I really need to go to bed. It's fairly late, here, and I have to get up early in the morning. But, sometimes, a man's gotta do what a man's gotta do!

All this time, all these years, my arch-nemesis in the Play-By-Mail game of Hyborian War was right here under my nose - and I didn't even realize it. Until now.

If you are one of the fortunate souls in the universe to have a copy of Issue # 69 (November/December 1994) of Paper Mayhem magazine in your possession, then go and retrieve it from that secret stash of old Play-By-Mail magazines that you've got tucked away where only you know it exists, dust off the cobwebs from its cover, and flip it open to page # 41.

There he stands, second guy from the right.

Eric Nakayama!!

It was he that was Asgard's bane in that very first game of Hyborian War that I ever played in, HW-85. I ruled the Aesir, and Eric Nakayama held sway over the evil Hyperborians. That has to be the same guy! It just has to be.

Three straight peace treaties he slapped my kingdom in - and then he dropped out of the game. Why did he drop? He had cut my kingdom in half early on. He had every reason to continue on, and yet he did not. The scoundrel! He left me in a void of wonderment, frustrating me by departing unannounced, depriving my Aesir kinsmen of their just and due revenge.

Maybe that's what happened to him. Maybe he simply drifted on to other games, such as CTF 2187. I never played it. In fact, I never played in another Play-By-Mail game with Eric Nakayama ever again, after that, as far as I know.

I remember raiding the hell out of Hyperborea, after he dropped out. His countrymen paid a severe price for his thrusting them into war with me, only to then abdicate his throne and leave his subjects to pay the price of Asgardian wrath unleashed.

Funny, but in that photograph of him in Paper Mayhem, he doesn't look anything like I imagined a Hyperborian would look.

>sigh< How very disappointing!

And what about you? Who's your arch-nemesis in Play-By-Mail gaming?Come on. I know that there has to be one. Spill the beans. Let's hear all about it. You need the release. It will do your soul good.

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

If one wants to conduct an autopsy of the Play-By-Mail industry, in order to try and gain some insight into how to improve the industry, one malignancy to look at is something commonly referred to as the set-up fee or the start-up fee. It is a blight that continues to ail the industry, and it constitutes an obstacle and a barrier to entry into the gaming genre of Play-By-Mail. While technology has brought mankind into the Twenty-First Century, the set-up fee is a throwback to the prehistoric days of the Play-By-Mail industry. This is one Neanderthal that deserves to be slain.

There are enough obstacles and barriers to entry into the genre of Play-By-Mail gaming, without PBM companies erecting additional ones for gamers to overcome. In a day and an age when PDF documents can be generated quickly and easily, and are common place in a society that has embraced computers and the Internet, set-up fees make less and less sense.

As a long time veteran of playing Play-By-Mail games, I balk at the fees that PBM companies continue to charge for being set up into this Play-By-Mail game or that one. If people like me balk at it, then do you really think that people who have no experience with Play-By-Mail games, but who otherwise might find PBM games to have merit, won't be likely to balk at paying them, either?

Certainly, paying ten bucks here or forking over fifteen bucks there is not the end of the world, but how many Play-By-Mail companies do you think that someone completely uninitiated would be willing to go out on a limb with - if they are beset with set-up fees right from the get-go. To get more people re-interested in trying Play-By-Mail games, in order to re-grow the PBM industry, every last obstacle and barrier to entry needs to be eliminated.

It may, indeed, be impossible to reinvigorate the genre of Play-By-Mail. If technology, itself, has slain the great beast, then PBM cannot be made any more dead by analyzing it and by criticizing it. In their pursuit of the Holy Grail of automation, Play-By-Mail companies continue to treat set-up fees as sacred cows. Preserving these archaic barriers to entry only helps to ensure that Play-By-Mail gaming cannot make a comeback. The best thing to do with these sacred cows is to make hamburger out of them!

If given a choice between trying a Play-By-Internet game that is free of charge, and a Play-By-Mail game that carries a legacy of both start-up fees and per-turn fees, all else being equal, which do you think that the average gamer is likely to go with? How many Play-By-Mail games are still thriving that charge a per-order rate, I wonder? The good old days of Play-By-Mail's golden era are not golden because more Play-By-Mail companies charged start-up fees back then, compared to now. There was no e-mail nor World Wide Web back then. Rulebooks for Play-By-Mail games had to take physical form, and had to be physically delivered from Point A to point B - and made all the more expensive because postal rates were part of the nature of this beast of the player getting set up with all that he needed to have, in order to be on par with his fellow gamers in whatever Play-By-Mail game was in question.

