As I go about the task of creating new articles and editorials for our PBM related site, here, I often find myself wondering what I should write about?

Invariably, many of my articles and editorials touch upon some of the same things. I often find myself saying the same things, over and over and over again - albeit perhaps in a way worded somewhat differently than the time before.

As I emphasize and re-emphasize that PBM isn't dead, hearing that echo may or may not annoy those of you who bother to take time out to pause and read what I write on the subject. But, consider this, if you will: To persuade people to take up the PBM gauntlet, it might be helpful if they start their consideration of that proposition with the belief that PBM is not already dead.

I also have to overcome Internet-based obstacles that take the form of prior pronouncements by others - the self-anointed seers and prophets of play by mail - that PBM is either dead or dying. PBM's death knell was sounded decades ago, during the height of play by mail gaming's golden era. So, from my perspective, the deck is pretty well stacked against me from the get-go.

There's also a lot of Internet noise that must be overcome. Doing a web search for the search phrase "pbm" just now, Google yields a Wikipedia disambiguation page as the very first item listed in its search for that phrase. Both Yahoo! and Bing search engines yield a non-play by mail item for their first place items in their respective searches for the very same search phrase. So, what's a guy like me to do?

If the Internet is to be a battleground for the future of play by mail gaming - arguably even THE battleground, then PBM is going to have to fight for every inch of Internet territory. In the grand sum of things, PlayByMail.Net is but merely a beachhead in PBM's counter-attack on the gaming world.

Ours is a small beachhead. Very small, in fact. In this conflict, we are at considerable disadvantage. If, however, nearly everyone and their brother (of those who have actually heard of PBM's existence, in the first place) thinks that PBM gaming is long dead and buried, then I think that it stands to reason that we may realistically enjoy the element of surprise.

Our beachhead is established. It is growing. Now, we are merely awaiting the arrival of reinforcements. Granted, they may not get here in time to save either us or this beachhead, or they may even never arrive, at all. But, what matters is that WE are here. If the situation appears utterly hopeless, then all the better - for we won't suffer under any delusion of the possibility of success. What better time could you ask for, gentlemen and ladies of the PBM gaming world, to invade the gaming world?

Now, some of you may be thinking, "Hey, Charles, it's a delicate situation that we've got here." So what? Do you like PBM gaming suffering under the seemingly eternal burden of being a dead niche of gaming? Hey, it may or may not be a niche, but if it is, then it's OUR niche!

I'm not trying to conquer the gaming world. Where would be the fun in that? No, what I'm after is an expansion of our existing territory, with "our" referring to PBM gaming.

Just think of it as a bug hunt, and you'll be fine, kid.

At times, I don't know whether I feel more like a grave robber or an archaeologist, as I try to sift through the remains of a once-thriving PBM industry. The core issue to me is not whether play by mail was a cottage industry or not, but whether the industry, however else it may be described, was thriving or not. The evidence that I have compiled, to date, is in favor of the proposition that PBM was, indeed, once a thriving industry.

So, what happened? I'm glad that you asked. In a nutshell, if I had to sum it up in just one word, then that word would be "change." Things changed. The world changed. Gamers' taste in gaming entertainment changed.

Ironically, though, the very things that made PBM games great never changed. If you were to sit down to design a brand new PBM game from scratch, today, you could certainly do a lot worse than to read an article originally authored by Rick McDowell, of Alamaze and Fall of Rome fame, a couple of decades or so ago. The article in question is titled: PBM Design in the 90's

This article is an example of what I consider to be seminal thinking, when it comes to comprehending what is needed, in order for the PBM industry - postal gaming, especially and in particular - to become a thriving industry, once more.

That day, of course, may never arrive. It may simply never happen, and the world will continue to turn, regardless of whether postal gaming makes a successful comeback or not. The future of the world does not hinge upon play by mail. However, I dare say that the world would be none the worse for wear, if a new PBM industry arose from the ash heap of the old.

