Issue #18 of Suspense & Decision magazine was published using a trial version of Affinity Publisher software, for those of you who might be curious about such things. My trial period has now expired.

Today, I purchased the software.

If I didn't intend to publish Issue #19, then I would not have made this purchase. The long term objective is not to maintain the current overall look of the magazine, but one of the objectives of Issue #18 using the trial version of this software was to see if I could largely emulate the look and feel of previous issues of Suspense & Decision.

However, while I did manage to get issue #18 published, and while using a new software platform, at that, there's still a lot about the software that I don't know about and haven't even experimented with. The most notable "progress" that Issue #18 evidences is the table of contents that contain links to specific pages, and the convenient links at the bottom of article pages that allow would to quickly make their way back to the table of contents page. Perhaps it's not aesthetically pleasing, the way that I did it, but it does attest to a greater degree of functionality for the magazine, compared to what I was previously working with and able to accomplish.

As I become more and more familiar with the new software, it is my hope that the magazine will begin to take on a more polished look - gradually, of course.

For those of you out there who want to create a PBM magazine of your own, feel free to give Affinity Publisher a look. Affinity Publisher can be found here: https://affinity.serif.com/en-us/publisher/

It's really late, here - about two-thirty in the morning - as I sit here putting words to digital paper. This is the calm before the storm, the pause before the lunge directly into maelstrom that is to be the very next issue of Suspense & Decision magazine - Issue #19!

I was gonna write an article around midnight, but I ended up getting sidetracked, and now I'll probably wait until I've had some sleep to carve out the first words of Issue #19's first article. Even still, I did want want to run a few words through the strainer, before I track down my pillow and lay myself down to sleep.

Issue #18 has been out a few days, now. How am I feeling? I'm feeling good. Really, really good! Not about everything, of course, but about the magazine. I haven't gotten a lot of feedback on Issue #18, yet. However, I have heard from a number of different people, and the feedback that has come in, thus far, has been positive. I take that as a good sign. I take it as a positive omen, a harbinger of good things yet to come.

I don't think that any of us has all of the solutions. Now and again, every so often, I try to figure out what lessons that I've learned from this exercise, back from when I first started working on Issue #1 until the most recent issue finally saw the light of day, Issue #18.

One thing that I'm certain of is that if everyone just keeps on doing things exactly as they have been doing them, then we probably won't likely see any substantial positive change of the PBM landscape for the foreseeable future, at a minimum. If PBM companies and PBM moderators intend to keep on keeping down the same road, doing things in the exact same way that they have been doing that got them to where PBM gaming has found itself, today, then if I had to guess, I would be very inclined to say that I think that the status quo will remain pretty much intact. The question that everyone needs to ask themselves is - Is the status quo what you want? Is more of the same the future that you want to see for play by mail gaming?

Most PBM games that ever existed, down through the years of PBM's golden heyday era, I never tried. Many PBM games. hundreds of them, in fact, will likely never be played by anyone, ever again. Why? Because those games are gone, now. Many of their original creators have either passed on or lost interest or simply move don to other things. Yet, I have played a few different PBM games down over the years, and I have had some really wonderful times playing games via the postal service. It's a genre of gaming which, I think, was ahead of its time.

Transitions to electronic and digital forms was seen as THE path to salvation for PBM gaming. Yet, a lot of disruption to the PBM industry has ensued. Some costs were cut - but so, too, were many profit margins upended. The transition to new technologies sounded the death knell for not just countless different PBM games, but to the PBM industry, itself, to a large degree. Not absolutely, but the impact has proved to be very, very devastating, to say the least.

Rick Loomis' recent death cast a solemn pallor across the play by mail gaming realm. As I sit here and reflect, I can't help but to notice that I'm not quite as young as I was, once upon a time ago. And like Rick Loomis, my turn will eventually come, just as yours will, each our own. I can't help but to think that everyone in PBM was so busy trying to cut costs that they may well have cut the industry's throat, too.

