This forum is for discussion of Stefan Graf's game of Diplomacy played via PBM Chaos.

This forum is for the discussion of Diplomacy.

Players can SHOOT or they can MOVE. Of course, if you MOVE, I need to know WHERE you are moving to. And if you SHOOT, I need to know WHO you're shooting or WHAT LOCATION that you're shooting at.

There is no rulebook, per se. I can try to put one together, as time allows, but there wouldn't be a book, even if I did. What you fail to grasp is that is basically the rules. You have one character to play. Your character can either SHOOT or MOVE. If you do neither, or miss a turn, then your character stays where they are at, but are still susceptible to being shot at by other characters. Two characters can't occupy the same space/location, so you can't move into a location where another player is. You can try, but if they don't move, then your character won't move. The dead are instantly removed, so if you try to move into a location where a character is dead, your move will go through.

As I have posted, previously, PBMville is an experiment. Me? I hate big, thick, lengthy rulebooks. So, I am trying to keep rules to a bare minimum. One character, one order per character. And it's not a complicated choice - SHOOT or MOVE. But I do have to know where you are moving to, or what you are shooting at. Otherwise, how would I just automatically know which character that you're shooting at, or what location that you're moving to?

That's basically the sum totality of your "rulebook" that you are asking for.

Now, there may or may not be Events, as the game progresses. If so, then those Events will be explained at the time that the Events transpire. No player gets rules for Events ahead of time, because that would give the Events away before they happen.

If one reads the issues of PBM Chaos, then everything that you need to play is included in PBM Chaos. I did create a rule to govern what happens, when I make a mistake, as GM/Narrator. That's a rule for me, not for players, though. Even then, dice will decide.

When players SHOOT, as was explained in PBM Chaos recently, I roll dice (one die). Specifically, I roll to see if the shot is a HIT or a MISS. If it's a MISS, that's the end of your turn and action. If it's a HIT, then I roll that one die, again, to see if you WOUND or KILL the targeted character. I never know ahead of time who is going to actually get shot or killed.

There's no big rulebook to study. That's not what I wanted to create. PBMville is more an experiment than a game. As a game, it is an exercise in minimalism and incrementalism. It begins at a very basic level. One character, one decision per turn. And your one character with one decision per turn only gets to choose between SHOOT or MOVE.

Rather than inundate and bury players with a bunch of rules, in PBMville they start off with basically no rules, and no more than one character with one decision to make.

Events, should they happen, are a way to increase the rules, but in a very deliberate, incremental manner. This approach allows for a gradual increase in complexity, and players do not have to worry about devouring a bunch of rules all at once. This is geared at hopefully providing players with a more leisurely atmosphere for playing PBMville.

A large part of the "fun" to be found or discovered in PBMville doesn't revolved around a player's one measly character. Rather, it's more about what everyone else's character choose to do. Your one character's role is an exercise in simplicity, itself. SHOOT or MOVE. How utterly boring, right? But complexity can arise, where numerous simple decisions arise in the course of any given turn. That's one of my theories, anyway. While you're shooting somebody, somebody else might be shooting you.

Common sense says that gunfights are dangerous. Very, very dangerous. There's good reasons that most people avoid gunfights, if they can. Yet, in the context of a "game," players instinctively sense that if all that they do is to try and avoid gunfights, then they will end up missing out on something - namely, the excitement that naturally accompanies shooting the other guy's character and killing them.

If you follow along long enough with what gets published in issues of PBM Chaos, you will likely begin to notice subtle changes. Incremental degrees of complexity are being slowly woven into the fabric of the game/experiment. For instances, players are learning really quickly that characters can die very quickly. First turn deaths can, will, and have happened, already. Also, some characters are now WANTED, Dead or Alive - and a reward is now attached to their heads. Obvious changes in incremental form, but changes that do NOT require a rulebook to grasp and understand. Also introduced without more rules for players to learn is that characters' kill counts are kept track of. Where there were no kills, because no character had died, there was no information of this sort to track - and by extension, no reason to trouble players with it.