For many gaming enthusiasts, PBM used to be the brightest star in the sky, a beacon that shone in the heavens, the gemstar in the constellation of gaming. The last couple of decades have seen PBM gaming fall into disfavor, shunned and cast aside, it's golden glow slowly tarnishing. The bright star of PBM has, in recent years, been flooded out by an influx of massively multiplayer games of all shapes, sizes, and genres, with the gaming public fixated upon a visual smorgasbord of graphics and frenetic mouse clicks.

As infatuation with the surface appearance begins to fade, gamers are re-learning lessons that they were already all too familiar with. With many of these Digital Age games, their beauty has turned out to only be skin deep. In comparison, many PBM games enjoyed rather lengthy lifespans, compared to many of their modern-day non-PBM counterparts. When the eulogy for PBM was given in other gaming circles all those many years ago, and even within PBM circles, for that matter, PBM Gaming's days were numbered.

Except that, all these many years later, those of us gathered here still find ourselves counting. While it is indisputable that, along the way, many individual PBM games and many PBM companies fell by the wayside, giving up the ghost willingly or went down fighting, PBM, itself, still hasn't died. Apparently, the long foretold and long prophesied death was greeted with such anticipation and a somber mood that, in all the rush and excitement to usher in a new era of technology (and by consequence and extension, a new era in gaming), the whole affair turned out to be a funeral without a body. Everyone was in such a tizzy to read the obituary, that no one bothered with conducting an autopsy. Because no one could bear to see their beloved PBM gaming die, PBM's funeral was a closed casket ceremony.

In case you didn't comprehend that, I will rephrase. PBM isn't dead. It's still here. It's still alive. And, yes, it's still changing. The face of the PBM industry changed before (many times, in fact), and it is changing, once more. Even now, we are in the midst of one of these phases of perpetual change.

The good thing about the PBM industry reaching the bottom of the proverbial barrel is that, when you're at the bottom, there's nowhere to go but up.

The postal service, itself, may well, indeed, be a dinosaur. Yet, it is still with us, even today, all of its critics and all of the criticism heaped upon it, notwithstanding. For all of the talk of transitioning towards a paperless society, the reality of life is such that I probably interact with more paper, today, than at any point over the course of my entire life.

The worst thing about Rick's article in question is that it is as short as it is. PBM is all the poorer for it, too, but likewise, PBM is all the richer for articles like this one by Rick McDowell.

Excavation is often times tedious and time consuming work. Unearthing and displaying valuable pieces of PBM history like this article by Rick McDowell help to make all of the time and effort worthwhile. In the PBM sense, it's a lot like robbing King Tut's tomb.

Far Horizons: The Awakening hearkens back unto the PBM days of old, for all of the good and ill that such entails.

Like many play by mail games from yesteryear, this game teases the imagination, even as the documentation that accompanies the game tends to add to the confusion of the experience.

This review focuses only upon the first five turns, and as such, my experience with both the game and its moderator is relatively limited. All things considered, at this juncture in time, I rate the game moderator much higher than I do the game.

That's not to say that I am prepared to abandon the game, for nothing could be further from the truth. Rather, I commend the game moderator for the energy, competence, and interest that he brings to the game that he has chosen to resurrect from the ashes of PBM's past.

One of the worst aspects about the game, in its current design stage, is that it is a pain in the ass trying to sift through all of the documentation, just in order for me to try and figure out how to accomplish tasks that I, personally, consider to be basic and fundamental in nature. To the game moderator's credit, he tries to continually flesh his website's documentation out, in an attempt to illuminate for the player how to issue orders correctly that the player wants to issue for his empire.

In the introduction section of the game manual for Far Horizons: The Awakening, it states: Still, those who enjoy a more aggressive game, or those who wish to role-play an "evil" or warlike species will not be disappointed. However, in the earliest stage of the game, the role playing aspect associated with the game remains relegated to being a future possibility. There has been no manifestation of role playing through the in-game mechanisms for the first five turns of my empire's progress. Your mileage may differ, however, assuming that you encounter - and communicate with - other species, in your respective bids to expand the scope of your empires.