In a day and an age where PDF reigns, why were advances in computer technology incapable of empowering PBM companies to tackle the beast of set-up costs? In truth, it did, actually. It's just that PBM companies chose as a matter of personal choice to retain this antiquated fee structure to the consumer's detriment. If there is to ever be a new era of Play-By-Mail gaming, then I just don't think that set-up fees and start-up fees will be a driving force in making such a reality. And, reality being what it is, a new era in Play-By-Mail gaming may simply be unrealistic.

But, the golden era of Play-By-Mail's heyday was not achieved by individuals whose primary driving force was realism. Rather, it was fueled by imagination and innovation. It was a golden era of imperfection, one of bug-plagued games and moderator eccentricities.The genre of Play-By-Mail is waiting to be rediscovered by a new generation of adventurous souls. Who will they be that chart new ground in this field? Or has man become too timid to unleash his imagination once more?

I'm going to go ahead without you. Follow me, . . . but only if you dare!

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

This is a 3D model that I can light, and render from any angle. I am pretty please with the way this shot came out. Small Craft combat is an important element in the came, with two ship-types essentially large carriers.

  Dragon.jpg (Size: 36.22 KB / Downloads: 13)

'Tis easy to talk about "the player" when talking about creating user interfaces for games. I end up doing it myself, even though I know better. There ain't no such animal.

Grim pointed out, in another thread, that sometimes programmers design the game assuming that the players have the same degree and depth of understanding of every aspect of the game as they (the designers) do. And Grim is right. That is a big fail.

There is a tendency among some interface designers to go to the opposite extreme. To design the game to be "user friendly," by constantly pestering the player with requirement that he agrees that he understands the consequences of the order he has given. As one mentor of mine said: can you imagine having a human assistant who constantly said, "Are you sure you want to do this sir?" every time you told him-her to do something? That can get old, quite quickly, even for a noob, and is about as friendly as a straight-jacket.

What designers (and critics of designers) need to understand is that there are a whole bunch of different types of users and the interface has to work for all of them - which sometimes means having more than one interface, not designing for the lowest common denominator. When looking at an interface, it is important to have at least four or five personae and look at the interface from the point of view of each one of them. If Sally Mae Noob can't figure out what to do, it doesn't matter of Harry Curmudgeon likes it or Billy Whizkid finds it perfectly suited to the fact that he has memorized all 372 item codes. The standard questions that must be asked about the personae are:

• What are the gamer's goals?
  
• What are the gamer's skills and experience?
  
• What are the gamer's needs?
  

Today is the first day that I have did a search for something related to PBM or PBM gaming, and the results of a search engine's searching yields an entry for this site, for PlayByMail.Net, on page one of the search results.

There, way down in position # 10 on that first page, the following appeared:

Pulling PBM gaming back from the brink
Mar 28, 2011 ... Some say that PBM gaming teeters on the brink of destruction. Other say that PBM gaming went over the edge long, long ago. ...
www.playbymail.net/mybb/showthread.php?tid=122 -


So, an article that I create a mere two days ago makes the first page of Google's search engine results. While that doesn't speak especially well for how many people are doing web searches for the search phrase PBM gaming, I think that it does mean that the number one search engine in use, today, knows that our site is here.

What I would like to know, though, is whether other of our site's users would receive similar results, if they did a similar search on their end? So, if any of you site users who are registered here wouldn't mind, could you do a search of your own, and copy and paste the first entry that you come across for this site, as well as tell me what page and what position on that page that the results appear in?

Thanks in advance for your time and assistance in this matter.

There'll be a lot of this kind of a post. I am going to try to share a little bit of how the programming is going and hope that being forced to write coherent sentences will help me work through some of the sticky parts.

I've started working on combat and since this ain't Eve Online, combat is basically going to be high-text, low graphics. Combat will occur in discrete chunks of .10 days, each of which will be divided into 10 ticks, which ends up being a little less than a half hour. We'll be tracking speeds, distances (in light milliseconds which are just about 30 miles), maneuvers, and location within the planetary system (very important since a ship that can reach the oort cloud can jump out of the sector, thus escaping combat). Combat is asynchronous, so only one player is online as it happens. The other is sent an email as the attack start and a second one continuing the combat report as soon as it ends.

Offensive weapons break down into 5 major systems: beams; torps (preprogrammed so they don't adjust to their targets maneuvers) missiles (target seekers), spinal mounts and alien weapons which are wild cards and tend to be, once they are figured out, the sword of a thousand cuts, or the frost giants' invincible helmet - type weapons. Weapons are targeted at different parts of the ship and a particular set of weapons (all heat rays, for instance) can be targeted independently of other sets, even of the same type (Lasers, for instance.) Weapons are mounted on the ships, or can be mounted on combat craft - very useful for a carrier-type strike, especially if attacking a starbase (think Pearl Harbor.)

