OngoingWorlds blog

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

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Big Ideas Week on SciFi Ideas

Big Ideas Week - SciFi IdeasThe website SciFi Ideas (www.scifiideas.com) is planning a special event this February. “Big Ideas Week” will celebrate the website’s 1-year anniversary by posting lots of new ideas and articles, and encouraging readers to take part.

I caught up with the creator of SciFi Ideas, Mark Ball. Here’s what he had to say…

What is SciFi Ideas?

The idea behind SciFi Ideas is simple. Too many great ideas go to waste. Sometimes they come to you in the middle of the night and you forget to write them down. Sometimes they stay in your head for months and eventually transform into something too big and unwieldy to use. Perhaps you just have so many great ideas that you don’t have time to use them all. We want to rescue these unused ideas and use them to inspire other writers. Read More

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Examples of great world building in children’s films, inspiration for your roleplaying game

finding nemo

In my last article about taking inspiration for worldbuilding from films, I said it was best to have a look at some examples, demonstrated brilliantly on the big screen. Read More

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Examples of great world building in films

If you’re creating a new brand new world for the setting of your roleplaying game it helps to look at some examples first, demonstrated on the big screen. Below are some worlds from films which might give you a good starting point when creating your own world. You might also want to look my other article about world ideas to use for the setting of your game.

Pirates of the Caribbean

Pirates of the Caribbean

In this world of Pirates and swashbuckling, the films follow the same characters but there’s actually a lot more going on in the world. There’s a crew of undead pirates, a crew of seamonsters, and toffee-nosed gentry from the East India Trading Company, as well as some voodoo magic for more of a supernatural element to the world.

It would be easy to take this world and use it for a roleplaying game. Your characters could be the crew of a Pirate ship, and you raid any ship that comes near whilst avoiding any ships that are hired to catch you. Or if you want to be more legitimate, you could be a simple trading ship which moves from port to port transporting cargo, and avoiding being raided by Pirates. Or you could take on jobs from port Sheriffs to track down and destroy all Pirate ships that are causing problems for other ships. As the world has supernatural elements like voodoo magic and curses, this could give your characters plenty of interesting and ludicrous things to do.

Terminator Salvation

Terminator Salvation

In the Terminator films we see snapshots of the grim future where robots have taken over, and in Terminator Salvation we see more of that world. The robots have huge flying ships, as well as human-like robots and many other weird contraptions.

Humans are farmed, and collected and kept in colonies. The Humans that have escaped work as freedom fighters, fighting against the robots.

Your characters could be the Human resistance, fighting against the robots. This world also has a lot of scope for time travel, as time travel is used by both the robots and the Humans to alter the course of the future. This means possible missions could be to travel back in time to before the robots took over (to our present, or further in the past), and try to stop the robots, or to prevent the robots from travelling back to the future and attempting to kill John Connor, or even your characters own parents.

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18 Great story scenarios taken from films, to use in your roleplaying game

monster from evolution film

If you’re a GM of a text-based roleplaying game, you will need to come up with decent story ideas for your players. This can be challenging because coming up with new ideas all the time is difficult, the professionals even struggle when making films, which is why you might see the same plot idea being used over and over again.

But don’t worry about copying someone else’s story idea, because as long as you’re playing it with different characters, it will be a totally different experience. In fact it can be a good idea to look at films as examples of good story ideas. Here is a collection of good scenarios from films that will make good story ideas in your roleplaying game

Alien Queen

Aliens invade a planet, and you have to kill their Queen – from “Aliens”

For: Sci-fi or fantasy games
It’s easy to start a story where an infinite number of aliens invade a planet, but it’s sometimes difficult to end it, just because there is an endless amount of aliens and only a few of your characters. You could start writing about killing some, but then it gets boring. You need a way to finish off all of the aliens for good. You could create a virus that kills them all, or you could wipe them out at the source.

In the film Aliens, a planet has been taken over by aliens before our main characters get there. The characters have to fight their way through hundreds of the beasties until Ripley meets the Queen, and kills it. In the film all of the other aliens are killed off by a massive nuclear explosion, and the main characters escape.

In your story however you might not want this kind of ending, for example if the aliens have invaded Earth, a massive nuclear explosion might cause more problems than it solves. So you’ll have to think of another way to get rid of all the aliens. It could be that they’re all being controlled by one source, the Queen, so if you kill the Queen, all others will drop dead (this is handy for robot monsters).

Star Wars bombing run

The bombing run – in “Star Wars”

For: Sci-fi games
Your characters are given a plan to achieve a goal. Make sure all writers are informed of the plan, and likewise all characters are informed of the plan too.

The goal at the finale in Star Wars IV: A new hope was to fire a missile into a very small target on the humongous Death Star. This involved flying close to the Death star, dogfighting with enemy spaceships, getting into the trench,  avoiding and shooting more enemy spaceships, and then one character will launch the missile when they’re close enough.

In your story the goal might be an enemy spaceship or spacestation that you have to destroy. Getting close to the spaceship will be difficult, as you first have to dogfight with some enemy fighters. There’s more for other characters to do here, by having them figure out a way to turn off the enemy spaceship’s protective shielding or defensive turrets before they can get close, which might involve getting aboard the base to sabotage it first.

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7 movies with character flashbacks

As part of Flashback Week, encouraging you to write flashbacks about the early life of your own characters, here are some films which also include character flashbacks.

Big fish poster

Big Fish

A son tries to learn more about his dying father, who is renowned for telling ridiculous stories which are always blown out of proportion. The flashbacks show his father’s early life and how he met his wife. Details in each flashback are exaggerated, due to the father’s ability to embellish his stories.

Godfather 2 poster

Godfather 2

Flashbacks show Mafia chief Michael Corleone’s father Vito, showing how he came from Sicily in his youth in the early 1900’s to the founding of the Corleone family in New York in 1925. These flashbacks are more substantial than most, and take up almost half of the film. The flashbacks of Vito Corleone are an interesting parallel to his son Michael Corleone in the 1950’s who is trying to expand the family business into Las Vegas, Hollywood and Cuba.

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TV series & films that would make great PBEM games

There are many PBEM games around, many set in their own fantasy worlds where the GM has done their own worldbuilding to create a world for their game, but there are many films and TV series which have already done the worldbuilding for you and provide a great setting for your PBEM game.

Star Wars

Star WarsGeorge Lucas has created a diverse fantasy world with spaceships and limitless types of aliens. It is popularly extended through many films, books and games. Creating a new scenario within this world would be easy, and because if it’s popularity you will have a large audience who are already familiar with the world.

Settings for this game could be a planet, a spaceship, or a group of people travelling the galaxy. There are also multiple time frames you can choose from when creating your game.

Star Trek

Starship EnterpriseThis is a rich science fiction universe described in all of the Star Trek series’. Each spinoff series has focussed on exploration so there are many locations already described, and it is not too hard to invent many more for new adventures.

The classic way to create a Star Trek PBEM is to think up a name for your ship, set up a goal (usually exploration of new alien worlds) and populate your ship with members as your crew. Because of Star Trek’s popularity, you will have a large audience already familiar with the world and technology within.

The TV series’ episodic format can be easily converted into a PBEM format – discover a planet, perform a mission, then leave to planet and go onto the next adventure. It can be tough for a GM to keep coming up with new worldbuilding ideas for new planets however.

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