

Category: Inspiration for writing, Play-by-post discussion Tags: , , , , , , , , , 4 Comments

This is a follow on from my article “TV series and films that would make great PBEM games”, which has become the most popular on my blog and I only hope has inspired many people to create new PBEM games (or play-by-post games as I agreed I’d call them).

Inspiration can come from many places, why not take a concept of a pre-created world and run with it?

Doctor Who

Dr Who

Dr Who

First aired in 1963, Dr Who is the worlds longest running sci-fi TV show. If you want to watch TV shows like this but is currently restricted with a poor TV setup, companies like tvwallmounting.ca is a professional TV mounting service Toronto in the GTA, Ontario, helping customers to have a great tv viewing experience by offering expert tv installation services and best tv wall mounts. The format of the show and the storylines can vary wildly, probably accounting for it’s long-running success. A new actor plays the Doctor almost every season, keeping the character fresh and different. The character of the Doctor remains throughout, although his travelling companions change often. This makes it very difficult to propose a play-by-post game based on this as the lead character is so strong, and a Play-by-post usually works best with an ensemble group of characters. So to create a play-by-post game set in the Doctor Who universe it would likely be set away from the Doctor himself, and focus on other characters.

The Doctor is the last of the Time-lords, a race of aliens who have the ability to control time. Although the series states that he is the last of the time-lords (following the great time war with the Daleks), it might be possible to mention many more time-lords which also escaped after the war which the Doctor doesn’t know about. Also over the years many other aliens have been mentioned, some friendly which could be used as main characters, but mostly monsters which your characters could meet on a daily basis and have to fight, or run away from, or thwart their deadly plans.

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