Some things remain a mystery, at the current stage of things. For example, why the player needs to issue a SCAN order, in order for their starships that they move from location to location to generate a Scan Report, rather than each starship's crew handling that task of their own initiative, is beyond me. I don't understand why the player has to issue the SCAN order, for that task to be accomplished. Is the player limited to either scanning or doing something else, in the same turn with the same starship in question? It just seems that the game presently punishes the player unnecessarily, if the player forgets to issue a SCAN order for each starship, each turn.

Using the JUMP command, starships can move from star system to star system, within the game's setting. There are a total of 90 stars in the galaxy of the game that I am playing in, one titled by the game moderator as Galaxy Alpha. To move a starship from one star system to another star system, an X, Y, Z system of movement is utilized by the game. Thus, rather than just trying to move my starship to star # 46, a much more cumbersome process is utilized. Thus, the chances for human error increase, I think, where players are compelled to utilize a multi-digit system (X - Y - Z), instead of a single digit system (star # 35).

Issuing even a relatively short set of turn orders has invariably proven to be a time consuming exercise, to date. For the uninitiated, Far Horizons: The Awakening is definitely not the game that you want to play, if you only want to invest five or ten minutes of time in issuing turn orders for your empire. The worst part of it is that I spend far more time trying to track down exactly what format my turn orders need to be in, than I do in imagining my empire's place in the overall scheme of the galaxy, relative to other player positions in the game with me. In a nutshell, the work factor outweighs the fun factor, so far. Perhaps that will change for the better, over time, but nonetheless, this remains my opinion of the two (work factor and fun factor), at this stage of the game's progress.

After five turns of turn results and five turns of progress, I question what the whole point was of going through the initial allocation of tech points, where the design phase of my empire was concerned. Watching some of my tech levels increase over the last few turns, I am left with a very jaded feeling about the whole design stage of the game. This is a problem that is traceable to the original design of the game, and is not the fault of the current game moderator, Casey. Five turns in, and I am now dumping the bulk of what I spend each turn into increasing my empire's Mining tech level.

Why? Because, it very noticeably impacts how much I will have available to spend, the following turn. Basically, I am milking my homeworld's ability to be mined, each turn, now, with no end in sight. This approach to mining conjures up memories from my days as designer and game moderator for Starforce Battles. There's a reason that I rejected this approach towards mining in that game, all those many years ago.

Far Horizons: The Awakening holds much potential, however, for the very fact that it is automated. But, so far, at least, it has also been a very dry game, generating very little excitement within me, and doing nothing of note to ignite my imagination. To endure the rigor of deciphering the orders scheme for issuing turn orders, each turn, I wish that the game would do a much better job of firing the engines of my imagination.

The cost of playing the game is right - it's free! Hey, that's always a plus, and especially in an era of a tight economy. But, as the saying goes, time is money, and if I measure Far Horizons: The Awakening in terms of how much excitement that I have gotten, thus far, for the amount of time that I have spent trying to figure out how to accomplish even the most basic and fundamental of orders, then in my considered opinion, I'm losing money.

Even so, I also believe that the vast bulk of this game's potential remains untapped.

In a new galaxy configuration, one where players begin the game in control of empires that reflect empires not all starting relatively equal, one where empires have clearly existed over a great span of time, as reflected by their respective and different assets and advantages held, I think that the role playing aspect might actually have some meat on its bones at game start - rather than players having to wait until they make first contact.

The current approach to the game is that no real history exists for any of the empires, as they start the game. The empires all end up feeling all the more dull and boring for it, too - unfortunately.

Rest assured, I want to like this game. For that matter, I want to love this game. For now, though, I am merely playing this game. At this early stage of things, it largely just feels as if I am going through the motions. There is no love story to report, only a brush with mediocrity. I wouldn't even describe it as friendship, at this point. The game is still largely a stranger to me. By the time that I write my next review of it, perhaps this game of Far Horizons: The Awakening will have grown on me, a bit.

