I inadvertently deleted the template for this site's front page, last night. It would not cooperate, when I tried to fix it. I'll get to it over the next day or two, if all goes well.'

Sorry for the inconvenience.

There's a copy of issue # 15 of Paper Mayhem magazine on sale on ebay.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/PAPER-MAYHEM-15-...5d408c48e0

Starting bid amount is: $9.99

Sale ends on Jul 01, 2013 21:15:50 PDT.

The Galactic Prisoners Facebook page has some new commentary on it, in the Recent Posts by Others on Galactic Prisoners section. Specifically, a one Mike O'Neill posted little about the origin of Galactic Prisoners, its connection to a predecessor game called Starship Command, and he mentioned that he is in contact with the programmer for Galactic Prisoners.

Check it out for yourself, by clicking here.

Having all of those old issues of Paper Mayhem on my desk definitely helped. If nothing else, they provided a ready stash of food for thought.

Over the last several days, I have pondered on things PBM. Specifically, there have been two things which have been the subject of my play by mail thought patterns.

The first of these is that, of the remaining Play-By-Mail games still active, a number of these share something in common - namely, predetermined start-up positions. Hyborian War, Middle-earth PBM, and even the recently resurrected Alamaze all fall into this category, to name a few that come immediately to mind.

The second of these is that some of the more promising entrants into the quasi-PBM fray, such as Far Horizons, Rimworlds, Empyrean Cluster Wars, Ilkor: Dark Rising, and Fate of a Nation appear to be either dead or their development has slowed to a crawl. Both Rimworlds and Empyrean Cluster Wars seem to still be out there, making sporadic progress, but news from these beasts is few and far between.

We will soon be entering the second half of 2013, and from all appearances, it will be another year of drought for those seeking a new crop of PBM games to whet their appetite with.

PlayByMail.Net is one to talk, though, huh?

Week after week of bone dry emptiness. A mere hull of what it could have been, by now. What was it about the blind leading the blind?

With the vats of irony overflowing, with plenty for all to drink, the wheels of play by mail gaming continue to turn at their cosmically slow pace.

In our home, Red Dead Redemption and Injustice: Gods Among Us are the latest two entrants into my son's PlayStation 3 video game collection. But, the PBM cupboard is bare, as far as new entrants into the genre are concerned.

Where's Ryan Probert and Debellos Invinco, when you need them?

Site user, Ixnay, has set off down the path of game development for his project, Event Horizon. Rome was not built in a day, however, and neither will Event Horizon take form quite that quick - assuming that it ever comes to fruition, at all.

Over all of PBMdom, the pallor of doubt was cast, long ago. It is in that haze, that a term used in describing black holes gave birth to the spark of creation in Ixnay. It was not, however, a dream born yesterday. Browsing the quiet remnants of the PBM Gamer forum, today, I took note of Ixnay's words recorded there. The wheels in his mind have been turning the sands of imagination for more than a couple of years, it seems. I wish him well on his journey across the vast plains of game development. May he not get lost in pursuit of his objective.

Middle-earth with its twenty-five player positions, and Hyborian War with its thirty-six player positions, represent a degree of thought and complexity that strikes me as missing from much of the PBM-esque offerings that have appeared on the PBM horizon in recent years.

Somebody had to come up with all of the characters and information contained in the kingdom start-ups for Hyborian War and Middle-earth. How very time consuming it must have been - and without the Internet at one's disposal to facilitate such undertakings. Somebody had to move mountains. Somebody had to do the grunt work.

Programming is, I suspect, grunt work, even on the very best of days. Lots of mundane code to write. How does one create a PBM work of art out of the techno-babble of programming language, anyway? Your guess is as good as mine.

If play by mail is to rise once more, then someone is going to have to move a few mountains. Somebody's got to ante up, and step up to the plate, and do the grunt work necessary to turn an idea into an actual reality.

Right about now is when one begins to realize just how desolate that PBM space is.

We're all alone out here, you and I - and whomever else just might wander by this way.

I can't program. I just don't have the knack for it. I wouldn't even know where to begin. That's one mountain that this man cannot move - cannot hope to move.

But, I can fire up the engines on this editorial page, once more. It won't give you a new PBM game to play, but it will give you something new to read, when next you drop by this site.

It's been many months, since I last heard any news about the relaunch of PBM Universal by Bob McLain. Perhaps it was simply never meant to be. Just one of many rumors that blow in the PBM winds.

Whatever direction that these winds may blow, may you always enjoy the breeze.

