OngoingWorlds blog

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

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Your world is ever-changing

your world is ever changing

In every good story the world is ever-changing, just look at the world in Star Wars (I suppose we should say “galaxy”) at the end of Return of the Jedi, the world had changed completely. In Lord of the Rings, the world had changed throughout.  Read More

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Heroes & Villains – Incompetence

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.  lego movie

So last time I covered the risk of creating Omnicompetent characters – those good-at-everything characters that are hard to believe. Too often we make our heroes and villains omnicompetent, and it’s a warning worth heeding. The Omnicompetent soon end up Omni-unbelievable, distorting the world and making things just seem wrong.

However, there’s a flipside issue I want to address, that of Incompetent heroes and villains. Though I find the former more common than the latter, it’s still an issue with good worldbuilding. Read More

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The art of the Dwarven Insult

dwarf insult

Dwarfs are known for their colourful use of the common tongue, especially when it comes to insults. Sometimes these are meant in jest, with some dwarfs known to use words as a weapon to rile up and anger their opponent into making a mistake. A few dwarfs have taken to using this as a part of their arsenal in battle, with a few being true masters of the insult, making their opponent slip up and attack them in anger, only to be met with a well-placed axe or hammer to the head. Read More

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Nothing’s original any more!

This was originally posted by Steven Savage on his blog under a different title, Steven 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. 

Adventure time

Every worldbuilder, author, artist has had that moment. That moment where originality seems to be a fleeting illusion.

Perhaps they feel that they can’t seem to do anything original. Read More

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Try these Heroes & Villains

The following is an extract from an article by Steven Savage from his Way with Worlds series of articles. It’s really intended for writing a book, but I thought it was interesting for creating heroes & villains in your roleplaying game. 

Heroes and Villains by Screwbald

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Heroes & Villains – Forget good & Evil

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. 

Frozen - is Elsa a villain?

It seems that we often end up discussing Good and Evil when we are talking Heroes and Villains, antagonists and protagonists, and often for pretty good reasons. Let’s face it Good Versus Evil is a prime conflict and element of many stories, and we want to read/play/experience interesting characters. Read More

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Pairing up characters with opposite traits

Lethal weapon

It’s fun when 2 people get together and write a sequence of action about their characters. It’s even more fun when those characters have completely opposite character traits, maybe they’ll wind each other up? (which is very fun to write!) or maybe they’ll use their separate personality traits and skills to their advantage (good cop bad cop perhaps?). Read More

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I’ve always been fascinated by Star Trek’s vision of the future

This article was written for us by A.S. Williamson, about the new Star Trek Victory game which launches soon. We don’t normally post articles that are adverts for games, but I thought this showed an insight on roleplaying which was quite interesting. – Onion

USS Victory miranda class

I’ve always been fascinated by Star Trek’s vision of the future

It’s not just the spaceships and the aliens, the technology and wonder – it’s this really unique look at the way that humanity evolves over the universe’s run. Read More

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Heroes & villains – Omnicompetent characters

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. 

Eddie Morra from Limitless

When we create heroes or villains, indeed main characters, in many cases we’re dealing with highly competent people. Read More

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The Toughest Skill for a Role Player to Have

the toughest skill for a roleplayer

There are a lot of good skills for a roleplayer to have, good grammar is one of them, the ability to keep writing through a dry spell, getting past writer’s block. But if there is one skill that I think is the toughest to have it’s not the ability to create narratives, come up with plots, nor to come up with names (I suck at that last one). It’s selflessness. Read More