I dropped by, today, and cleaned up a little bit of forum spam, and deleted a few spambot accounts.

I hope that everyone is doing well.

OK, lay it on us  - what is up with the future of this magazine?
If you need help (understandable), what do you need?

Well, we haven't heard from Grimfijnger in awhile.  Is that his fault, or is that ours?  We have to show there is a reason for companies to produce games, and then for magazines to cover them. 

We have to do our part. 

Rick McDowell
www.alamaze.co
support@alamaze.co 

I renewed the web hosting service, today. The amount of disk space available has also been increased.

Not a review per se, but I came across the following in my files.  It was originally published in S&S ToC newsletter and shows some of the passion and action what was Tribes of Crane.

                                                               The Lion Strikes

    Lee's orders weighed heavy in his hands. The enemy had been found, now it was up to his and Eyrik's warriors to bring them to bay.

    With his training of the Willamette almost complete, he had been ordered to rendezvous with the Klamath southeast of Arcola to guard against the Beastmaster people coming south to aid Drakon's forces at Arcola.

    With the link up complete he had conferred with Eyrik Gunnarson, Chief of the Klamath. Both of them had agreed that the Beastmaster probably wouldn't come down. Darkon's forces were out numbered and being mauled at Arcola. Darkon wasn't the most brilliant at times, but he wouldn't throw a tribe away. No they'd have to scout north up the Rahwack road to find them.

    Just before their scouts were to depart, a messenger had ridden up with a note form Kinglord Al-Ra-Shan.

    Liam had held the scouts up while he broke the coded note to read its important words. When he was done he sent one of his runner’s for Chief Gunnarson, this was news to be shared.
    
    When Eyrik showed up, Liam quickly gave him the grist of the message, “Hoseclan and Warlord of Thunder units have continued their attacks against Darkon’s forces around the city. Also and more important Al-Ra-Shan has had reports from his forester’s that the Beastmaster people were seen near the north edge of the woods on the road.” “Now we can concentrate our scouts instead of scattering them everywhere looking for those devils.” Eyrik added. And so the scouts were briefed and sent out with orders to pin down the Beastmaster’s position.

    While the scouts were out the rest of the warriors had prepared for the coming battle. There was no question in any of their minds as to what must be done. If the enemy wouldn’t come to them, they were to tear the forest down if necessary to flush them out. Weapons were given one final edge and many of the warriors were strengthening or adding extra bindings to their warhawks.

    No battle in the clear grasslands this time, they would be diving in and out of the trees and crashing through the branches to get at the enemy. They were to hammer the Beastmaster until the enemy broke ... pound them into the ground. The enemy was strong no one doubted that, but had not the Multnomah stood up to them and fought them to a stand still? And what of now? Darkon’s own was hiding in the forest afraid to meet them in open combat. They would show the council just how good they were. Between them and the Klamath they would strike the Beastmaster a blow Darkon himself would feel where ever he was.

    All too soon the scouts returned, the Beastmaster had been found right where Al-Ra-Shan said they’d be. Orders were issued, plan’s finalized. The Willamette would have the honor of drawing first blood followed closely by the Klamath’s attack. Many would die but Kinglord Lee had given his orders, destroy the Beastmaster people and they would do so this bright fall morning .... or die trying.

Hi Folks,

I've done some more work on the game, and I am looking for playtesters to try and break the system for me.  I'll be adding to the background/world as the playtest continues, but I really need to make sure that the basics work too.  Anyway, if you're interested follow the link below, or send me a private message with your email address or Yahoo ID and I'll send you an invite to the group:

https://ca.groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/d...usade/info

Hope to see you there soon. 

Stephen

Here you may get to know Alamaze - the Origins and GAMA Play By Mail Game of the Year.
We started about 1985, and are about as big as ever here in 2014, with over 85 games started in the last 18 months, so about 1 a week on average.  We also are presently at about $2 a turn for most players.  (www.alamaze.co) 

We are constantly updating kingdoms and code to keep things fresh.  We maintain records in Valhalla.  We have a really good order checking  utility in our web order entry system.  We run turns roughly 2x a week - actually 7x a month.   Turns are due noon Eastern USA and generally are processed within a few hours.

We are looking for some more players for the next Darkness of Silverfalls game, buts in german language. 

http://www.pbem-spiele.de/index.php?id=98

Its for free, possible someone can german... 

(here is a thread in which we can discuss what I posted in the blog)

Speaking as the assistant regional manager of Suspense & Decision magazine, I present you a quick summary of current status:

Grimfinger is still presumably on his sabbatical/hiaitus/self-imposed banishment. I have been unable to email or PM him.

Charles, I deeply and sincerely hope all is well with you and your family. Please feel free to update us or maintain radio silence, as you see fit. All is good with us, with your media empire, and with PBM in general. Having said that, I think I speak for all of us when I say "we'd love to hear from you!"

I have a full issue's worth of articles in my posession, edited and mostly formatted. I could post an interim version of the magazine using this content. Some of it is really good stuff indeed. If I had all the collateral that Charles has, I would gladly put Issue 10 together myself. What I am lacking is:
•Cover art
•Ads (we could either do an issue without ads, or rip them from last issue)
•Charles' multiple columns
•Charles' explicit permission to publish an issue
So, if anyone is reading this, what do you think we should do?
•Wait until we hear from Charles?
•Publish an interim issue without the fancy stuff?
•Try to create a full issue, filling in what we can?
•Full-on publication and here's some cover art and/or editorial ramblings to help out?
I will start a thread on the forum -- please post your thoughts there. The forum appears beset by some error messaging, but still works. You can browse threads and post while ignoring the errors. I haven't seen Charles on the list of "recently active members", but I have seen some of you. Please chime in there.

Which ALSO brings me to the question of how to help shoulder the load of Charles' large PBM media conglomerate. He has hinted that he might consider offloading some parts to other helping hands. Here are the main chunks -- please consider which of these you as a loyal member of the PBM community might want to help out with:
•Suspense & Decision magazine
•PlayByMail.net forum
•This blog
•PBM wiki
I post all this, obviously, without any consent or contact from Charles. I just thought it might be useful if we "loyal members" could try to rally ourselves to support the community and perhaps help