OngoingWorlds blog

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

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Borderlands – The New Kids On The Block

Star Trek Borderlands logoThis article was written by Rich LeValley from Star Trek: Borderlands, a roleplaying group that’s been running since 1993.

Well, I’ve been familiar with David Ball, Award Winning Website creator, for some time. He has been a great supporter of my own game system Star Trek: Borderlands. It is with great gladness, then, that I have been given permission to bring Star Trek: Borderlands play to Ongoing Worlds in the form of the USS Marcus (see the game’s homepage here). Read More

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Interview with Mike Bremer about Starbase 400

Starbase 400

I recently had a chat with Mike Bremer, CO of the Star Trek play-by-post game Starbase 400, part of the 9th fleet roleplay community. I asked Mike a few questions, and got an interview going about his game, which I’ve published for you lucky buggers below! 🙂

How did Starbase 400 first come about? How long has Starbase 400 been running?

Mike BremerThe Simm launched in 1995 as the USS Pegasus in the now defunct Seventh Fleet. Mark Casey then moved the simm to Tango Fleet when he started it in 1996. I joined the simm a few months later, and then took over as CO in 1997. It’s ran continuously under my command since then. Read More

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USS Providence, a chat-based sim

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

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Starbase 118 – serious Star Trek simming

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

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The importance of community in Star Trek Freedom

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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9 more movies with character flashbacks

You might need some inspiration for flashback week if you want to create a really good back-story for your character, and want to enter the competition. We’ve shown you movies with flashbacks in them before, but there’s just so many, so here are some more to inspire you to write your own! Well you can watch all your favorite movies freely at https://freecouchtuner.com/years.

Eternal sunshine

Eternal Sunshine of the spotless mind

Despite not flashbacks in the conventional sense of cinema, we see glimpses of the main character’s life (Jim Carey), including many moments he shared with his girlfriend (Kate Winslet) as they are being erased by a company he’s paid to eradicate memories of their relationship.

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Interview with a Star Trek author

STAR TREK: TYPHON PACT zero sum

Zero Sum Game is one of Mack's novels in the Star Trek: Typhon Pact series

I was recently told by Miles Unam from the PBEM group Starbase 118 that he’d managed to get an interview with Star Trek author David Mack.

David Mack is the national bestselling author of more than twenty novels and novellas, including Wildfire, Harbinger, Reap the Whirlwind, Precipice, Road of Bones, Promises Broken, and the Star Trek Destiny trilogy: Gods of Night, Mere Mortals, and Lost Souls. He developed the Star Trek Vanguard series concept with editor Marco Palmieri. His first work of original fiction is the critically acclaimed supernatural thriller The Calling.

In addition to novels, Mr. Mack’s writing credits span several media, including television (for episodes of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine), film, short fiction, magazines, newspapers, comic books, computer games, radio, and the Internet.

Mr. Mack was gracious enough to talk with Tallis Rhul, a member of UFOP: StarBase 118, about his experiences with writing for Star Trek and his advice for aspiring writers. This is the first time I’ve seen a member of a PBEM game get an interview with a professional author, and it’s really interesting to read about how he has created new villain aliens in the Star Trek universe, as well as expanding on existing races, like the Breen, which was a race only barely mentioned in Star Trek: DS9.

You can read the full interview at StarBase 118’s website here

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Interview with Anthony Keen from the Star Trek Freedom PBEM

Star Trek Freedom

Star Trek Freedom

Star Trek PBEM games on the web

Star Trek makes up a vast amount of PBEM games, mainly due massive scifi universe in which it is set, giving the chance to have an unlimited number of possibilities for different starships, and an infinite amount of locations your characters can explore.

Star Trek Freedom

Star Trek Freedom , a network of PBEM games which all take place in the Star Trek universe.

There are many Star Trek PBEM games around, but Star Trek Freedom stands out for two reasons, it has a very detailed website (http://www.startrekfreedom.com) which is always kept up to date, and a strict training process before you’re even allowed to join a ship.

Star Trek Freedom has five ships, with an average of ten people onboard each. The ships make up the “52nd Fleet”

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