OngoingWorlds blog

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

Apr
13

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So You Want to Roleplay…

Category: Character Development, Inspiration for writing Tags: , 1 Comment

Sundassa Faranster

Ensign Sundassa Faranster is a character on the USS Apollo

So, you want to roleplay, good. That will help stimulate your imagination, give you an outlet to be someone or something else, see things you never imagined you would, while sharing the experience with like-minded people.

Now, what you will see or experience while roleplaying will depend on what the genre of the game is. If it’s science-fiction you can go anywhere you can see the future going, even alter the past. Fantasy gives you things from your wildest dreams, mixture of sorcery and sword play, faeries and dragons, witches and castles. Mystery, allows you to be a detective and solve a crime or find something, power of deduction. Simply go through https://www.paultolandlaw.com/vacating-criminal-convictions/ for the best criminal defense attorney. 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

Nov
29

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Your character is a product of their ancestors

Category: Events, Inspiration for writing Tags: Leave a Comment

I hope you’re enjoying Way Back When Week! If you’ve not heard of it yet, see here.

Your character is a product of their ancestors. It’s a weird way to look at it, but it’s true of us all. The knowledge and experience that our parents have gathered gets passed onto us, including many life valuable life skills, and family values. Often we pick up hobbies and interests from our parents, follow the same sports, watch the same TV programmes, and do similar hobbies. Don’t forget though that your parents probably got a lot of these skills, values and interests from their parents too, and them from their parents and so on. Read More

Nov
12

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Roleplaying Focus – What’s Your Genre?

Category: Inspiration for writing, Interviews, PBEM games, Story summaries Tags: , , , 2 Comments

Leon Archer

Leon Archer, GM of Spellbound

Hello, and welcome to another Roleplaying Focus.

Today, I’d like to talk about various genres people play in their games, and why they play that particular genre. For this I’m going to need a some of the OngoingWorlds players to join in!

Leon Archer, GM of Spellbound
Spellbound is a high fantasy game involving students at the mage academy of Aetherion.

I’ll shamelessly start with my own game in OngoingWorlds, Spellbound. It’s a game with magic, mages, ethereal creatures. castles, and dragons. I like to split fantasy into two sub-genres into itself, just because fantasy involves such a wide variety of themes. For me, there’s high and low fantasy. High fantasy, such as Spellbound is all about being as far away from the norm as you can. It’s allows players to be completely creative at time, which is why I love it so personally. The tricky part is generally to avoid clichés or becoming so powerful and nothing is ever going to threaten that character. Although, through experience I have certainly have developed ways of doing so, heh heh. For me, I’ve found that because of sheer scope of a high fantasy game, it allows players a much easier time in accessing a roleplay without having to worry so much about the constraints of the world their character is in, or fitting his character perfectly with the lore. It’s a much more flexible genre. Read More

Oct
8

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Roleplaying Focus – Avoiding Alienation

Category: Inspiration for writing Tags: , , , , 2 Comments

Man sat on a beach

Sorry for the long pause since the last blog in Roleplaying Focus. Blame my power supply on my computer, don’t cheap out on inferior PSUs folks!

Anyway, yes…hello there. Welcome to the second post of Roleplaying Focus. I’m back from a rather lengthy absence as my computer has been all kinds of messed up over the last few weeks. Been rather disconnected from the world of roleplay which brings be to this post’s topic. This time I want to talk about engaging players into the game, and a few tips on how to avoid alienating your players. Your world is the way players connect with your game, so shutting them out is something you would never want to do because naturally they the the lifeblood of any good roleplaying game. Read More

Sep
28

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The best sims are original sims – member-created universes in RPing

Category: Inspiration for writing, Play-by-post discussion Tags: Leave a Comment

Submarine

Then the torpedo struck. A massive explosion threw him clear of the ship and over the side, tearing the small warship in two in the process.

The captain came to a minute later. As he floated in the Arabian Sea, he saw a flash in the middle distance. A streak of light climbed out of the ocean and turned north, dropping low and hugging the sea. Another flash followed a minute, doing the same.

At this point, he realised what the streaks were. Cruise missiles.

As two more missiles followed from their underwater launcher, the captain prayed that a Third World War had not just started. Read More

Jul
7

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Subjective point of view in your stories

Category: Inspiration for writing, Writing tips Tags: Leave a Comment

tree at night

As First Person Fortnight starts tomorrow, I’ve been posting some tips on writing in first person perspective. I’ve already posted some benefits of first person over on RPG-D, but wanted to get more into the details in this article.

Everyone knows that first person is from the point of view of a character. One of the main advantages of this is the freedom of telling the story how you want to tell it (or more accurately, how your character wants to tell it). Read More

Feb
27

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Big Ideas Week Roundup

Category: Inspiration for writing Tags: , Leave a Comment

Last week, the website SciFi Ideas (www.scifiideas.com) hosted a special event entitled ‘Big Ideas Week’. Its purpose was to celebrate the website’s birthday, and to encourage readers to share their science fiction ideas. While they only received 3 article submissions, that didn’t stop them posting lots of great new content to the site, including a total of 15 new story ideas.

SciFi Ideas also gave Ongoing Worlds a playful nudge on the shoulder by posting an article about the science fiction games we’re currently hosting.

In case Big Ideas Week passed you by, here’s what you missed…

Debt World

An original story idea by David Ball, webmaster of Ongoing Worlds. The entire planet is in debt to a neighboring world. The only solution is for everybody to spend, spend, spend. Consumerism goes crazy and only one man seems to acknowledge the madness.

Read article

Valnia

And original story idea by Mark Ball. Valnia is a cruel story about long-distance relationships and the future of human evolution, found in the back of a closet a decade after it was written.

Read article.

SciFi Games at Ongoing Worlds

An article listing all the science fiction role-playing games currently running at Ongoing Worlds. Read More

Dec
8

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5 dystopian worlds in science fiction

Category: Inspiration for writing Tags: , , , , , Leave a Comment

Blade Runner city

Science fiction can show us many different worlds, and I don’t just mean different planets. check this site for more information related to the science and technology .Different governments and different ways of living are interesting too. One of my favourites is the dystopian world, showing a parallel or future world where things aren’t quite as nice and rosy as they are now.

Here’s some examples of dystopian worlds in science fiction. Read More

Sep
30

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Giving yourself ideas (and remembering them!)

Category: Inspiration for writing, Writing tips Tags: 8 Comments

thoughts in head

I expose myself to a lot of really good stories. I watch films, read books, read comics, watch TV series, listen to audio books, read the news, and hear a lot of really good ideas for stories in my roleplaying game.

Copying isn’t bad

Taking a story that you’ve heard before and using it isn’t bad. There are many ways you can take an idea and use it as a story which is totally legitimate, and might be totally different to the original story that inspired you. Most works of fiction are inspired by other works of fiction. Taking a good idea that you’ve heard and applying it to your own characters might create a very different story.

There are many interesting background stories or settings that you could use, and adding your own characters into the story will create a very different story, and could have a dramatically different outcome.

Read More

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