Down through the years established play by mail companies have spent a lot of time and energy reinventing the wheel. The wheel that I am referring to is the graphical user interface, or GUI for short.

In the postal genre of gaming, the original graphical user interface for play by mail games was the player, himself. Each PBM game came stocked with a brain and an imagination. Graphics resolution was a non-issue, for players' imaginations enjoyed open-ended resolution. In their respective minds, entire worlds - even entire universes - took shape and became populated with details. Hardware compatibility issues were non-existent, as players' imaginations could absorb any play by mail game, even if players simultaneously seemed seldom capable of mastering the games, themselves.

Play by mail game moderators have struggled over the years to transition their entertainment products to the digital age. Apparently suffering under the self-imposed mass delusion that graphics were key to a form of entertainment that was traditionally and historically bereft of graphics, they set about the formidable task of "enhancing" their games with graphical capabilities. The ensuring result? Failure, typically.

While it should, perhaps, be binary to PBM companies that play by mail gaming was never graphics-dependent, either to survive or to thrive as a viable medium of gaming entertainment, nevertheless, PBM's Old Guard apparently suffered great difficulty seeing the forest for the trees.

Rather than bringing tried, tested, and proven entertainment to an Internet-empowered potential user base numbering in the millions, PBM's Old Guard opted to take advantage of technology to alter their core entertainment products. The result, as predictable in hindsight as it may be? Mass failure. Mass rejection by the gaming public. A sharp decline in the genre as a whole.

While opinions on such topics may vary widely, I would like to make one observation: The Internet did not kill text as a viable medium of communication.

So, if the vast bulk of play by mail games of old were largely text based games, why do people think that the Internet killed play by mail or somehow or other rendered it obsolete? Even if it did, was it because this medium of entertainment was primarily text based?

Personally, I think that such is exceptionally unlikely. If play by mail gaming has died, all readily available evidence to the contrary not withstanding, then its demise likely has nothing, whatsoever, to do with classic PBM games being exercises in text writ large, pardon the pun.

While editing the site's front page, my web browser decided to declare war on me, with the end effect being about 20 to 30 minutes of the front page being blank.

The forum software's portal page is what I use as the front page for this site, currently. Templates are what the software uses to control the display of information on this page. For some reason or other, instead of saving changes to the template, the template would save as a blank page. Consequently, what anyone who visited the site during that particular time frame would see would be absolutely nothing - just a truly blank page.

It's not hard to fix, nor even very time consuming to fix, if my web browser cooperates. The worst part about such episodes is that I get no warning. I did go ahead and make a copy of the current portal page template saved with today's date, in case it happens again in the future.

Dealing with websites, there's always something kind of problem or other to rear its head. But, fortunately, this problem appears to be remedied, for now.

My apologies for any inconvenience that this may have caused to any site visitors affected by this glitch. My thanks to Google's cached page system, for allowing me to re-create the front page template as quickly as I was able to.

• Galaxy Alpha - Game started
  

Flying Buffalo, Inc.
Rick Loomis of Flying Buffalo has announced on his Twitter page that Flying Buffalo is going to be starting an Anonymous World Wide Battle Plan game in a couple days. His announcement was dated three days ago, so the game may or may not have already started, by now. If you want to get in on it, contact Flying Buffalo at: games@flyingbuffalo.com

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The Road of Kings
Play by mail gamers looking to join an organized game of Hyborian War need look no further than http://www.warbarron.com/rok/forumdispla...rthing-Pit forum section over at Warbarron.Com.

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Duel2 Forums
A number of Duel2 (formerly known in PBM circles as Duelmasters) players have recently decided to organize their own game of Hyborian War. They have a discussion thread created for this game over on the Duel2 forums in the following thread: http://www.reality.com/duel2/modules.php...f8adcce207

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GadGames
I dropped in on the Gad Games blog site, today, but there was no new word from Sean Cleworth on Gad Games' game project, Ilkor: Dark Rising. There has been a little bit of activity during the month of February, over on the Gad Games' Facebook page, if you want to check it out for yourself.

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Voidspeak Blog
I've posted a few very brief blog entries, of late, on the Voidspeak blog, located on the Flagship magazine website. The Flagship website has felt pretty dead, ever since Carol Mulholland's abrupt disappearance several months back, due to health issues. So, I am trying to post some over there, now and again, to try and breathe a little life into the place. Thus far, I am certainly not succeeding.

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Wy'East Games
Heading over to Mark Wardell's Wy'East games website proved to be wasted time, today, as Mark has apparently not bothered to update that site with any new postings since August 21st, 2010 - over six months ago! So, those of you looking for an update on Mark's progress with Galactic Empires 3.0, you're just plain out of luck. The rules for the Galactic Empires playtest can be downloaded directly from Mark' site at the following link: http://www.wyeastgames.com/filemgmt/visit.php?lid=2

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Olympia G3
Popping in on the Olympia G3 forums, today, there's recent news from site user Meta, there, on the Gui for an Olympia Web Browser. Previously, meta had posted a screen shot, in the same forum thread.

There is a conspiracy afoot! Surely, it must be a conspiracy, because how else could it be explained?

Ineptitude. Lack of awareness. Loss of concern. Distractions of life.

One of the things that I do, in the course of running this site and in the course of trying to come up with material for this site, is to visit other websites - particularly websites that pertains to play by mail gaming of the postal genre kind, or sites that sued to pertain to the same.