Defenses are ablative armor, forcefields that work like more ablative armor but slowly restore themselves as combat continues, ECM, and projectiles that attack incoming projectiles like chaff or ABMs. The program is set up to handle unlimited types of each weapon, but ships are limited to installing no more weapons than they have hard points, something that is determined by the type of hull and cannot be augmented.

The first combat-oriented screen I am working on is the one used to set the tactics to be used. Players can create multiple combat sequences and store them. Defensively, there will be the ability to use different programs depending on the type of attack and the threat level of the attacker. Offensive, the player chooses his sequence just before beginning the attack ("Computer, initiate combat sequence, "Riker-Alpha.")

I could have handled the whole tactics things with a series of lists. Choose a weapon from list A, a round to start firing in from list B, and a target section of the other ship, base, or combat boat, but I'm trying to make the process a wee bit less mechanical. What I have come up with is a orbiting group of images that stand for the basic weapons types. Click on one and it circles around to the front and center and a list of the weapons of that type fades in down and to the right on the screen.

In the center is an outline of a generic starship (or starbase, or small craft can be swapped in.) On it, in roughly the right position, is the name of an area that can be targeted (Bridge, Hull, Cargo, etc.)

To program a weapon type, the player selects the weapon for the list and then clicks on the target he wants to aim at. (The cursor turns to cross hairs as it approaches the ship outline.)

Right now I am happy with the outline and the orbit, but consider the list of targets boring (but I haven't got a lot of space available so anything fancy will require some GUI legerdemain), and I haven't quite figured out how to select the round to begin firing on.

Attached is a screen shot - there's no back end code for the screen at all, though there's a fair amount of jQuery used to make the orbit and to do some cross fading.

If anyone has thoughts, or questions or just wants to say, "Jon, it sucks, throw it out and start over," please feel free. Feedback will help a lot, especially since mistakes corrected now are so much less of a hassle than later on. I will listen carefully, and undefensively, I promise.


  Tactics.jpg (Size: 151.89 KB / Downloads: 11)

An off-site interview that Flagship magazine's editor, Carol Mulholland, did with Jon Ogden of Rimworlds.

Some say that PBM gaming teeters on the brink of destruction. Other say that PBM gaming went over the edge long, long ago.

Apparently, there was a great conflict, of some sort. Or, maybe I am simply looking at the evidence wrong. These PBM gamers, now these fellows (and the occasional PBM lass or three), they meant business, back in the day.

What you've got to understand is that these sons of bitches meant business. Play by mail gaming was serious business to these folks. They invested lots of time, lots of money, lots of energy into the hobby. Hell, they invested bits and pieces of themselves into these games, into these dad-burned PBM games, as they called them - play by mail. Some sank their hearts into it. Some sank their souls into it. A few of these crazy bastards even invested their life savings into it, and became what you or I today might call "game moderators."

Man, that's a big, fancy term. Game moderators. PBM game moderators. These were the czars of play by mail. Why, if it weren't for them, there's no telling where PBM might have ended up.

Flash forward to the present date. Now, look about you. Welcome to Czarville - PBM gaming that is consolidated, antiquated, dilapidated. But, beneath it all, the old beast lurks even still. Oh, it's down there, all right. Watching. Waiting. Lurking. Just biding its time, until its ready to pounce once again upon an unsuspecting public.

If I posed the question, "Which PBM company has the best PBM website on the Internet?" What would you say? If I posed the question to you of, "Which PBM company has the worst PBM website on the Internet?" There would be one hell of a lot of competition, don't you think?

Maybe what PBM gaming needs is more fees. What do you think about that? Postage fees. Start-up fees. Special action fees. Rulebook fees. Fees for this. Fees for that. Here a fee, there a fee, everywhere a fee, fee. By chance, does anyone happen to know if Old MacDonald, himself, played PBM games, too?

Or, maybe what the PBM industry needs is for someone to pull play by mail gaming back from the brink. How does one save the postal system from itself, though? It's antiquated. It's out of step with the times. It's monopolized, in many instances. Can anyone really afford to use it, anymore? The postal service, I mean. What's it really good for, aside from delivering bills to your doorstep? Aren't you glad that we've all outgrown being entertained by envelopes dropped off at our doorstep or in our mailboxes? Thank God for technology! It has saved us from both the need and the desire to be entertained in such an outmoded way.

Or has it?

As a society, we've apparently chosen to super-size our junk mail. Now, we are beset with spam. The more that things change, the more that they remain the same.

