It's an unfortunate fact of Rim-life that F-t-L travel puts great stress on the bodies of your crew and even worse stress on their minds. After a jump they are incapable of any coherent thought for a least a few hours. We simulate this by always making an interstellar jump immediately end a player's turn. Any time he had not used is deposited in his time bank, and his time bank cannot be withdrawn from until the following stardate (which begins at 4:00 a.m. Universal Time (AKA Greenwich Mean Time.) Of course there are activities he can engage in since they take no time - like pulling a Purser's Report (full or partial inventory.) or retiring to his ready room and calling the many status reports available to him there. The one no-time-charge activity he cannot indulge in is making another jump.

The Vu-Screen he'll see once the jump is finished looks something like this. Note that time available has been reduced to zero, and the jump icon is disabled.

  JustJumped.jpg (Size: 106.84 KB / Downloads: 7)

Something else he can do without time-charge is run a system-scan that will provide minimal details about every planet in the system. The scan can be looked at on line, presented in a more printable format, or downloaded as either an html or text document. We'll probably also provide it as an excel sheet before we go live.

System Scan for C0-781-VI

The first planet revolves around this yellow dwarf in orbit A. This is a very small planet with a very low pressure, nitrogen/oxygen atmosphere, and no seas. It has 2 moons and a lithosphere of boiling lava and small semi-continents.

The second planet revolves around this yellow dwarf in orbit B. This is a small planet with a high normal pressure, nitrogen/methane atmosphere, and no seas. It has 0 moons and a lithosphere of boiling lava and small semi-continents.

The third planet revolves around this yellow dwarf in orbit C. This is a large planet with a normal pressure, nitrogen/oxygen atmosphere, and water-based seas. It has 0 moons and a lithosphere that is made up of a few continents surrounded by vast seas of salt-water.

The fourth planet revolves around this yellow dwarf in orbit D. This is an extremely large planet with a very high pressure, nitrogen/CO2 atmosphere, and toxically contaminated H2O seas. It has 0 moons, a ring, and a lithosphere made up of a few continents. This planet is inhabited.

The fifth planet revolves around this yellow dwarf in orbit E. This is a large planet with a normal pressure, nitrogen/CO2 atmosphere, and liquid hydrocarbon seas. It has 2 moons and a lithosphere made up of a few continents. This planet is inhabited.

The sixth planet revolves around this yellow dwarf in orbit F. This is a very small planet with a extremely low pressure, nitrogen/CO2 atmosphere, and toxically contaminated H2O seas. It has 0 moons and a lithosphere that is mostly icy.

The seventh planet revolves around this yellow dwarf in orbit G. This is a large planet with a somewhat low pressure, ammonia/methane atmosphere, and liquid methane seas. It has 3 moons and a lithosphere that is covered in ice.

The eighth planet revolves around this yellow dwarf in orbit H. This is an extremely small planet with a extremely low pressure, almost non-existent atmosphere, and liquid ammonia seas. It has 0 moons and a lithosphere that is covered in ice.

The ninth planet revolves around this yellow dwarf in orbit I. This is a very small planet with a extremely low pressure, helium/ammonia/methane atmosphere, and no seas. It has 0 moons and a lithosphere that is covered in ice.

The tenth planet revolves around this yellow dwarf in orbit J. This is an extremely small planet with a extremely low pressure, almost non-existent atmosphere, and no seas. It has 0 moons and a lithosphere that is covered in ice.

The eleventh planet revolves around this yellow dwarf in orbit K. This is a small planet with a low normal pressure, ammonia/methane atmosphere, and no seas. It has 0 moons and a lithosphere that is covered in ice.

The twelfth planet revolves around this yellow dwarf in orbit L. This is an extremely small planet with a extremely low pressure, almost non-existent atmosphere, and no seas. It has 0 moons and a lithosphere that is covered in ice.

More Ilkor development news: http://gadgames.com/blog/2011/04/18/ilko...n-session/ go and check it out!!

Cheers,

Sean.

Standard Game G85 will be starting in 2 weeks (i.e. May 1st).

Gad Games
Our first PBM blurbstop this time around is the Gad Games blog, where Sean Cleworth, the Archlord of Gad Games, apparently has had nothing new to add to his blog since our last visit to their site. Gad games, of course, is in the process of bring Ilkor: Dark Rising to the gaming world.

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Rimworlds
Heading over to the Rimworlds site, we find Jon hard at work on one of the more promising new entries with deep roots in PBM history. Rimworlds is to be an online, multi-player science-fiction role-playing game, one inspired by the GAMA-award-winning Play-by-Mail game of the same name. A brief visit to the Rimworlds Facebook page reveals no new artwork for the game posted there since January 3rd, 2011. However, there have been numerous updates on the Rimworlds forum from Rimworlds' Galactic Overseer, Jon, over at the PlayByMail.Net website. According to Jon, the Rim's map is huge - 1,500,000 sectors in a 3D grid 1000 x 100 x 15. In it there are approximately 30,000 stars with 35,000 planets orbiting them.

