OngoingWorlds blog

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

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Need new members? – Don’t Forget Your Friends

Friends can be roleplayers too

The wait can be unbearable. It can be a year or a week. But however long we have to wait for the next episode of our favorite series, we can’t wait for that day to come (or year, though that can test our patience; we’re looking at you, Sherlock!). But then we have the inevitable problem: have our friends watched it yet? Why does that matter to us? Because we like sharing things that interest us with the people we care about.

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Games that can’t ever succeed – and how to fix them

Roleplay apocalypse

Sometimes sites pop up here and there that can’t ever do very well. They can’t achieve reasonable, realistic growth expectations, and slowly decay over time, unable to grow. Read More

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How To Properly End A Game

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This might be even tougher then losing members. We hate to see our games go, but if we’ve finished the story, gone as far as we could go, and hit the limit. It’s time to pack it up and call it a day, we did our job and by god we did it damn well. But how do you do that? How can you end a game? Do we just delete it like a bad character? No! That is never an option! A game isn’t like a character, it’s something more. Imagine it a home. Imagine if Back To The Future had no ending, if Star Wars had no ending, if Breaking Bad just suddenly stopped, or you ended like the Sopranos and just cut to straight black. That’s not exciting, that’s boring. And ending a game like that, to be honest, it might tick off a few people. If you can’t think of a way to end your game, that’s ok. But if you can but don’t want to, that’s a little unprofessional. With this you can find ways and examples on how to either save or end a game. Read More

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How To Properly Leave A Game

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It’s a sad but true fact. Sometimes a game we might be a part of just may seem like it’s not the same or we’re just not interested in it anymore. This happens with most games and if for some reason it seems you can’t make peace with the problem at hand, you may feel like you want to leave. It’s a sad fact but it’s a true fact that some members just may not feel interested in the gameplay anymore and they want to leave. But how do you leave? Do you just unsubscribe? Do you delete your character and then subscribe? If you’ve answered yes to any of those questions, you’re wrong.

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Grand Master Tib’s Corner – Interview with Chas Hammer, Creator of SciWorld #PraiseTheTurnip

perpetual-universesHail those of Perpetual Universes! Grand Master Tiberius here, recently I had the opportunity to talk to the creator of SciWorld, [which is coming up soon] Chas Hammer! So let’s see what Mr. Hammer had to say shall we?

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Way With Worlds: Intelligent Life

This was originally posted by Steven Savage on his blog, but has allowed me to republish it here as I think it’s useful for roleplayers! This is part of Steven’s Way With Worlds series of articles. -David

Portrait against starting a sandstorm Fantasy Author: mvn78

I’m going to start by assuming the setting of your story has intelligent life in it. If not, well that sounds like a challenging write, and feel free to skip this part until you need it.  Or don’t because hey, you never know. Read More

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Way With Worlds: Ecology and Ecologies

This was originally posted by Steven Savage on his blog, but has allowed me to republish it here as I think it’s useful for roleplayers! This is part of Steven’s Way With Worlds series of articles. -David

Futuristic city

So you’ve got the origin of your universe (or perhaps you used our universe as a template, which does save a lot of effort). So now that you know how it all began, it’s time to move things to the next level. Read More

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Way With Worlds: Origins. In The Beginning

This is a segment of an article written by Steven Savage from his blog. Worldbuilding is really important to us in roleplaying, and planning out your world’s history is a great way to make it feel authentic. Here’s Steven’s article about the origin of your world. 

An airplane flying inside a huge O'Neill Cylinder World, a self-contained fully sustainable environment

Image credit: Adam Benton

Where It All Begins

Worldbuilding starts with the beginning – sort of. We may not always spend time on the beginning when we start, we may be following a rush of creativity as inspirations form, but in the end good world building always comes back to the question “where did it all come from?” Read More

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10 things that annoy other roleplayers

Misty Wilson from Phoenix roleplaying

Written by Misty from Phoenix Roleplaying

This article was written by Misty from Phoenix Roleplaying where she’s the Advertising and Community Officer. Misty also roleplays as Kateri in The Dark Cometh

We all have those things in life that aggravate us. Just like there are things in Roleplay that annoy us. And on the occasion, tremendously….Some, more than others and some people more than others. No, I am not saying some folks are annoying, even if the fact is sometimes true. I’m saying that some people tend to get annoyed more easily than others might. And some things are just plain more annoying than others. Read More

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Way With Worlds: Views, Lenses, and Your True Main Character

This was originally posted by Steven Savage on his blog, but has allowed me to republish it here as I think it’s useful for roleplayers! This is part of Steven’s Way With Worlds series of articles. -David

Fantasy World

Writing your world up is one thing. You can take notes, document everything, draw up timelines, and so forth. That’s a matter of technique, imagination and, frankly, your ability to write everything down. Getting yourself to use all those notes? That’s another challenge. Read More