OngoingWorlds blog

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

Mar
23

By

What will be… hits 200 posts (and shows no sign of stopping)

Category: Interviews, OngoingWorlds site news, PBEM games Tags: Leave a Comment

DavidOne of the most successful games on OngoingWorlds is What will be, will be… created by Izzy Stuart, it was the first game to reach 200 posts (and as it’s taken me a while to publish this article – it’s now well on its way to 300!), and has been running for 9 months. I asked Izzy the creator and GM, some questions for this article.

Izzy

Izzy created the game 'What will be, will be...' in June 2011

In What will be, will be… there has always been a lot of drama! With the first section introducing us to characters such as Evangeline Turner, the nervous young girl, who finds herself diagnosed with a brain aneurysm, to Natalie Sans, a girl living in a foster home with an abusive carer. The section sees Evangeline’s situation with her aneurysm through, whilst looking into the lives of surrounding teachers and students who find themselves all wound up in it all. The next section expands more on the lives of students from all round the school, with everything from high school dates and dances, troubled students doing crazy things, to illnesses, pregnancies, fires, and much more! The third section was kick-started with the anticipation of the Halloween dance, as well as the two expecting mothers within the school. Read More

Mar
15

By

For GMs: 5 things to say to your members OOC

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

A microphone in front of crowd

OngoingWorlds is a great place to post chunks of story that you can share with your other members, but there’s no reason you can’t use it to send OOC (out of character) messages to your entire group. In a forum you might have a separate thread for this, but as you’ve noticed OngoingWorlds is a bit simpler than this (which in many ways is better – it’s intentional!). So when you post an OOC message it’ll get sent to all members just like your normal story post. Read More

Mar
7

By

OtherSpace – A Multi-User Shared Hallucination

Category: Interviews, non-PBP roleplaying Tags: , , 2 Comments

DavidEver heard people talking about MUSHs or MUDs in the same breath as PBEM or PBP? They’re actually quite similar, and I was able to interview Wes Platt, the creator of OtherSpace, an original space-opera MUSH. He’s been running OtherSpace for 14 years and has a following of over 200 members. 

So what is a MUSH?

Wes PlattA MUSH – also known by the rather silly name “Multi-User Shared Hallucination” – is a text-based platform that players can go online to connect with from all over the world.

If you like reading and writing stories in real-time, improvisationally, with other people, it’s the sort of thing you’d probably enjoy. It’s a lot of fun if you get a kick of developing characters and crafting dialogue on the fly, reacting to situations, and following chains of action and consequence toward not-always-predictable territory. Read More

Mar
2

By

Simming Upgrades

Category: Play-by-post discussion Leave a Comment

Simming, a phenomenon that has it’s humble beginnings and it’s majestic present, but some have always worked to expand on the creation, right from the very beginning. The how is sometimes very obvious, but the why is at times very unknown. – Admiral Kalvin (First documented admiral in simming)

First let’s explain that the original online simming was itself an expansion to something that already was around, and in fact was around for many years before going online. When simming itself was invented, nobody is really sure, but there is a belief based on facts that it was around for fanzines back in the 1980s. The evolution to where simming is today is one that went through many changes, stalled a few times and even had jump starts. From where and how it began, if any of the documented original seven online players were told that it will be where it is today defies logic. Read More

Feb
28

By

Matching Your Character Up For A Game

Category: Character Development, OngoingWorlds site news, Play-by-post discussion Tags: , Leave a Comment

DavidWhen you join a game do you create a character to match the world, or do you start the other way around – create a character and find a game to match them to? This article is written by Ellen, (aka TotallyAwesome from RoleplayHub). Ellen has been roleplaying for over 15 years and is a regular member on Harry Potter RP ‘Vault 713’.

Ellen

Ellen has been roleplaying for over 15 years

So, you’ve got your favorite character and you can’t imagine ever *not* playing him or her, but your RP site starts to get a little lack-luster, or maybe goes in a direction you’re not liking. What do you do? You’ve got this sixteen-year-old, shy, gay, Jewish Ravenclaw, who’s dad is a professional broom designer, and you want to take him to a site where Neverland is real, or Rita Repulsa is back with a vengence, or there’s a sudden dyer need to get to the fountain of youth. I think I have your solution.

Bringing characters from site to site is easy, once you know how to do it. You can take any character from any site and change certain things about them so that they fit into the new surroundings. Read More

Feb
27

By

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

Feb
5

By

Advice For Future Roleplayers

Category: Play-by-post discussion Tags: Leave a Comment

Pen and paper

I was browsing the very popular roleplaying forum RPG-Directory today and found an interesting thread asking for members to post valuable roleplaying advice for people who are new to roleplaying. The thread was started by member Shadowed Mirrors and was contributed to by more people than I could possibly list here, it’s best to see the thread here.

Here’s the advice list:

  1. Don’t spam a cbox or you’ll get your head cut off XD
  2. Don’t be rude to older members or you’ll head get cut off
  3. Just don’t loose your head
  4. Save posts to a word document because if you lose it you will be frustrated all day
  5. Variety is good. Mary-sues not so good.
  6. Look-up what a Mary-Sue is XD  Read More

Jan
14

By

Roleplaying story summaries from 2011

Category: PBEM games, Story summaries Tags: , Leave a Comment

 

Girl laptop

2011 was a great year for OngoingWorlds, we had over 200 new members join up, and 148 new games were created (almost double the amount of games created the year before!). Also the game Blue Dwarf was moved to OngoingWorlds from aYahoo Group, instantly making it the game with the most posts on the entire site.

2011 was also a great year for many roleplaying games. Here’s some story summaries of other roleplaying games from 2011: Read More

Jan
8

By

Simming History: In the Beginning

Category: Interviews Tags: 1 Comment

Tigra Tigress has been roleplaying online since the beginning, and has been very influential in the Star Trek communities. She claims she’s one of the longest running Play-by-Email people on the web, and is still simming! The article below was originally discussed in her chat seminar at last year’s SciWorld convention, which she’s continuing in the 2012 convention.

Here’s Tigra’s article:  Read More

Jan
4

By

Aeterna Roma: Roleplaying in the Roman era

Category: non-PBP roleplaying, PBEM games Tags: , 2 Comments

Aeterna RomaThere are many different worlds you can use as a setting for your roleplaying game (I’ve even listed a few ideas here), and here’s a game that’s set in the Roman era. Here’s an explanation of a forum-based roleplaying game Aeterna Roma by its co-founder, Gothy. Read More

« Older Posts
Newer Posts »