All information (including all rules of the game) are not always relevant nor needed, and particularly if they aren't even in play. Providing a rulebook with everything that could happen over the course of the game creates a DISTRACTION. Players should concentrate on the game, not on a rulebook that mentions things that haven't even happened, yet, nor which may ever happen. Players tend to remember that PBMville is a GAME, more than they remember that PBMville is an EXPERIMENT.

In real life, we live our lives in the PRESENT moment. Yet, people routinely allow themselves to become distracted, by dwelling upon the PAST and/or the FUTURE. In the context of a so-called "rulebook," most of what you might view to be the "rules" are likely a part of PBMville's FUTURE. Characters that exist in the game, now, are not seers nor prophets. They cannot see into the future. Hell, in many ways, even I can't see into the future of this game, and I'm the GM and Narrator.

PBMville is NOT a dungeon crawl. Players don't even get to write their own characters' backstories. Rest assured, that players do get to make decisions, but as of the present moment, their choices and range of decisions is VERY LIMITED, and this is intentional and by design.

At worst, PBMville ends up being a failed experiment. Players may or may not end up finding any fun to be found in the concept. Some players may choose to stick around longer than other players. Some players may experience parts of the game that other players do not. Right now, what players "see" is the town map of PBMville with its various locations marked out with numbers, and other characters (most of which are player characters, with a couple of non-player (NPC) characters tossed into the mix. Players cannot see ahead in time, nor can they see anything other than that town map and other characters. But even where the other characters are concerned, they only "see" the other characters that are in the game, right now, though they also have an AWARENESS of characters that died, but which used to be in the portion of PBMville that they see.

Perhaps this "explanation" is something that you prefer, but this explanation isn't the same thing as a rulebook. To understand the RULES of the game, read the issues of PBM Chaos as they get published, and in the order that they get published (at least, from the point where PBMville began). Players do NOT receive individual turn results via e-mail. Instead, turn results for the entire game get published on an issue-by-issue basis. Accordingly, the RULES as you envision such things to be, will appear in issues of PBM Chaos. Players do NOT receive rules that are irrelevant ahead of time. That is a big, big no-no!

And if you bothered to read all of this, then you're likely the most knowledgeable player in the game, but you still don't know more rules about the game than anyone else.

If it has to do with Galac-Tac, feel free to post it in this section.

Feel free, also, to contact Talisman Games via e-mail at: galactac@talisman-games.com

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Magazine Articles about Galac-Tac

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The town saloon is open for business!

Talk away. Jabber your jaw off. It don't matter if you're new to town, or if you've been here a while.

You need to come up with a character name, preferably a colorful one. Your character needs a first name, a last name, and a descriptor of some kind - examples might be Dangerous Joe Jenkins, Wild-eyed Bill Hoffman, Henry "Silver Dollar" Cassidy.

Then, send me your character info via e-mail to: grimfinger@playbymail.net

You don't have to subscribe to PBM Chaos, in order to play, but you will need to read/browse each new issue of PBM Chaos, because that's where all turn results for all players get posted. If you don't, you won't where to move or not move your character, nor where to shoot.

If you haven't subscribed to PBM Chaos, then you can do that at this link:
https://stats.sender.net/forms/bo4xAd/view

If you ever need to look at old issues of PBM Chaos, you can find links to those at this link:
https://forums.playbymail.dev/

Your character can either MOVE or Shoot in any given turn. Your character CANNOT move to a location where another character who is alive is at. If you try to do that, your move order will fail. 

Your character CAN move into a location where a character lies dead. We haven't had this situation, yet, but if two or more characters try to move into the same location, only one of them will get that location. The others will be shit out of luck.

You don't have to worry about loading/reloading your gun, and you don't have to worry about running out of ammunition. You aim by Shooting at a location. You may hit your target, or you may miss your target.

When you move, you can only move one location distance from your character's current location. If you aren't sure if you can move or shoot to/at a particular location, then you can always e-mail me and ask me.

Life isn't fair, so the game isn't fair. Life in the Wild West isn't fair. It's downright rough, at times. It's easy to get wounded. It's easy to die. The more characters that pour out into the streets of PBMville, the more crowded the streets become, and the more dangerous they become.