OngoingWorlds blog

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

By

More opinions about downsides when casting magic

character powers with penalties

A few weeks ago we posted an article by Squidlord about why penalties for magical powers is bad. There was a lot of discussion about this (go read the comments). I asked the roleplayers on RPG-Directory what they thought about this too, and got some great answers. Read More

By

Blue Dwarf is 15!

This article was written by Andy Longman from Blue Dwarf.

blue-dwarf-fifteen-years

7,884,000 minutes
131490 hours
5475 days
15 years.

All of these are big numbers. And all of these tell us exactly how long the Blue Dwarf sim has been running.

From it’s first ever story post on 23rd April 2000, to today people have been continually contributing to the ongoing saga. Read More

By

IC actions and IC consequences: A critique

This article was written for us by Brian aka Crimsyn from the USS Portland in Obsidian Fleet.

Picard with Phaser rifle

If you poke around the internet, you’ll see that a lot of the simms out there have something in their rules to the effect of “IC actions have IC consequences,” often putting various degrees of emphasis on this statement, such as “if you write your character jumping out of the airlock, your character is going to be dead.” It is so popular that it has somehow become almost a clichéd truism in the world of simming, commonly cited by players and GMs alike. Read More

By

The importance of having a game website

This article was written for us by a member from one of our fantasy games.

building a website

Game websites are important. Even if you do not know how to script, it is in your best interests to make one. Read More

By

5 ways to make your audience empathise with your character

Data from TNG crying

Everyone wants to read about a character they can empathize with. Here’s a few tips written by Sal Taybrim from Starbase 118 from the article Compelling Characterization (read it in full here).  Read More

By

SciWorld 2015 is coming soon!

Sciworld - celebrate roleplaying

SciWorld is an online roleplaying convention that brings science fiction and fantasy writers together. This is an online convention & is hosted over dedicated chat rooms & features many different play-by-post and PBEM games coming together and sharing stories & ideas. You can attend sessions to help you become a better writer, join in games, share in open discussions & make new friends. Read More

By

Nobody really cares what your character looks like…

This is an extract from a blog article on the Starbase 118 website by Sal Taybrim. There’s loads of great articles with tips for roleplaying in their Writer’s Workshop section, so make sure to read that right after this. 

Attractive Star Trek cosplay lady

Nobody really cares what your character looks like…

This is harsh, but true. In a writing game, we all imagine what your character looks like. If you insist that they are attractive, leave a few details and then move on to the action. Your readers will fill in with how they imagine the character to look and be depending on their own definitions of attractive. Read More

By

The HolOW-lens 3D world v2

It started out as an April fools joke, but several people kept asking me if I’d update the HolOW-lens world and add more hidden codes, places to discover, and billboards for their games. So I’ve worked on an update with 4 new hidden codes.

Here’s some screenshots:

zombies near a billboard

Read More

By

You might have noticed the “Featured game request” area

featured game pointerYou might have noticed on the homepage there’s now an area for “Featured games”. This is something I’m trialling to see if it’s popular, as it has been requested by several people now.

I don’t really like to show favouritism to one game over another but this might solve 2 problems: Read More

By

A simple tip – Read your post out loud

Nimoy with microphone

I found this great advice on the RP community Starbase 118’s website, which is a simple tip to improve your writing. Read More