For commercial PBM companies, how do you make play by mail gaming more profitable? For prospective PBM players, how do you make PBM gaming more attractive? Furthermore, how do you accomplish both, simultaneously? Honestly, I just don't think that doing more of the same will make that magical formula manifest out of thin air. It's gonna require more.

A lot more!

It's very tiring, at times, arguing with the wind. I've done that a lot, it seems, over the span of the lifetime of Suspense & Decision magazine. Sometimes, it's felt like nothing really seems to matter. Sometimes, people just become set in their ways. I don't say that as a criticism, but merely as an observation from the outside looking in. I'm sure that, in some ways, I'm probably set in my ways, too. So, what now?

Over twenty years ago, I gave a speech, and in that relatively brief speech, one thing that I stressed was that we can either be victims of change, or we can be agents of change. Changes, my PBM friends, is a constant of life. The world changes around us, all of the time. The world changed around PBM. PBM didn't become less fun. It just sort of got passed on by. It's still getting passed by, today.

Much like when an interstate highway supplants previous thoroughfares, and small businesses sometimes pay the price of progress by being cut out of the loop merely as a consequence of technology coming into existence by way of the traffic that they were used to previously then being directed elsewhere, the Internet superhighway left many PBM firms off in the distance, and soon enough, they became little more than distant memories for many. Not all, certainly, but a great bulk of the former overall PBM player base went with this technology, following it along and experiencing new and wonderful and engaging forms of entertainment. And how does the PBM industry of yesterday compete the entertainment offerings of today that the Internet has made possible in such a relatively short time span?

Maybe it can't. Or, as I believe, maybe the remaining PBM powers that be simply won't. Maybe they are done trying. Maybe they've grown older along with the rest of us. Maybe they've already fought their good fight. Maybe they just want to live out their remaining days in peace, perhaps even enjoy some of those new forms of Internet entertainment right along with the rest of us.

If I can't persuade anyone, either on the PBM company side or over on the PBM game moderator side that any notable and sizeable degree of positive change in the overall PBM player base requires notable and sizeable change on their side, then I don't know that there's anything that I can do, personally, effectuate the kind of change and the amount of change that will get PBM gaming thriving, again.

I believe that the big pieces of the puzzle are already in place. I believe that the overall player numbers of PBM gaming can swell to prodigious numbers - numbers that have not been seen in a couple of decades or more. Yes, I really do honestly believe that.

But I also believe that, in order to achieve that, in order to realize that, there's gonna have to be some lightning and some thunder and a true willingness to embrace change. There are some great PBM games, and lineal descendants thereof, out there. But are you willing to go the extra mile?

Because if you're not, then what's the point? You've tried it your way - some of you have tried it your way for decades on end. Maybe what you have been doing all along works for you, and you're simply not inclined to change. After all, who am I to tell you that you need to change?

How many PBM players do you have? How many PBM players do you want to have?

Me? I want to open the floodgates. I want them to come pouring in. I want them to like what you've created and have on offer to the gaming world at large.

Over in the Alamaze community, there's some fabulous stuff going on. Over at RSI, they've got a fabulous game in Hyborian War going on. Over at Phoenix: Beyond the Stellar Empire, they've got some fabulous player loyalty going on. And those are just a few examples that I can cite. But they are important examples.

But are your player numbers what and where you want them to be?

Suspense & Decision magazine is back, and Issue #19 is right around the corner. I decided to give it one more try. Won't you?

PBM development is sparking through the aether...