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Empire Forge Conquests
At the Empire Forge Conquests forum, the game's admin has suggested that an option for all players to enter an End Turn command, and the turn results be run, even if the time period has not expired. The Beta test for Empire Forge Conquests appears to be progressing slowly, if forum posts there are any indication.

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Rolling Thunder Games, Inc.
Cruising over to the Rolling Thunder forum, we find a few scattered postings of recent vintage.

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Pegasus Productions
Heading to the site for Pegasus Productions, the company that runs the PBM classic game called Alamaze, I find that the site won't load. Alamaze's original designer, Rick McDowell, was recently sighted online at the Fall of Rome forum recounting a brief bit about Alamaze's history. Rick apparently intends to make a renewed effort to reacquire Alamaze from his brother, Phil, who runs Pegasus Productions.

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Madhouse Interactive Entertainment
The DungeonWorld discussion group continues to be a hive of posting activity, with Mandrake Darkhallow (Reeve to the Darkhalow Estate), Dana of Lionel (Black Tower Necromancer), and Champion Dane Fore (of Runeforge Earth) being recent participants in the ongoing dialogue there.

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Harlequin Games
The discussion group for Legends is still going strong, with sixty-four postings during the month of April 2011, with twelve more days left until the end of the month.

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Flying Buffalo, Inc.
Dropping by the Flying Buffalo Gamer forum, site user Walter announced a little more than a week ago that turn results for turn # 2 of StarWeb game number SW-1378 are back. This is the very same Walter who is a frequent visitor to, and participant in, the PlayByMail.Net forum, and no review of his time and experience playing StarWeb has been forthcoming from Walter, as of yet.

The Rim's map is huge - 1,500,000 sectors in a 3D grid 1000 x 100 x 15. In it there are approximately 30,000 stars with 35,000 planets orbiting them. The stars are of all types including binaries and trinaries, standard colors - blue, yellow, red, brown, and black, and sizes from sub dwarfs to super giants. In addition there are various hazards and anomalies some of which are slowly moving from sector to sector.

At any given time a ship's captain can view a 9 x 9 map that is originally centered on the row/column/layer in which his ship is located. The data on the map is provided by his affiliation and the map can be scrolled in 3 dimensions to show what else is known about the area in which he's presently located. The representation of each type of star is tool-tipped to provide more data (like number of planets, if any) as soon as he cursors over the sector.

All affiliations are eager to increase their knowledge of space, so each will pay for data. Not much for an empty sector, but a great deal for discovering major dangers or the locations of artificially constructed habitats like ring-worlds.

Different sensors can scan sectors at different distances, so the cursor will change to show which ones can be read from the ship's present location

The map can also be used for navigation since clicking on any sector will feed those coordinates to the navigation programs.


  NavigationMap.jpg (Size: 155.16 KB / Downloads: 5)

For those players who remember this game..
I have found the game rules online...

Here they are:
http://members.ozemail.com.au/~pbm/kom/komrules.html

Any other player tried this game in the past?

In addition to the Captain and Exec who are the avatars of the player, there are lots of officer-types (27 at present) who may be recruited to increase a ship, base or colony's ability to accomplish certain tasks. Their skill is tracked on a 9 point scale and is directly reflected by their rank which goes from "acting ensign" to "senior commander." There are higher ranks than that, but they are reserved for player-characters. An officer may be promoted at any time, but the ship has to have enough training points available to it to increase his/her/its rank. (The higher the rank, the more points needed) A ship earns training points by engaging in activities - the riskier the activity, the more training points are accumulated.

It is possible, occasionally, to recruit a high ranking officer from a starbase, but they know their own worth and expect to be promised extraordinary salaries and a fat recruiting bonus, so it's usually less expensive to promote from within.


  fullgrouping.jpg (Size: 110.25 KB / Downloads: 5)

I am using Media Wiki software for the PBM Wiki.

I am new to being on the admin side of wikis, and would appreciate some guidance, for those in the know.

I want to limit access to who all can edit (or vandalize) the PBM Wiki. I know that, typically, one of the core beauties of wiki software is that it empowers a mass of individuals to edit and to revise a given wiki site.

My preference, however, is for myself and a handful of others (trusted others) to be able to edit and to add to the PBM Wiki. Some anonymous soul added a spam link on the PBM Wiki, recently, so I would like to go ahead and address this potential nightmare, to get it out of the way.

I believe that what I need to do is to edit the LocalSettings.php file. If anyone in the know can provide me a simple copy and paste of what to add to the LocalSettings.php file, that would be appreciated. Or, in the event that I am lost and in left field on this subject, if you could provide corrective guidance in the alternative, then that would be appreciated, as well.

Mucho thanks in advance for your help!

While browsing the World Wide Web, today (or should I just refer to it as the Internet?), I came across what I think is one of the absolute best PBM related postings that I have encountered in a long, long time. It is a blog posting/article titled: Games that I have worked on

If you haven't checked it out, yet, then go and do that now. Go on. Yes, it's mandatory. You know that you want to, anyway. So, what are you waiting for? Just read the article, already.