Whats normal within pbm standards?????

I have asked a polite question one week ago to a moderator active on this message board. I have send the question to his email adress.
No reply at all. I can see him answer questions at his own website.
The problem in pbm is in my honest opinion the lack of time answering a normal question to new customers.

Medieval Inspirations have successfully re-launched Midgard and are now in a position to accept start ups.

Midgard is a mixed moderated open ended Play By eMail (PBeM) game set against a rich medieval backdrop boasting strong story lines, colour maps and over 700 cities allowing plenty of opportunity for player interaction.
The game allows many different styles of play, from power gamers to role players, and although most prefer the former, it does boast a fair number of the latter. Players advance through a series of levels of increasing power by completing any number of a variety of tasks offered by any of the 11 different factions or 5 different religions. Players start the game with a position known as a clan, and may have a maximum of three of these. Clans may then form up to three Expeditionary Forces and lead a city.

Each faction and religion also has senior positions which are run by players. Such positions have a main influence on the game being responsible for completing and upholding their faction’s or religion’s goals as well as their diplomatic stance. To complete these obligations they may also offer tasks to players.

Midgard offers many challenges for the individual, and there are no real winners or losers. Characters can find themselves basking in glory one minute, only to find themselves being cut down and slain the next. The ultimate for power gamers is to reach the factional or religious number one. However, even this exalted position is not permanent, and must be handed over at some stage to a new incumbent.

So if you want to be a warlord, a fervent cleric, a mercenary or maybe an assassin or perhaps a trader or even run a black market, get in touch with Ali or Andy at either;
medievalinspirations@yahoo.com or
medieval.inspirations@googlemail.com

Start up plus 2 turns are free.

For information on pricing for further turns, please consult the group's file section.

I have uploaded what I believe to be a production-level version of the Rimworlds enrollment application. Its purpose is to allow a new player to design his first ship and equip it with everything necessary to give orders in the main program. The app is totally live, except for the final "launch" button which is not enabled, but would save the ship to the database and transfer the player to the log-in screen of the main app so he could file turn one. (He doesn't have to and can simply look around, check his inventory, etc.)

You are perfectly welcome to head off to http://starflight.rimworlds.net/ without doing any backgrounding but you might want to check out the overview of the game I posted here, and the the gameplay page of Rimworlds.info In designing the app, I assumed that the player would have been made familiar enough with the basic concepts from reading the wiki that the help pages would simply remind them of what they should keep in mind as they built their ship, not re-explain the basic concepts.

I would appreciate feedback from anyone who is willing to take the time to test the application. (It shouldn't take more than ten minutes, start to finish.) If you encounter a problem, 'twould help if you remembered the details so I could attempt to recreate it.

Thanks, and Good Gaming!

So, what - exactly - is PBM?

PBM is an acronym, one that stands for Play By Mail. It is a reference to a genre of gaming that was - and still is - played through the postal system, which, in the United States of America, is the United States Postal Service.

Whether one says PBM, PBM games, PBM gaming, play by mail, play-by-mail, postal games, postal gaming, play by post, correspondence games, or correspondence gaming, they are all variations on the exact, same thing.

Later (as in newer or more recent) variations on the core genre that is postal gaming have manifested themselves as PBeM (play by e-mail), PBM (play by web - as in the World Wide Web), PBI (play by Internet), TBG (turn based gaming), and even BBG (browser based games).

There is, of course, another type of PBM acronym that one encounters, these days (primarily due to the broad public debate on health care dominating news headlines in the current day and age), but that is a reference to Pharmacy Benefit Management or Pharmacy Benefit Manager. This is an entirely different and wholly unrelated type of PBM - at least until such a point in time, if ever, that someone invents a PBM game with a theme of Pharmacy Benefit Management. Even if someone does eventually invent just such a game (Rick Loomis, perhaps??), I just don't foresee myself giving it a try. Not because Rick Loomis might invent such a game, of course, but simply because such a game sounds awfully boring, to me.