As a kid, I used to look forward to receiving the Sears Roebuck catalog in the mail. Man, what a great thing that was! Now, I can access far more information about stuff that Sears or any of a countless number of other stores carry, via the Internet, of course, than their catalog ever carried, even in its thickest of issues. Yet, how many times have I bothered to browse Sears' website? Uh, they do have a website, don't they?

My role in the grand scheme of things is not to keep the play by mail industry from going over the edge. Some say that they went over the edge long before I ever even started playing PBM games, all those many years ago.

From my vantage point here on PlayByMail.Net, I largely just observe things. Today, for example, during my recent of many explorations of the Internet's past signs of PBM life, I encountered a couple of things that I took notice of - and which I believe are positive signs for the hobby of play by mail.

One of these is our own site user, Ixnay, expressing interest in signing up for a game of Hyborian War that is being organized by, of all things, Duel2 players, rather than by Hyborian War players.

The other is Mica Goldstone's response to KJC Games' forum user Dave No Mates At All, whose plight I had mentioned in the PBM News Blurb for March 14th, 2011.

In order for PBM gaming to thrive, to be brought back from the brink, so to speak, the universe of postal genre gaming requires at least some degree of pollination by players, and at least some component ingredients of service by PBM moderators and/or would-be-PBM-Moderators.

Like the paladin of fantasy gaming fame, Ixnay boldly follows his faith - his faith in PBM gaming as a viable and entertaining medium for enriching his personal life. In the process, he helps grow his hobby.

And Mica? Well, let's just say that it's good to see that Dave No Mates At All did not die in a PBM wilderness area utterly bereft of answers from the PBM game company that he chose to do business with. Mica's response, relatively brief though it was, probably made that poor fellow's day.

So I just read somewhere that FH is open-source? Is that true? Can I get a copy of the source code? Can we start modding it?

The Road of Kings
A large group of Duel2 players (about 20 of them, give or take a few) recently decided that they would try to play a game of Hyborian War. They are looking for a few additional people to sign up for this game of Hyborian War, so that the game can get off and running as soon as possible. If you think you qualify as a relatively new player (or are returning from a long absence) and would like to join this friendly game, then check out the discussion thread that they recently started on The Road of Kings website.

-----

PlayByMail.Net
I recently received several e-mails from that infamous PBM personality, Bob McLain. Bob insists that he has no photos of PBM conventions - because he never attended any, and that he always had an Associate Editor attend on his behalf, when it was cost-effective - which wasn't often.

Bob McLain said that his biggest splurge was hiring a pair of Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders to pass out Gaming Universal flyers at an Origins in Dallas, back in 1983 (or thereabouts). Mark Kaiser, one of Bob's magazine's Associate Editors, was in charge of making sure the girls had the flyers, knew what to do, and so forth, but Bob thinks that Mark mostly made sure that he got their phone numbers.

Years later, the woman who owned the agency through which Bob McLain hired the cheerleaders told Bob that the girls never gave out their own numbers, but instead, gave out the number for a local pizza shop. Bob McLain said that he always imagines Mark calling that pizza shop, asking in his very precise, avuncular way for Denise, and being offered her as a special, take-out only. Bob also said that it's likely that this is what drove Mark Kaiser out of play-by-mail, and off the face of the earth. Bob told me to feel free to share this story in the PlayByMail.Net forums.

In more Bob McLain related PBM news, Bob said that he currently owns the rights to the famed PBM game, Quest of the Great Jewels. Apparently, Bob sold the game to Jeffrey McKee of Mesa, AZ, in January 2000, with a contract stipulation that if Jeffery wasn't running the game within three years of contract execution, then the rights to the game would revert back to Bob McLain. Bob also asserted that this very same contract guarantees that himself, Mike Shefler, and Rich Van Ollefen are entitled to lifetime free play of Quest of the Great Jewels. Bob also still has a copy of the rulebook and source code for Quest of the Great Jewels.

-----

Empire Forge Conquests
Jeff Sullins has announced that the Beta Test for Empire Forge Conquests has started. If interested in joining this Beta Test, then contact Jeff via the Empire Forge Conquests forum.

-----

Flying Buffalo
A new game of Starweb has started, recently, this one designated as SW-1378. This game is a 2-week regular game of Starweb, according to this post in The Flying Buffalo Gamer Forums.

-----

Middle-earth Strategic Gaming
Heading over to the Middle-earth Play-By-Mail forums, I came across an interesting (albeit very short) discussion thread titled, "How I got addicted to MEth..." It's a good thread about becoming addicted to this PBM game.