It would truly be nice if there were more PBM gemstones such as this one lying around. There may be, in fact, but the Web is such a vast expanse of information and collection of individual websites, that just trying to sift through them is akin to panning for gold. Most of the time, I come up empty handed. This time, though, I struck solid PBM gaming gold.

Our site here at PlayByMail.Net is hopefully adding a few PBM nuggets to the Webosphere, from time to time, and it's really great seeing several of the user base here posting frequently, and growing the dialogue on PBM gaming. This is contributing greatly, I think, to our site now enjoying a regular flow of repeat visitors to the site on a daily or near-daily basis. It's not a huge crowd, but I do believe that it is an interested crowd, and that, I think, counts for something.

The underlying reason for establishing the PBM Wiki, as I recently did, was to try and come up with a better format for the PBM Boneyard list. I have a feeling, though, that the PBM Wiki will eventually evolve into something more substantial than just a list of PBM companies and PBM games, both active and inactive.

It's good to have site users Rich Van Ollefen and Victory still visiting us, from time to time, even though neither seem to have much to say, of late. Those guys form links of substance to PBM's past, and hopefully, we'll be hearing more from both of them going forward.

One change that I made to the front page of the site, today, was to add an Interview Queue section. This is to serve as a continual reminder to me to catch up with interviews that are outstanding, plus to keep site users abreast of new additions to the interview list, as various individuals agree to be interviewed, in the future.

There's always so many different areas that are play by mail gaming related that I can invest my time with, that some areas inevitably end up on the short end of the stick. Doing a PBM game of my own seems to be a project that I make little, if any, progress with. Maybe the coming weeks and months will be kinder to me, where such is concerned.

Site user Walter seems to have his nose stuck right in the middle of several new PBM games (well, new to him, anyway). I'm looking forward to hearing him review Starweb from Flying Buffalo, Inc. and Cruenti Dei from Sardarthion Press.

Even though time is always in demand, there are several new undertakings that I want to embark on, also. I think that I will hold off on announcing what those things are, for now, though.

If, during your own web searches, you happen to strike PBM gold, then be sure to share PBM sites of value that you happen across.

Project Libertine
Hatch, over at the Project Libertine Development Blog, continues to both code and blog, making progress in the areas of Comets, Ship Upgrades, Shipyard Build Time, and Colony Modules, since the last PBM News Blurb.

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SNIFL
There are multiple open positions for managers for SNIFL football (soccer) teams. SNIFL has a long standing community, some of which have been there since the year 2000, when SNIFL started.

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Wy'East Games
Dropping by the Wy'East Games website, there is no word of progress on their game, Galactic Empires, since August of 2010. Wy'East games was formerly known as MJM Enterprises.

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PlayByMail.Net
PlayByMail.Net has launched a PBM Wiki, and is currently in the process of transferring all of the PBM company and PBM game information contained on PlayByMail.Net's PBM Boneyard list over to wiki format.

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Briny en Garde!
Checking in on the Briny en Garde! folks, there does not appear to be a lot of activity on their site or its forums, but there was a brief mention of new rules for the game's restart were in the process of being checked over.

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Middle Earth Play-By-Mail Forums
There's been a small flurry of posting activity over at the Middle Earth Play-By-Mail forums, over the last week. One thread, in particular, features players of the game discussing their favorite turn from the various game of Middle Earth Play By Mail that they have played, over the years. Site user Iron Man attached a PDF copy of his favorite turn, and you can find it in that thread, and download it and browse it, for yourself, if you want to. In that game, he played the position of the Dragon Lord.

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Madhouse Interactive Entertainment
Madhouse UK, claiming to be the world’s leading turn-based gaming (TBG, previously known as PBM, or PBEM) company, is in the process of revamping its website, bringing a new look to the site that many have long since become accustomed to. Madhouse proudly carries the British flag for TBG design. Their new site currently has numerous links on it that do not work, yet - with the key word being "yet."

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Gad Games
Over at the Gad Games blog, Sean Cleworth continues to update the world about the progress of his company on the Ilkor: Dark Rising project, announcing a launch date for the Ilkor website of July 1st, 2011.

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Origins
The Academy of Adventure Gaming Arts and Design has announced the nominees for the 37th Annual Origins Awards.

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The Hyborian Tome
The Hyborian Tome website has undertaken the launch of a new Hyborian War Wiki site. This long term project is currently in a state of infancy, with much Hyborian War related information expected to be incorporated into this new wiki. Hyborian War is a play-By-Mail game of battle, intrigue, and diplomacy set in the unmatchable Hyborian Age of Conan. The game is run by Reality Simulations, Inc., operating out of the company's Tempe, Arizona headquarters.

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Duel2
Site user Tripwire has announced over on the Duel2 forum that a new game of Hyborian War, one heavily populated by Duel2 players, primarily, may see the first turn results run at the start of next week.