During its course of existence, play by mail gaming has been covered by a wide variety of sources, and this genre of gaming (which many view to be classic gaming at its very finest, providing a form of quality gaming entertainment still unrivaled in terms of the overall gaming experience that the player has), is still alive and popular with many gaming enthusiasts and gaming adherents, whose interests in gaming entertainment run the gamut from RPGs (role playing games) to wargaming.

Included within this broad range of coverage of the PBM hobby and of the commercial PBM industry were numerous magazines dedicated specifically or largely to coverage of play by mail gaming. Published titles such Nuts & Bolts, Paper Mayhem, PBM Universal, Gaming Universal, Flagship, American Flagship, Campaigner's Newsletter, American Gamer, The PBM Report, Simulacrum, and PBM Worm covered every aspect of PBM gaming, delivering a cornucopia of PBM news to a gaming public thirsting for details of an ever-changing PBM scene.

Within the genre, postal games covered an exceptionally broad portion of the entire gaming spectrum. Space conquest games, fantasy role playing games, and hardcore wargames that would make any grognard proud are but a few of the many popular categories of games that fell under - and to this day are still encompassed by - PBM gaming.

Play by mail gaming shares many similarities with board gaming, as well, the turn based aspect a signature feature of many PBM games. Unlike many modern-day massively multiplayer online games of various types, postal games tended - and still tend - to deliver a more personalized gaming experience, one that did not leave the player lost in a tsunami of player pools that number in the millions, for some of the more heavily populated massively multiplayer online games, particularly where MMORPGs of note are concerned.

Combining a beer & pretzels sort of appeal with a community of both commercial and non-commercial game moderators, PBM left an indelible mark upon the history of gaming. Rich gaming experiences that were unique to postal gaming helped elevate the hobby and the industry to such a place in the public eye that good old correspondence gaming soon carved out a place for itself in the pantheon of gaming genres.

As with many different sectors of the gaming industry at large, PBM has endured its share of periods where the industry would consolidate. Rumors to the contrary notwithstanding, though, play by mail gaming continues to thrive heading into the second decade of the Twenty-First Century. Numerous groups of hardcore PBM gamers can be easily located on the Internet, today, with new industry champions joining PBM's venerated Old Guard in celebrating play by mail gaming in the modern era.

Both nostalgia and a desire to return to the roots of what a true, honest-to-God multi-player gaming experience should be like, are helping to create a Renaissance of the core postal gaming experience for new generations of gaming enthusiasts, even as more and more PBM old timers find themselves returning to the play by mail fold. The resulting diversity can only benefit PBM gaming, as the PBM hobby and the PBM industry chart a new path into the future.

Whether a player's turn results are delivered to him or to her in a paper envelope, or in one of a variety of different electronic equivalents, the PBM experience continues to act as a catalyst for positive change within the gaming industry at large. In this way, PBM continues to push the gaming envelope, after all these many years.

Gad Games
Sean Cleworth, the mastermind behind Gad Games, continues to keep the forge hot over at his company, posting yet another entry in the Gad Games blog titled, "Combining Turn-based with Real-time." It's a posting that explains their company's current line of thinking to run their forthcoming game, Ilkor: Dark Rising, with three time lines.

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Harlequin Games
Dropping by the Whispers of the Palantir discussion group, which is a Yahoo! group, I take note of the fact that this particular discussion group remains a very active place tucked away on the Internet. This is not a discussion group that is overrun with spambot postings, either. For the month of March 2011, this discussion group received 166 postings, by all concerned.

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Jason Oates Games
Heading back over to Jason Oates Games, to see how things are progressing there, the home site for Ancient Empires and Company Commander, I find that there have been no updates in the Jason's News section of that site since January 31st, 2011.

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Midnight/MU
A recent trek to visit the Midnight/MU website revealed that a new version of the game is being developed. This is a fairly recent announcement, dated March 25th, 2011. Also, I would be remiss if I failed to point out that the Midnight/MU forum is a hotbed of activity, a truly flourishing oasis of site users taking time out to post during their visits, there.

