OngoingWorlds blog

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

By

Keeping your players in the loop & developing your community

The guild cast

Roleplaying is great. Characters, story, worldbuilding. Great!

But what also makes it great is roleplaying with friends. People we like and trust, and enjoy chatting with. This is why it’s often important to develop your community outside of the roleplay too. Read More

By

October Image competition – Entry form

october image competition

Hey dudes, we did this last month and I’m doing it again! Basically nominate your game using the form below and I’ll pick the game with the best image to win. You can see last month’s winner here.

I’ve extended the date another week because I should have already published this blog article by now. That gives you 10 days to enter. Closing date is October 18th, which gives you some time to use your Photoshop skills and upload a great game image! Read More

By

Need to write characters with cancer, ADHD, epilepsy or are horses? RPG-D has you covered!

horse

The basic anatomy of a horse for roleplayers. You need this in your life!

I know this is a bit of an edge case, but sometimes you might be writing about a character with an ailment which you don’t have much experience with. I noticed recently that the RPG-Directory forum has a reference section called ‘D-pedia which has the following guides:

Read More

By

How to write a newsletter for your roleplaying game/site

DavidRecently on our Facebook page I asked what sort of articles you’d like to see on the blog, & several people asked asked for more helpful advice for roleplayers & game owners. Elena (who runs her own roleplaying site “Before the Mast”) volunteered to write us this article. She talks about a game as a “site”, but this is totally relevant if your game is part of a larger site, like games on OngoingWorlds.

Woman with newsletter

How to write a newsletter for your site

The marketing concepts would tell you that newsletters are one of the least expensive – and most effective – public relations tools that exist for drawing attention to a website. I’d say it is very valid for the RPG world too, as it happens on sites. Read More

By

Some secrets for an effective villain

Final boss

I saw these tips in the newsletter RPT#624 by Johnn Four. Read More

By

Become a Hero and be entwined in OngoingWorlds’ tentacles forever BWAHAHAHA

Squiddie grabbing heroOkay I admit I just wanted an excuse to use this cool graphic I made.

This article is a bit old now. Hero Membership is still a thing, and is the best way to support the website. But the details have changed, so here’s a link to a much more recent article:

Become a patreon & get Hero Membership

By

Way With Worlds: Heroes and Villains – Dark Mary Sues

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. -David

Looking through glass

NOTE: I am addressing Mary Sues in this column, which often involves questions of definition. As Mary Sues (and the male counterpart Gary Stu) are often a continuum, I wanted to clarify my defintion. My definition is of an “author’s pet” – a character who gets vastly preferential treatment by the author in a way that distorts the story. Thus I am discussing them entirely in the negative. Read More

By

Need a Scifi Avatar for your character? There’s a website for that!

Last week I discovered a website that seemed very useful for people roleplaying in a scifi setting. Called Sci-Fi Avatars, it’s a large database of Photoshopped character images you can take and use as your character.

Star trek avatars website screenshot

With photos of loads of different aliens from Star Trek, Klingons, Andorians, Bolians etc, you can just pick one and use it to represent your character without having to trawl the internet or attempt some dodgey Photoshop yourself.  Read More

By

New category: Adventure

Indiana Jones

A new category of “Adventure” has been added to the list of types of games. Read More

By

Hero membership

Hero membership

Hey dudes, I’ve added a new way to highlight & reward users who donate. As a way for me to say thanks, and for donators to have something a bit special. Read More