OngoingWorlds blog

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

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2023 Tournament of Simulations open for nominations… Finally!

It’s long past time for us to hold the next Tournament of Simulations (ToS)… before it’s 2025! Speaking of years, ToS is the oldest and longest-running award in the simming and online role playing community.

For those who might be unfamiliar with ToS, this is where you can enter your role play to potentially win a prize at no cost or risk to you! Judges from across the community go through all of the entries and grade them on story, characters, and readability.

As has been our tradition for several years now, play-by-post games will be graded on 10 consecutive posts while chat games will be graded on a single chat session. All sims will be considered regardless of club or fleet affiliation. We then present awards to the top-scoring games. The sims that don’t place are not announced. That’s right: you’ve got nothing to lose, so why not enter?

Okay, enough on that. How about we get on with the nominations…

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2022 Simulation Cup Results… Finally!

Image by Malkfan

What a tournament! A record of 88 fantastic entrants led to another record of 36 awards to be conferred below. Before we get to those, however, you might remember that we’re running this Tournament of Simulations (ToS) under the Simulation Cup banner to honor the 2012 and 2014 tournaments.

Naming conventions aside, this competition has been one for the ages, easily blowing away last year’s records of 70 entrants with 26 winners. The participation and excellence displayed is a true testament to the ongoing strength of the simming and online role playing community, regardless of what others might say.

As I say every year, evaluating sims is a subjective art, and this is certainly true with ToS.  We’re not here to identify the best games as this is impossible.  Instead, we’re here to identify what we think are outstanding sims that exude excellence.  A different set of judges might very well chose a completely different set of winners.  And that’s okay! If you’re interested, this is how we select the winners. With that on the record once again, here are your 2022 Simulation Cup winners:

Play-by-Post

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Top Blog Posts of 2023

Continuing our annual tradition dating back to 2014, it’s time to announce our top blog posts from the last year. Yes, it’s been a slow year here at the Blog, our slowest ever in fact with only five total articles published all year.

However, 2023 did produce one of our most interesting posts yet, one that I’m not even sure what to make of TBH. If you haven’t read it, take a look below:

Let’s get back on track in 2024…

If you’re a writer or just passionate about play-by-post, we would love to hear from you and publish your work!

Past summaries: 2014 | 2015 | 2016 | 2017 | 2018 | 2019 | 2020 | 2021 | 2022

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Omens

While toiling away attempting to come up with a great story. Yes, before you say anything I know it has been over a year since my last article. But I digress… Instead of coming up with a great story I stumbled across a very interesting comment on a previous Ongoing Worlds article:

In the 3rd month of the 33rd year, the Castle collapses
Young and Old collide in combat
Seizing the opportunity, the Brazen Man attacks
The Estate is now his, and They his subjects


On the first read, I didn’t know what to think of it, though someone else replied in the comments section with, “What is this squiddies poetry?” Poetry yes, but not Squiddies, I thought. If there’s one thing I’ve learned in my many years of simming, it’s that you never know what to expect next or where it will come from next!

Back to the task at hand of trying to get the creative juices flowing and continuing to work backwards in time through the blog posts, I observed a similarly strange poetry-like comment in the Babel Conference article. I then noticed that both comments were from someone going by the name of Nicholas de Sim with an avatar of simply NdS. My interest was piqued! I clicked on Mr. de Sim’s Disqus profile, which revealed six different four-liners. Seeing them all together, they then reminded me of Nostradamus quatrains. Do we have a Nostradamus in simming? Google search time!

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2022 Simulation Cup: Enter Today!

Image by Malkfan

With calendar year 2022 in the books, it’s time for us to formally close it out with the annual Simulation Cup. Wait, don’t I mean the annual Tournament of Simulations aka ToS? Yes, they are one at the same!

According to our records, the 2012 tournament was held under the Simulation Cup banner. In honor of that event 10 years ago, we decided to use its name again today. And we think it makes a pretty cool poster too!

The mechanics of the game remain the same: Here are a few tips on how to win. For those who may be unfamiliar, this is where you can enter your role play to potentially win a prize at no cost or risk to you! Judges from across the community go through all of the entries and grade them on story, characters, and readability.

As has been our tradition for several years now, play-by-post games will be graded on 10 consecutive posts while chat games will be graded on a single chat session. All sims will be considered regardless of club or fleet affiliation. We then present awards to the top-scoring games. The sims that don’t place are not announced. That’s right: you’ve got nothing to lose, so why not enter?

Okay, enough on that. How about we get on with the nominations…

Read More

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Top Blog Posts of 2022

As we say hello to 2023 today, it’s time to take a look back at yesterday with some of the best blog posts of 2022. This has become somewhat of a tradition around here since we first did it for 2014. These talented writers amaze me every year with their insight and dedication to the community and the sheer creativity!

Enjoy….

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The Benefits of Playing Online Role-Playing Games

Image source


A lot has been written recently about artificial chatbot ChatGPT. The New York Times describes it as a ‘Code Red’ For Google Search. Other sites talk about its ability to potentially disrupt Hollywood, how it can write essays, and that it can even negotiate your cable bill. More worryingly, in the hands of bad actors, it can be used to generate malicious code. Since it can seemingly do so much, what can it do for role playing? I decided to put it to the test with this request:

Write a blog post to appear on ongoingworlds.com

Here’s what we got in response:

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20 Years in Star Army

While 2021 turned out to be the year of the anniversary, we haven’t run out of anniversaries quite yet. Indeed, our friends at Star Army celebrated a big one earlier in 2022. Depending on how you count it, they were founded in either June or November 2002. Regardless, it’s still an incredible 20 years!

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Whether it’s coffee, Earl Grey, or Romulan Ale, it’ll taste better in your very own UtopiaFleet mug!

That’s how it read on the shopping or merchandise or whatever they called it page on the Utopia Fleet website more than 20 years ago. As I recall, they sold at least four different Utopia Fleet-branded items:

ItemPriceDescriptionPitch
100% Cotton T-Shirt$14.99“White T-Shirt with Fleet logo on the front and the URL of the Fleet homepage on the back.”none
11 & 15-ounce Coffee Mugs$12.50 / $13.99“Dishwasher safe ceramic coffee mugs.”“Whether it’s coffee, Earl Grey, or Romulan Ale, it’ll taste better in your very own UtopiaFleet mug!”
Mouse Pad$12.99“Standard-sized premium cloth covered mousepad”“What better way to show your loyalty to the Fleet than by having the logo right under your mouse?”
Ballcapunknownunknownunknown
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SciWorld is Here!

Good evening,

I just wanted to take a quick moment to remind everyone that the SciWorld convention is just about eight hours away. For an up-to-date schedule and additional information please visit the website for the con and it’s Discord.

Website: https://www.sciworldonline.com/

Josh