OngoingWorlds blog

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

Jun
14

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Wreckage: A survival roleplaying game

Category: Behind the scenes - running RPGs, Interviews, OngoingWorlds site news, PBEM games, Story summaries Tags: , 1 Comment

Wreckage

David

I’m always glad when I see a new game created on OngoingWorlds, and I especially like the bespoke games with a very stand-alone story. A story created recently that looks extremely promising is Wreckage, created by Mike, who recently wrote some articles for this blog. Stand-alone games (and I mean games that aren’t based on an existing franchise like Harry Potter, Star Trek etc) are often tough to get started because it can be difficult to attract players, but are great because you’ve got complete freedom over the world and characters, and Mike’s game has made a brilliant start at creating a gripping story.

I asked Mike 3 questions about his game, and here’s what he wrote:

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May
5

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Spellbound: Taking inspiration from fantasy

Category: Interviews, PBEM games Tags: , Leave a Comment

DavidOne of the games I keep noticing pop up on the homepage occasionally is Spellbound, a fantasy game created last November, and had a very popular time over December and January. Spellbound has a good compliment of character,s each with a consistent Japanese anime style image. The game’s pace unfortunately slowed over February- March but made a comeback in April and has been on the homepage (or not far away) ever since.

I spoke to the creator of the game Phantasmagoria and asked him about Spellbound.

Have you played play-by-post games before?

phantasmagoriaI regularly play a few play-by-post games on-line – we usually use special forums such as Myth Weavers to play. Since they are designed to play games this way, and contain a load of features that make a game easy to manage and play for both the game master and the players themselves. Most of the games I play I usually tend to be the game master. I like having that ability to create a world. It’s where my user name comes from. Phantasmagoria could be described as a magical illusion of changing imagery, and considering with each new play-by-post game is a different world and changing story, I think this suits rather well! Read More

Mar
23

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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

Jan
14

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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
4

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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

Dec
11

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Interview with Tristan Wolf from Starbase 118

Category: Interviews, non-PBP roleplaying, PBEM games, Play-by-post discussion Tags: Leave a Comment

We wrote an article about UFOP: Starbase 118 back in October (you can see it here). I was able to recently ask some questions to the group’s founder Tristan Wolf. Here’s the interview: Read More

Nov
16

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Before the Mast, roleplaying in the Age of Sail [Interview]

Category: Interviews, non-PBP roleplaying, PBEM games Tags: 1 Comment

Before the Mast sailing ships

Before the Mast is a forum-based roleplaying game set in the ‘age of sail’, a term I’ve only recently learned – I’ve previously just called it “pirate times”, but it’s clear there’s a lot going on at this time in history, which is where Before the Mast RPG comes in. Fixing itself firmly in history, this is a roleplaying game (or “writing community” as Elena prefers) for history fans.

The game has been running since the 6th of August 2010, and Before the Mast has been very active especially on Twitter and Facebook. I interviewed their moderator Elena Vasilescu and asked her about the game. Read More

Oct
21

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USS Providence, a chat-based sim

Category: non-PBP roleplaying, PBEM games, Play-by-post discussion Tags: , , 3 Comments

USS ProvidenceContinuing our theme of Star Trek sims (we’ll stop and cover a different genre soon, I promise!) here’s an interview with Josh from USS Providence, part of the FSF (Federation Sim Fleet). Fleets seem very popular with Star Trek sims, it’s easy to unite games when they stare the same theme and same universe. Like I’ve already mentioned in the article about Star Trek Freedom, the sense of community in fleets can make it a great experience, which is probably why many Star Trek sims seem to have existed for a very long time.

The USS Providence sim began February 22nd, 2003. It has run continuously since then. I chatted with Josh Hrach, who is the GM for the USS Providence. Read More

Oct
10

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The importance of community in Star Trek Freedom

Category: PBEM games, Play-by-post discussion Tags: , , 5 Comments

Star Trek FreedomSome roleplaying games have the staying power to stay around for many years, while some lose their members and close just after a few weeks. A roleplaying game isn’t just about roleplaying, it’s also a community. To find out how important a sense of community is to a roleplaying group I asked Anthony Keen, CO of roleplaying community Star Trek Freedom. When I last interviewed Anthony Keen, it was clear that they’re taking it very seriously and put a lot of effort into both the game and the community. Star Trek Freedom has been around for over 13 years, so they’re definitely doing something right to make their players stick around. They’re really active as a community and socialise together using email, forums, Twitter and Facebook.

PR (Public Relations) is very important to us as its the sense of community and family that holds our game together.

Anthony Keen, Star Trek Freedom

Many roleplaying games focus on the characters in the game, and not so much about their players. It’s common to see a character biography on many roleplaying websites, but Star Trek Freedom also has a personal biography for all players too. You can also see a gallery of player photos here.

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Oct
5

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Welcoming Blue Dwarf to OngoingWorlds

Category: OngoingWorlds site news, PBEM games Tags: 5 Comments

Blue Dwarf

Last week a new game was created on OngoingWorlds that is a big deal for me. It’s technically not a new game at all, it’s a game that’s over 11 years old, a game I created and have been running for over 11 years.

The Blue Dwarf is a game based on a comedy scifi TV show called Red Dwarf which has been a favourite of mine since I was a teenager. I wanted to extend the world of the show, but knew I didn’t want to involve the small number of original characters because we’d never be able to write them as well as the original writers. There was a lot of scope in Red Dwarf’s universe, mostly because it was hardly explored which meant that anything we wrote couldn’t be proved wrong. Mainly it was the spirit of Red Dwarf that I wanted to continue, even if it wasn’t about the original characters.

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