OngoingWorlds blog

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

May
17

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Kickstart: A service to help get your roleplay running

Category: Advertising your game, Behind the scenes - running RPGs, Interviews Tags: , , Leave a Comment

So I was on RPG-Directory a few weeks ago, which is a great social network for roleplayers (and a good place to advertise your game!) and I noticed something called “Kickstart”, a service to support roleplayers that have created a new roleplaying game, and need to get it started. And we all know this is the most difficult time for any roleplay, getting off the ground can be difficult. I asked user Xexes more about Kickstart. Here’s what he wrote for us:

Xexes

User Xexes on RPG-D

What’s Kickstart?

Kickstart is a community effort to help roleplays get going, for roleplayers, by roleplayers. It’s hard to start and keep a roleplay going, and kickstart is meant to be that one last push. Read More

Apr
27

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Glass houses & roleplay copyright

Category: Behind the scenes - running RPGs Tags: 7 Comments

Copyright

Written by Charles Star and Jonathan Swift from Independence Fleet.

A disturbing trend developed during 2012. First, in May, an unidentified party filed a Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) complaint against the Simming Encyclopedia (SimEnc). Later that summer, at least three individuals filed similar DMCA complaints against our home club, Independence Fleet. Read More

Apr
21

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How to Suck at Role-Playing: a Step-by-Step Guide

Category: Behind the scenes - running RPGs, Play-by-post discussion 2 Comments

How to suck at roleplaying

There have been many, many articles written — both here on the Ongoing Worlds blog and elsewhere — about how to improve your roleplaying, how to be a better gamer and how to improve your writing.  In the interests of a fair and balanced approach, I felt it was time someone wrote a step-by-step guide on how to be an awful roleplayer, how to flat out suck at this past-time we all enjoy. Read More

Apr
7

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What does a Mary Sue mean to you?

Category: Behind the scenes - running RPGs Tags: , , 3 Comments

Bloody Mary-Sues

We’ve posted a few articles about Mary Sue characters in roleplaying games (you can see them here), but what exactly is a Mary Sue? There’s obviously the story of the very first Mary Sue character, but the term means different things to different people.

There was a discussion about this on RPG-Directory this week, which was quite enlightening, and here are the highlights: Read More

Mar
31

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Advertising an RPG

Category: Advertising your game, Behind the scenes - running RPGs Tags: 1 Comment

main_ASA2Maybe other people who have studies in Communication and PR would approach it from another side, and I am curious to see how they see it too. But as an economist who has learnt management and marketing in Uni, I believe in applying as many marketing and management concepts to managing a RPG. Yes, RPGs are not profit yielding, but this is the only main difference. In truth, most concepts applying to small businesses and non profit organisations do apply to it.
Read More

Mar
19

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Want more members? Advertise your game on PBEM2

Category: Advertising your game, Behind the scenes - running RPGs Tags: , , 1 Comment

Are you looking for more members to join your game? If you’re not advertising on PBEM2 you might be missing out, here’s a video walkthrough of me showing you how to add a listing on PBEM2 🙂

Feb
16

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Encouraging your members to post, an annoying necessity

Category: Behind the scenes - running RPGs Tags: , 2 Comments

girl forcing man to postWe’ve all seen roleplaying games where the posts have fizzled out, sometimes in the middle of an interesting story. So why does the story just stop and die? One of the reasons is a key player might suddenly have been unable to post, or suddenly they became too busy to post, or maybe they just forgot. After a long time the desire to continue fades, as does your memory of recent happenings in the game, and there’s no more posts.

I was interested in a recent discussion on RPG-Directory, where user Cady asked whether it’s okay to “poke, prod & beg for posts”. Read More

Feb
13

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10 tips for roleplaying in foreign countries

Category: Behind the scenes - running RPGs, Inspiration for writing Tags: Leave a Comment

Green and red roleplayers

Roleplaying in distant lands has been a part of the simming business for many years; one notable early example is the focus of Twilight 2000 on Poland for a number of their modules, a country that most Westerners could not visit in the 1980s. Read More

Feb
11

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Approving and declining members is a big ol’ piece of cake

Category: Behind the scenes - running RPGs, OngoingWorlds guide Tags: Leave a Comment

Roleplaying games are more fun with other members. In OngoingWorlds I’ve made it really easy to approve new members who’ve submitted a good character profile, or decline the ones that haven’t. Here’s a screencast explaining how to do it:

 

Jan
27

By

10 ways to keep your newest roleplayers

Category: Behind the scenes - running RPGs Tags: , 1 Comment

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Your Dilemma

Wes Davis

This post was written by Wes Davis, founder of Star Army

You’ve worked hard setting up your online roleplaying or simming community, and harder still to spread the word about it.

A stream of new players is joining, but some of them are flaking out and disappearing without a trace. How can you overcome new players’ shyness and make them feel comfortable and included in your community? Read More

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