Paul Mouchet wrote a highly inspiring article in S&D 18 on the trials and tribulations of crafting his own PBM project:

http://suspense-and-decision.com/Issue-1...gazine.pdf (page 6)

His game is called Norfolk Warriors

There WAS an open project to rebuild Vern Holford's Cluster Wars PBM.  The accompanying forum has been dormant for a year, but perhaps it will light up again?

http://www.hochler.com/forum/index.php

And Rinzai has alerted us to Prosperous Universe -- a game so tantalizing that I started browsing through their forum and found they seem to be *hiring* -- looking for designers and developers to join their remote team.

https://com.prosperousuniverse.com/t/we-are-hiring/1587

Mega-PBMer Raven Zachary sent me an e-mail, today, and in it, he compared me to Sisyphus - so it is nice to get Issue #18 of Suspense & Decsision magazine out the door and into the hands of the magazine's readership. Forever rolling a boulder up a hill in Hades certainly has a nice ring to it, where describing what it felt like hauling S & D out of mothballs and reacquainting myself with old processes, while simultaneously learning the ins and the outs of new software. What can I say? I'm tired.

Pooped! Worn out. Worn to a frazzle. These are all phrases that come to mind to describe the experience that was the compiling and the refining of Issue #18. But from the outside looking in, it's more a case of, "Eh? What's the big deal, here?"

And in the midst of it all, Rick Loomis of Flying Buffalo, Inc. passed away. For those that aren't good at grasping the significance of events, Rick Loomis dying was the equivalent of a cataclysmic event in the realm of play by mail gaming. He was the founding father of commercial PBM gaming. He was running commercial PBM games for right at fifty years - half a century! Plus, he also seemed to be the most successful figure associated with play by mail gaming in the entire realm of modern day crowdfunding. If anyone had the mojo, it was Rick Loomis, no question about it!

For Rick Loomis, PBM gaming was a profession - a way of life! For me, PBM gaming has been a hobby interest of mine since the mid-to-late eighties. Rick Loomis, whatever else might be said about the man, has been a constant in the realm of play by mail gaming longer than anyone else in the Old Guard of PBM gaming. Me? I'm not even close. I come and go as I choose, but for whatever combination of reasons, it appears that I have now come back, once again. Plus, I'm getting older by the minute, so honestly, I don't know how much longer I can keep on coming and going. For now, though, I'm here, so let's try to make the most of it, OK? After all, as Rick Loomis' recent passing vividly demonstrates, none of us are promised tomorrow.

If life has taught me anything, it's that irony is an omnipresent force in this universe of ours. It may well yet prove to be the case that the passing of commercial play by mail gaming's founding father may yet revitalize the soil of the PBM scene, leading in time to the dawning of a new golden era in PBM gaming.

As Bernd Jaehnigen phrased it in his article in Issue #18 titled, Tribal Starfleet Trade Report: The Shortcomings of Modern Board Games,| "But there is a large and growing community of gamers out there who have no idea PBMs or PBM-likes even exist. There is demand that no one has tapped into."

Let's find out!

This thread is for discussion of Issue #19 of Suspense & Decision magazine.

The Submission Deadline for articles, news, events, etc. for Issue #19 is: 10 September, 2019

The scheduled Publication Deadline for Issue #19 is: 30 September, 2019

Very sad to say Rick has cancer.  There is a go fund me page to help with medical bills and expenses.

https://www.gofundme.com/f/help-gaming-l...KuU7j9oQkA

https://www.dropbox.com/s/x1f525ptmsl5ui...1.png?dl=0

Struggling to get images inserted into forum posts at the moment so heres a link at our current The Isles advert

Let's see how this goes. I signed for a freeplay position here:

http://www.madcentral.co.uk/dungeonworld...eplay.html

I like how this is done - play one character, it's free for life. Play two or more characters, it's paid.

The game is free and open to all. Join the game, make friends, enjoy.
https://sites.google.com/site/clashlegends/scenarios/war-of-dwarves-and-orcs
http://clashlegends.com/

I was fiddling with a few things, last night, trying to fix something. So, if you encounter any error messages, it's probably due to that. I will try to get these issues sorted out over the next day or two. I won't have time to mess with them, today, though, due to other obligations.

Anyone want to volunteer to do a fresh install of the forum software from scratch, and import the existing user base and messages?