OngoingWorlds blog

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

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Randomizing and RPGs

This article was written by Steven Savage, creator of the awesome random generator site Seventh Sanctum

Look Back In Randomness . . .

Steven Savage from Seventh SanctumIn 1999 at a gathering of anime and Mystery Science Theater Fans, I commented how some anime attacks sounded randomly generated by computer. Suddenly it struck me that it would be easy to write a program to do that, as I’d written code to do superhero names and names in the vein of Elfquest characters. A few notes later I had enough ideas to try and I made an Anime Power Generator. Read More

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How to use bitstrips to create a character image

Bitstrips comicEver wondered what it would be like to bring your characters to life? Human technology has a way to go before we can extract such from our imagination and animate these larger, or indeed smaller than life personalities. But there is always the other form of ‘animation’ and one that’s accessible to even those of us who find adjusting the toaster a challenge.

Bitstrips is an App available on Facebook and Twitter, which enables you to create cartoon avatars. You can create as many as you like if you have alternative profiles or friends that don’t mind you mutating them. Read More

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

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

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New game category: Modern fantasy

Fantasy roleplay setting inside urban environmentIt was pointed out to me recently that there’sa gap in the game categories for games that are fantasy themed, but don’t exist in a fantasy setting. The current game categories are vague (deliberately so!), and so if you wanted a game set in a modern setting but where magic exists, like for example Harry Potter, you had to either select “Fantasy” or “Modern”.

Labelling a game “Fantasy” is putting it into a broad category that contains high-fantasy like Lord of the Rings, or Narnia, or wacky worlds like the setting of Dark Crystal or Princess Bride. Read More

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The story of New Worlds Project: #6 – How we reached the “F” Word…

New worlds project spaceship

By Kim Smouter, Co-Founder of New Worlds Project. See part 1 of the story of New Worlds Project here.

When I began writing this story, I didn’t want to just write about what I thought we had done to make New Worlds Project a unique endeavour but I also wanted to reflect on what had made the project fail so that others can see the signs and help prevent the demise of their play-by-post projects. Read More

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Spellbound – Thank You for Two Years of Magic

Aetherion IIIAfternoon everyone, Leon Archer here also known as Phantasmagoria, the GM for Spellbound. I’d like to tell you about some cool things that I’ve got planned for this November/December.

So, you may have noticed this month that Octy has donned his wizard’s hat and wand. That’s because this month is the 2nd anniversary for Spellbound. I want to personally give everyone who’s been with us all this time and those who are more recent a massive thank you for all the support and love you’ve put into the Spellbound world. Really, you guys are the best! Read More

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Uploading your own avatar

For a long time OngoingWorlds showed a Gravatar for a user’s avatar, with no option to change it. Until now! By default you’ll get a unique freaky-looking monster, but now you can upload your own. Read More

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Grammar lesson: Using dialogue tags correctly

1391969_678563025496024_1968337004_n-1This article was written by Chris (OngoingWorlds member: 11121519518)

I know that this is probably a little pedantic of me, but I’m kind of a grammar freak. (Im a, grammer freek.) I’m going to talk about dialogue tags and the punctuation involved in them.

There are some of you currently saying “What? What are dialogue tags?” I will tell you in the next sentence, because that is a very good question. Dialogue tags are the things you attach with dialogue, like “he said.” As I mentioned earlier, I will go over how these work and what punctuation to use when. Read More

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How to roleplay on Tumblr

I don't really know what "get out of the tag" means, but this was the only Tumblr image I could find that wasn't animated

I don’t really know what “get out of the tag” means, but this was the only Tumblr image I could find that wasn’t animated

I’ve been curious recently about the people roleplaying on Tumblr, and asked a roleplayer to send me a good help guide. With an initial reaction of “duh isn’t it obvious” she probably assumed I was an old fogie who didn’t know how to use the internet (it’s true, I’m over 30 now). Thing is, it’s NOT obvious. Tumblr is a minefield of horribly animating GIFs and blinking text that’s enough to give a squirrel a seizure.

Tumblr is very popular for roleplayers though, so I persisted. I was given this link, which I’ll paste some of the important sections here in case you’re also curious (but I recommend reading the full article if you are of course). Read More

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There’s millions of roleplayers. They just might not be where you’re looking

I noticed recently that RPGlibrary has closed the section of their forum for PBEM games, citing “the era of PBEM roleplaying has come and gone”. Utter nonsense, or is that true? Read More