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Agema
Over at the Agema forum, while the place isn't a complete ghost town, there just isn't really much of anything being discussed, there, at all. A discussion thread started back on February 3rd, 2011 there stated that in Agema's game, Scramble for Empire, that things are anything but quiet.

From high atop his lofty perch at the very rim of the PBM universe, Mark Wardell of both Wy'East Games and PBM Gamer fame is no doubt cooking up some nefarious scheme to bring the remaining forces of the Play-By-Mail world to their knees, as he prepares to reassert himself as a force to be contended with in the PBM affairs of both mice and men.

Do not be fooled! For strange though it may at first seem, rest assured that Wardell is in a frenzy, working himself to the bone, authoring great and malevolent tomes of Play-By-Mail wisdom. Whatever dire works that he unfolds, sooner more likely than later, do not be fooled into selling your soul for an early peek at these relics of PBM's future. The mad scientist always cracks, after all. Just bide your time, and Mark will be begging you to read his wild meanderings, before all is said and done.

The simple fact of the matter is that the world just doesn't have enough sites dedicated to the Play-By-Mail genre. The only way to remedy that shortcoming is for people such as you or I or Mark Wardell to create such sites. Granted, no one or not very many may end up using such sites, relatively speaking, but so what? Is that, alone, sufficient reason to do nothing? I think not. Better to be an obelisk raised to record PBM's existence than to allow its existence to fade unnoticed into the shadows of history.

I think that it is time for some new Play-By-Mail games to be born. One of the things that branded the PBM era of old with its own unique distinctiveness was that there were so many games that spontaneously combusted into existence from so many different individuals, each looking to get in on the action. Virtually anyone could do it, then. Virtually anyone could do it, now. So, what, if every new PBM game or even most new PBM games don't survive? The vast majority of the PBM games from the golden heyday of Play-By-Mail gaming didn't survive, either. Yet, even those failed games form part of the collective memory of PBM's golden era.

If the Internet and e-mail had been as readily accessible to the Founders of PBM gaming back then, as they are to us, today, then those Founders would have taken advantage of those tools, just as many take advantage of them, today. The postal format is its own worst enemy, beset by monopolies and besieged by postal rates - it simply can't compete with e-mail, as a medium of delivery, from a cost-perspective. Nonetheless, getting that turn results envelope in one's mailbox was part of Play-By-Mail's experience enhancers.

The opiate of PBM lay beyond the cost aspect of the trade. Play-By-Mail, you see, was about more than just playing a game or games. It was about a particular type of experience - an experience that still has as much relevance in today's world as it ever did. But, the genre isn't exactly churning out new Play-By-Mail games at an alarming rate. Accordingly, the PBM industry reaps what it is not sowing. There are more profitable ventures than creating new Play-By-Mail games, it seems. Well, that one's a no-brainer. But, many who created PBM games in the years now past weren't in it for the money, anyway. They simply wanted a piece of the action.

As I prepare to resurrect, once more, a Play-By-Mail game that I created many years ago, one that I ran for the pleasure of a relative handful of individuals at the time, I would like to go on record as always saying that I would like to also create at least one additional new PBM game in the coming months. In a nutshell, I want to bring something to the light of day. If it fails, it fails. If I fall flat on my ass, then I fall flat on my ass. But, at least an attempt will have been made to breathe a little life back into the hobby of Play-By-Mail.

In all likelihood, it will be a hand-moderated piece of imperfection. The grand object will not be to turn a profit of coin - but to turn a profit of fun. Be on the lookout for it. Coming soon to a galaxy near you!

NOTE: Originally posted in 2010 on the old PlayByMail.Net forums.

"And they did wallow in the Hell of their own creation, unsurpassed in desolation, unable to free themselves from the chains that bound them, from the chains that they, themselves, had forged. This Hell burned all the hotter, because the true fire no longer burned in their hearts. Their souls were lost, because they refused to find their way. They were without hope in the Abyss of Despair."