We've just posted a short blog about the GameMaster screens that we've been busy developing. The blog shows a sneak view of two such screens. We'd be interested in what you have to say.

http://gadgames.com/blog/category/ilkor-dark-rising/

One of the things that stands out to me, during my recent treks through the pages of back issues of play by mail magazines of old, is that one of the driving forces of the PBM genre was strong intellect. Simply put, there were some very smart cookies that injected life into the genre that was play by mail - on both the design side and on the player side.

Reading a Moderator Bio about Kathleen Seymour and Donald Redick of Fractal Dimensions is what got me to thinking about the degree of intellectual sophistication that went into designing, moderating, and yes, playing PBM games.

While many PBM games never lived up to the hype of those who designed them, or of those who advertised them, even still, many (if not most) of them were probably more complex than their critics - and many of their fans - gave them credit for.

I can't recall how many hours went into designing my PBM game, and it wasn't even a programmed affair. My game wasn't driven so much by strong intellect as it was by strong desire, though.

A lot of games that I have tried online in succeeding years have probably been at least as competently programmed as their PBM predecessors were years before, but they don't often strike me as being particularly sophisticated. My game wasn't really sophisticated, so it is not as though I am predisposed in favor of sophistication, per se.

The play by mail genre went through its Wild West stage, I suppose, as did various electronic mediums, many years later. Through time, mediums have a way of losing their frontier quality, it seems. Normalcy sets in, and complacency along with it.

Play by mail companies used to be well springs of innovation. They would churn out new games, and the world was young. It was that innovation, that sense of all kinds of PBM games everywhere that one looked, no matter which way that one turned, that helped to fire the imaginations of the PBM generation. Maybe PBM companies simply ran into a wall. Had they reached the end of their imaginations? Was the well spring of ideas now run dry?

In the March/April 1994 issue of Paper Mayhem magazine, Issue # 65, in his "Where We're Heading" column, editor David Webber stated that, after compiling Paper Mayhem's demographics, he knew that more and more PBMers were playing fewer and fewer PBM games.

Fast forward to Issue # 87, the November/December 1997 issue of the same magazine, and in the same column, we find David lamenting that he was hearing less and less from PBM companies. Shame on them! If anyone ever fought the good fight, it was David Webber. I never really knew him, but I miss him an awful lot, these days.

Fast forward again to the current era. Several PBM game designers of vintage era PBM games are trying to extend their legacy into a new era of gaming. All of them that are programmers are probably better programmers, now, than they were back then. But, I can't help but to wonder which of them will succeed and which of them will fail. I don't wish failure on any of them, but wishes, alone, won't make any of them succeed, and experience teaches that at least some of their efforts will end in failure.

That's just how the cookie crumbles.

I've been browsing an old ad for the now-defunct play by mail game called Stand and Deliver, which was run by either an individual or a company apparently using the same name (if I read this ad, right), operating out of New York, New York.

Stand and Deliver, a play by mail adventure as the ad touts the game, was a game whose setting was the Old West. That's right - cowboys, Indians, ranchers, outlaws, and more. You get the idea.

There's a lot of back issues of various PBM magazines that I don't have a copy of. So, thinking back on it, I don't think that I have ever actually read a review of any Old West type of PBM game, whether this one or any other, in any of the back issues that I do have. And that makes me all the more curious about this particular brand of PBM game.

It would seem to me that an Old West setting would be conducive to players getting in a little role playing, irrespective of what the actual character system was like.

I can also envision an Old West setting as being a slow exploration type of game. After all, you're modes of travel are all fairly limited, none of which are particularly fast, by modern transportation standards.

Where the game's economics system is concerned, I can see a lot of diversity. Running a ranch of some type might be a relatively stable way of earning income, compared to say, panning for gold in a creek as a gold miner, or living the life of a bounty hunter.

What would keep a bounty hunter from just killing another player's rancher character, and then assuming control of operations of their ranch? Probably nothing, but perhaps some positive and negative bonuses/modifiers might persuade folks to stay to the same path, or to seek a new life.

Perhaps Indians would be good scouts, but would they necessarily make good spies? Indians would stand out in settlements populated primarily by white settlers, wouldn't they? It's hard to be a good spy, if everyone is suspicious of you. Now, I don't know if these previous incarnations of Old West play by mail games actually allowed one to play an Indian position, but I can't really see any reason why it shouldn't be possible or feasible, provided that one incorporates some activities for Indian characters or villages to do on any given turn. They could hunt buffalo, raid ranches and settlements, protect their sacred tribal lands from further intrusions by the white man, or collect scalps of other players' characters, to name but a few.

Maybe Indian players would start the game with a map that is partially explored, giving them the advantage of knowing the land of their fathers. They might only know the terrain, but not necessarily or automatically know who has encroached upon their lands, on any given turn. In order to determine that, the Indian player would need to be vigilant.