Hi all,
I've just found this site recently after looking for a PBM game I could play. Mad Central looks good, though I signed up for Twilight Earth and hadn't received any turn reports. Abnormals looks cool but not sure when it'll pick up in activity again.
What I'm really interested in is Fall of Rome, although I'm blind, use a screen reader and Java aplets for whatever reason are unusable to screen readers. I've emailed their support and haven't gotten any response as to whether anything could be done, like make a web order form like KJC Games Nexus, although I have some problems with that one as well.
So does anyone know a game like FoR with story-based combat or heck, the whole turn report story-based would be awesome, has a web order form primarily consisting of drop downs and stuff and emailed turn reports.
Duel2 sounds cool but there are so many web games where I could play tha game for free and I don't see how it's worth it. Plus, I saw the sample duel and the descriptions weren't very exciting. I'd be interested to see a Fall of Rome turn report.
Anyway, just wondering if anyone knew of a game based on story but is computer moderated, similar to FoR.
Thanks.

One of the most "challenging" space empire PBM games of the 80s was Empyrean Challenge. It pushed the standards of the day to the limit in terms of informational awareness, design and customization, text reporting, team-based competition, military planning, and cost. (Mature positions could cost in excess of $10/turn -- in the 80s!)

Now it is back in the form of Cluster Wars. Original creator Vern Holford (interviewed elsewhere in these fora) has assembled a team and is recreating this beast with significant updates in terms of rules and (especially) tools. He ran game #1 of what he is calling a "pre-alpha" release, which seems to have concluded. Now game #2 is starting up, with a full roster of 20 players (I believe).

I will blog about it here in this thread. If anyone here is interested in joining, I encourage them to contact Vern (go to www.clusterwars.com for info). PBM games are usually hit with dropouts, and an early take-over of an abandoned position should find you in good shape for a full experience and an even shot at victory.

CW uses a highly customized MS Access client tool to both display every detail of your empire and provide you with power tools to craft your orders. It is, in my humble opinion, somewhat confusing. But the team has now put together a detailed tutorial to help get players through the first few turns. The first turn tutorial can be found here:

http://www.clusterwars.com/cluster-wars-tutorial

This tutorial, along with the MS Access tool, the CW web site, and the rules, suffers from deficiencies in layout, formatting, clarity, completeness, and accessibility to the uninitiated. But it more than makes up for that with enthusiasm, nuts-and-bolts knowledge-sharing, and a sense of collaboration with the development team. Like the game, it is a diamond in the rough.

The basic premise is that our star cluster is recovering from a dark age in which our old civilization crumbled and humanity shrank to a set of isolated star systems. Now, stardrive-capable civilizations are emerging on these planets simultaneously, and the race is on. Not only is this a race for control of the star cluster -- it is a race for survival. Every homeworld is approaching its population limit and death rates will soon go up. To save our people we must expand.

Unlike the old Empryean Challenge, in which 20-25 people were jammed onto one homeworld and forced to cooperate in order to face the other homeworlds in deep space, Cluster Wars grants each player an entire homeworld with a command economy. It appears we have been given a small bump in certain technologies to start with. Each player needs to set up their production lines, put together a complex interplanetary supply chain, boost technology quickly, and prepare colonizer ships to grab their share of habitable worlds, all in balance with spinning up military and naval defense forces and power-projection capabilities.

Turn 1 is out and orders are due back 6/20. Tomorrow I will post some screen-shots and review the basic approach I am taking (which, as it happens, is more or less in line with the turn 1 tutorial.)

For as long as I've been playing PBM games I have wanted to create PBM games. I did moderate a little role playing thing back in college for a little while. But I've always wanted to do a space empire game. (I have another thread on this, discussing technical options.)

So I thought we could design one in an open forum. Let's pool our brains and experience and design a PBM game we all want to play. Or even a series of them? Who knows. Let's start with this as see how it goes.

I am thinking close-ended space/sci-fi. It would be something vaguely akin to that Far Horizons game we had so much fun with on this forum. So in tribute to that experience, I suggest the name "Event Horizon" (which is a term used in discussing black holes...)

- close-ended
- computer moderated
- web-based UI, but still a turn-based PBM game
- 4X feel (explore expand exploit exterminate)
- include a role for individuals/characters to impact the game
- allow players to design ships/space stations/death stars

In terms of technology, I am going with the following for familiarity's sake and for ease of hosting. But this could easily be changed if others want to contribute to the project in terms of coding in addition to design:

- visual studio (C#)
- mySQL
- viewable through standard browser interface

That's where I'm at so far. Anyone else interested?

Where's Jack Kirby, when you need him?

When I think of play by mail gaming, I can think of no artist whose body of work better conceptualizes the genre than comic book icon Jack Kirby. It's not that Jack Kirby drew art for PBM games, back in the days of PBM Olde. Rather, Jack was just the quintessential example of an artist who could visualize in a way that fit PBM gaming to a tee.

