OngoingWorlds blog

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

By

50 Years in the Vortex: Roleplaying in the worlds of ‘Doctor Who’

TARDIS

“Let me get this straight. A thing that looks like a police box, standing in a junkyard, it can move anywhere in time and space?”

Ian Chesterton, Doctor Who “An Unearthly Child” (23 November 1963)

On 23 November 2013, Doctor Who, the world’s longest running sci-fi show, turns 50, with a spectacular special episode airing in 70 countries at the same time.

With 800 episodes to the end of this year with more to come and hundreds of expanded universe works, the multiverse of the show is a hugely developed one with lots of ideas for roleplaying.

Are you sitting comfortably? Then we’ll begin. Read More

By

Interview with David Ball about Blue Dwarf, going 13 years strong…

Blue DwarfSo David, give us a little introduction to Blue Dwarf. I assume it is related to the classic Red Dwarf Television show?

It’s based on a British TV show called Red Dwarf which is a scifi comedy about a small group of characters adventuring in space, trying to survive. When I started Blue Dwarf I wanted a game that had the same feel, but didn’t want to be limited to the few main characters, so used the same universe and set the game on a similar ship, the Red Dwarf’s sister ship. Read More

By

Why Role Playing Games Improve Speech and Language Skills

Some dudes just sat on the grass, chillin

Role playing games (RPGs) have been around since the inception of Dungeons and Dragons in 1974, and have since developed into a variety of role playing games and scenarios in recent years.

Whether it’s a historical event, mythical place, exploration or some other type of experience, the idea behind an RPG is that you collaborate with real people to engage and immerse yourself in an imagined and theoretical world. Read More

By

5 steps to world domination: How to create your own sim

Nathan Fillion, Mal Reynolds in Firefly

Nathan Fillion (image: Gage Skidmore)

Blame Nathan Fillion. That’s what I do.

I’ve created a good number of sims for my club (Phoenix Roleplaying) and elsewhere over the years; including some original concepts that I have covered in a previous article.

In this post, I will be covering some more general points about sim creation, focussing in particular on Kvant, the Simulation Cup winning Firefly sim that I created for Phoenix in 2011. I’ll give you a description of that sim to help you get the idea:

The Eagles of Warsaw are an elite mercenary group who travel the ‘Verse, tackling ruthless pirates, vicious Reavers… and rabid music fans. Read More

By

OtherSpace – Crowd funding a roleplaying game

In the last article about OtherSpace‘s upcoming story arc, I mentioned that the new story was funded by the members. This goes to funding the website’s hosting costs (not to be underestimated! I bet there’s many GMs out there who selfishly foot the bill of their hobby, whilst users get a free service!), marketing costs, player rewards, artwork. I thought it was pretty unusual for a roleplaying community to ask for money for the volunteers, so I asked OtherSpace’s Wes Platt about it:

Are the contributions mandatory or voluntary?

Wes PlattIt’s worth noting that we don’t just have contributions coming from participants, although many of our sponsors do play the game. Several are just friends of the game or fans of the idea of collaborative real-time storytelling. Honestly, I’d prefer to see more patrons supporting our creative efforts from outside the playerbase. It just feels so unfair sometimes, going back to the same well and asking for help from the same people, time and again. I’ve been very lucky, though. We have some extremely supportive players. All that said: It is absolutely voluntary. There’s no price of admission and no membership dues. You can join the saga and never contribute a dime – you’ll still be welcome. Read More

By

How Star Army uses custom imagery

ketsurui_rikouOne of the most important and obvious aspects of a text-based roleplaying game is that it uses text. But we don’t just have to stick to the written form, many roleplaying games use imagery and cool graphics to convey ideas, places, characters and mood. After all, a picture is worth a thousand words!

One of the most illustrative roleplaying games I’ve seen is Star Army, which uses brilliant custom artwork. I recently spoke with Wes Davis, creator of Star Army about the amazing artwork they use. Read More

By

Roleplaying Focus – What’s Your Genre?

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

By

Introduction to Star Army – a bespoke play-by-post universe

People and armour

Star Army is a play-by-post roleplaying game using a phpbb forum. The game consists of dozens of plots, all taking place in the same shared universe. They have about 80 regular members who write and roleplay for the site, and has been going since 2000.

I spoke recently with Wes Davis, creator and administrator of the game, and he was able to answer a few questions about Star Army.

Tell us about Star Army

Wes DavisRoleplay primarily focuses on military starships and their crews. We’re just coming out of a multi-year metaplot that was war-centric, so we’re starting to shift focus onto independent adventure plots on the dangerous frontiers of the major empires and improving the diversity of plot types and character types.

Star Army is a space opera setting with faster-than-light travel, aliens, space navies, and post-human construct races. Major themes include questions about what makes us human and what is worth fighting for. In Star Army, the galaxy is in the aftermath of an epic series of wars. Read More

By

The Institution – Interview with Emz

DavidIt’s hard not to notice a game when it’s almost always on the “recently updated” list on the homepage of OngoingWorlds, or when it gets over 100 posts in its first 4 months. The Institution is a modern drama, and here’s the game’s creator: Emz to tell you more about it!

The Institution

Read More

By

Roma – Historic roleplaying

DavidI love history, and especially the Roman period. As a kid I loved visiting ruined Roman forts, which is why I’m really excited to see a Roman-themed roleplay created on OngoingWorlds. This article was written by Edward Willems, the GM of Roma.

RomaThe idea for Roma came gradually, mainly through watching far too many films about ancient Rome and Greece – Come on, what GM hasn’t had a game at least partly derived from a favourite book or film? Anyway, the idea basically solidified when watching the film Troy. The thinking was effectively: “Brilliant, great film, historically accurate, good battle scenes, where are all the gods and monsters I wanted to see?” In the actual myth gods and magic frequently pop in and out, and the story’s pretty flat without them.

It occurred to me that this is true of roleplaying games too – Historical ones are great fun because it’s basically a fantasy setting that’s more believable and comes with its own inbuilt backstory. But the same problem applies: stringently detailed historical accuracy and ruthless realism take the bounce out of any game. Read More