And for the white man, one whose knowledge of the land is extremely limited, it's a whole new world to explore. You might want to avoid the natives, particularly at first, when you're conceivably in a more vulnerable position. But, you wouldn't necessarily know where the Indians are. Would you even know the general location of their lands, in the days before government-fabricated Indian reservations? Probably not, except in the vaguest sense, unless the area that you are in has already been settled for a while.

Running a saloon might be a profitable venture, but it might also entail regular (as in, virtually every turn) run ins with riff raff of various sorts, more than a few of which would think nothing of damaging your establishment with their needless and reckless barroom brawls.

What if there are twenty or thirty other players in the game, and you're the only law man in town? That's a lot of territory to cover. It might just keep an honest sheriff busy.

It would seem to me that a PBM game of this type would be more interesting, the more players that you have in it. Would there be an upper limit to how many players could play in it? How big is the Old West, anyway? Wasn't it vast, in those days?

Would there be a town, though, or would it take a while for towns to actually form? Would that happen due to direct player actions? Or would towns form and grow (or die off as ghost towns) as indirect or game moderator actions? Maybe the number of players in the game, or the total wealth in play in the game, determines the growth rate of population centers.

And what about major events? Do you still recall the winter of '89? Or what about the Great Buffalo Hunt? Didn't the railroad come through later in the game? Some random events or moderator induced events, perhaps historical or not, could keep the game spiced up and more interesting as players lead the simple life in the Old West.

Combat could be either individual scale (a gunfight), or larger scale (bank robbery or Indian raid). I can picture some degree of variety there.

I can also see some players not making it, but couldn't they just start over? Isn't that why they headed west to begin with, for a fresh start out west?

I never played Stand and Deliver, back in the day. It's got me thinking, now, though.

Circle your play by mail wagons, and give me some feedback on what you think, pardner.

A lengthy blog on current Ilkor: Dark Rising development. We've started to reveal a little about the GameMaster section and have supplied a screenshot. Hopefully a good and interesting read with more to come.

http://gadgames.com/blog/2011/08/28/ilko...r-section/

Hello,

I just found out about this site by sheer coincidence -- a google search for Far Horizons -- and wanted to post some links here that might be of interest. I think that those games deserve a place in Your link list, as they still have a strong fan-base, at least from the point of view of the ever dominishing group of pbem players.

1) A new instance of Olympia is running has been brought back to life. The war-game is set in a fantasy setting and is currently in the later mid-game stages. Currently, initiatives are under way to modernize this great game.

2) The Atlantis play by email games are missing, which feature a multitde of different code bases, derivates, special rules, i.e. Conquest, Arcadia, Standard, etc:
-- developers list
-- a running game from the 4.0.10 codebase

3) Eressea, a german but internationalized type of Atlantis game.

Regards,

iyhael

Not sure how interested you guys are to learn this type of information as it isn't strictly speaking PBM news.

However, I've just blogged about the build and deployment process that we use and follow in developing Ilkor: Dark Rising.

This type of process is vital if you want to be able to respond quickly to bugs and push new features in live.

http://gadgames.com/blog/category/ilkor-dark-rising/

Flipping through an old issue of Paper Mayhem magazine (Issue # 50, September.October 1991), I happened upon a full-page all-text add for the PBM game, Renaissance, by Constantine Xanthos, operating out of Hillsboro Beach, Florida.

A quick web search turned up the RenSim.Org website, but the sign-up link for the game takes one to a ERROR 404 - PAGE NOT FOUND message.

It's interesting how the site is already starting to regain some degree of recurring site traffic. Within the last 24 hours, there have been myself and nine other registered members who have dropped by the site. Most did not bother to post anything, at all.

Now, I don't write this to beat you over the head with that fact, nor even to annoy you with it. Rather, I just want to take this opportunity to encourage each of you to increase your participation on the posting end of things, simply because, without participation, none of us would ever have anything new to read, when we log onto the site.

The thing to focus on is not multi-page extravaganzas of frenetic writing activity. Rather, the thing to focus on is bits and pieces, fragments of memories and shards of recollections from your days of PBMing grandeur.

I've been flip, flip, flipping through issue after back issue of Paper Mayhem magazine, trying to figure out what to post on. Most of the games advertised in Paper Mayhem, I simply have never tried my hand at. So, that sort of limits me on the extent to which I can talk about them.

In Paper Mayhem issue # 60 (May/June 1993 issue), there's an article authored by George Cameron titled, "Seventy Turns In "The Land Of Karrus." Though I never played the game, I can and do recall Jean Brown from when I read paper Mayhem, all those many years ago.

So, whatever became of Jean Brown and her PBM company, Paper Tigers? Was their game, The Land of Karrus, computer moderated or a hand-moderated affair? Paper Tigers was based out of San Dimas, California.

We've made some radical new improvements to Ilkor: Dark Rising that has improved its performance by over 300%. Check out our blog about it:
http://gadgames.com/blog/2011/08/22/ilko...rformance/