The absolute vast majority of PBM related artwork that I used to encounter, in both PBM magazines and PBM games, meager as it was, never even remotely approached Jack Kirby level of quality. Yet, one area where a lot of it reminds me of Jack Kirby is in the rawness of it. Jack Kirby was artistic singularity in motion. He stood at the apex of comic book art - at the very height of art that was, by its very nature, imaginative.

And it is at that crossroads - the crossroads of the imaginative - that play by mail gaming intersects the handiwork of the late, great Jack Kirby. And it is at that very same crossroads that PBM gaming kidnapped my interest, forever.

Forever is a long time, quite a long time. And who created a group of superheroes called the Forever People? Why, Jack kirby, of course.

And when I tried my hand at an attempt by site user Ramblurr a couple of years ago to resurrect PBM game, Far Horizons, which character did I graviate towards as the inspiration for my space empire's ruler? None other than the infamous Darkseid, of course - another Jack Kirby creation.

In recent years, as various PBM companies and PBM game moderators have attempted to cross the Great Divide from the postal genre to gaming in the mediums of the electronic frontier, PBM's Old Guard continues to pay the price for ignoring what Jack Kirby tried to teach them, as he tried to teach all of us, in his own unique way.

More than just being able to bring a particular piece of artwork to life, a single image, Jack Kirby was a true master artist. He would bring entire worlds - entire universes - to life!

The crossing of the Great Divide helped to ensure that postal gaming's transition to electronic mediums would be a perilous journey fraught with risk, since PBM's Old Guard never seemed fully comfortable with the fact that their greatest success had always been traceable to what resided under the hood. You see, it was imagination that they were packaging and selling to the general public all those years that they were in business, far more than the games, which served primarily as vehicles of delivery for worlds of imagination.

So, while much ado was made with pomp and circumstance by the Grand Poobahs of PBM's Old Guard about increasing efficiency and reaching larger audiences, they gathered up their baskets and wheelbarrows of ideas, and loaded their ships of passage down, heavy with weight - even as they became beggar children of imagination.

Left and right, their ships sank, many on their maiden voyage into the Great Beyond that is the Internet. Here lie sea monsters!

Even still, they launched anew into the frightful waters of progress. The bottom of this Sea of Technology is ripe with the treasures of many such sunken ships of the PBM Line. Welcome to Davy Jones Locker, boys! Ahoy thar, ye scurvy scalliwags of Play-By-Mail gaming!

So, whenever I cast my eyes upon the surviving remnants of the PBM industry, today, forgive me for not placing undue value in instances where a single Frank Frazetta painting is exalted far beyond its value, in a failed bid to get the PBM engine of progress rolling along at full steam on rails made of modern-day Internet steel. Milking a single cow to death will not yield more milk, any more than killing the goose will net you all of the gold eggs, all at once.

Kirby was king for a reason. PBM gaming faltered and suffocated for a reason. For many reasons, perhaps, but none more so than where PBM's Old Guard tripped over its own lack of appreciation for imagination, smashing face-first into the hard concrete of Internet-based reality.

Rather than learn what Jack Kirby tried to teach them for free, instead, they have complained for years on end about concrete being hard. The problem isn't the concrete, people. That concrete of reality serves a very useful purpose.

Lack of imagination, and lack of appreciation for imagination's role in PBM gaming having a Golden Era, at all, have been - and remain - a pox upon all of the houses of PBM gaming.

Jack Kirby's been dead almost twenty years, now. That's a damned shame. How is it that a man born in 1917 better understood PBM gaming at its best, than all of the remaining PBM companies and game moderators that remain, almost a full century later?

Hail to the king! Long live Jack Kirby! Long live PBM gaming!

Hi all,

We've been running our PBE game (Fallen Empires) for about a year and a half now and have just launched V.2. Its a fantasy game that uses spread sheets to build equipment and buy goods and Word documents to give actions, as well as having a map to move around and interact with.

The game currently has two options for players - Tribes and Settlements. Both have progressed well since V.1. We're looking to add new player run options in the near future, including Sea Raiders and Mercenaries, which will eventually lead to Political Figures who have control over multiple types.

The game is currently running at a two weekly turn around for the turns, and had been running at weekly throughout V.1. Turns cost £2 each and set up and first turn are free.

If you're interested in giving it a go, or have any questions please post here or email us at fallenemp@gmail.com

Thanks!

Links to the following sites have been removed (due to no longer being active links) from the PBM Hivemind section, which is located on the front page of this website.

FateOfANation.Net
Olympia 3 Forum
Austerlitz Forum
London en Garde!
Empire Forge Conquests