Some of these websites that I visit are the websites of commercial play by mail companies - the websites of those that I consider to be the Old Guard of PBM. There's aren't exactly a lot of new commercial play by mail companies erecting websites, these days, so for the most part, I am relegated to sifting through the debris of websites initially established years ago - back when the World Wide Web was a much younger entity.

Most of the commercial play by mail gaming companies of the past left very little, if anything, of their history scattered in the cosmic debris of the Internet. Most of them probably never even evolved as far as posting a website on the Internet. If they did, there's precious few traces of their existence preserved for mankind's posterity to find, even so relatively soon after their demise.

Player communities of play by mail games also exist on the Internet. In fact, they seem to be faring at least as well as websites run by play by mail companies, themselves.

What play by mail interest there is out there in Internetland seems to largely be a relatively focused affair. Some of it is quite intentional on the part of those controlling certain websites, and some of it is just the way that things evolved largely on their own over time.

Some sites cull the PBM player base by their respective approaches to controlling access to viewing PBM related materials, including online discussions pertaining to PBM games, while others cull the PBM herd by restricting participation.

Spam postings, particularly by automated spambots, certainly is at the heart of what drives some of these types of restrictions. Preservation of remaining vestiges of once glorious player bases may perhaps drive some of these restrictions, as well. Who knows?

In crafting this website and its accompanying forums, which form the very heart of this site, I strive to remain cognizant of restrictions, so that they can be kept to a bare minimum. If a new visitor to this site happens to find this infinitesimal site in amongst the cosmic bulk of the Internet's other offerings of all types, then they can browse at their leisure, and view pretty much everything that gets posted in the forums here, as well as the material that ends up getting posted as HTML format pages. They don't have to register. They can, if they want to. I would certainly take this opportunity to encourage them to do so - but only if it strikes their notion to do so.

If they want to post material on this site, then the quickest and easiest way for them to accomplish such is by registering, and posting in the forums, here. But, they also have the option of sending me material via e-mail, and I could then post it for them.

For play by mail to experience a resurgence of its player base, then I think that restrictions that I commonly encounter when visiting other websites are an obstacle of note to growing the player base for postal gaming. Comparatively speaking, though, it probably is not a greater obstacle than PBM moderators who have grown disinterested with their own craft through the passage of time.

If interest in play by mail gaming suddenly exploded, and we all awoke tomorrow to millions of new faces all clamoring for a chance to play games via the postal medium, the PBM industry, itself, couldn't handle such an influx.

RollingThunderForums
One of the more interesting PBM related discussions currently taking place on the Internet is occurring over on the Rolling Thunder Games' forum, in a discussion thread that was started way back on October 3rd, 2006. That discussion had died out on October 16th, 2006, just a couple of weeks or so after it was started, but I posted in it on February 23rd, 2011, and it seems to have sparked some new memories, as several long time play by mail gamers have posted in that thread over the last few weeks.

It's not a lengthy discussion thread, but it interesting, nonetheless, and well worth checking out, in my considered opinion. The first page of that thread can be found here: http://www.rollingthunderforums.com/inde...=1514&st=0

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The Road of Kings
Over at Lloyd Barron's "The Road of Kings" website, site user Graniomi posts that he is in the final stages of a contract with HBO for "Game of Thrones. He's trying to drum up assistance from PBM gamers interested in helping to develop a PBM/PBEM game.

That discussion can be found here: http://www.warbarron.com/rok/showthread....a-PBM-PBeM

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Flying Buffalo Forums
I dropped by the Flying Buffalo Forums, today, but there's just not a lot going on on that site.

A quick glance at the Recent Posts section of that site's main forum index reveals that of the last ten messages posted on that site, six out of those ten were posted in 2010.

The site admin there, Craig Delahoy, was kind enough to post an inquiry from me, looking to see if anyone had any interest in being interviewed about their gaming experiences with Flying Buffalo. To date, though, no site user from that site has contacted me, wanting me to interview them.

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PBM Gamer
Stopping by the website of the Mad Scientist of PBM, Mark Wardell, I took notice that nothing new has been posted there by Mark since February 1st, 2011 - over a month ago.

Hopefully, Mark's interest in play by mail gaming will be renewed, in the forthcoming weeks. Until then, it just doesn't look like there's much of anything going on there.

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Jason Oates' Games
On the Jason Oates' Games website, it declares that a new game of Ancient Empires will be starting soon. What does soon mean, in regards to that assertion? I have no idea, since the website doesn't bother to expound upon it.

However, I do know that Beast, a site user here and on The Road of Kings website, has posted that Ancient Empires is looking positive. See his posting in the thread here:

http://www.warbarron.com/rok/showthread....0%A6/page4

The rules for Ancient Empires can be downloaded from the following page of Jason Oate's website here:

http://www.jason-oates-games.com/page9.html

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Flying Buffalo, Incorporated
On Rick Loomis' Flying Buffalo website, if you go to the Flying Buffalo Quarterly page, then Rick has several past issues of Flying Buffalo Quarterly that you can download for free.

In Issue # 79, there's an article titled, "The History of Play-by-Mail and Flying Buffalo." It's worth your time to grab that article and check it out.

The direct link to Issue # 79 of Flying Buffalo Quarterly can be found here:

http://www.flyingbuffalo.com/download/fbq79.pdf

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Star Fleet Warlord
Apparently, a new standard game of Star Fleet Warlord was supposed to start on February 13th, 2011, according to the news page of that game's website. The direct link to that news page can be found here:

http://www.play-by-e-mail.com/news/news.html

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Fate of a Nation
Peter and folks over at Norberg Games are seeing a noticeable increase in the number of postings taking place in their site's forums for Fate of a Nation, their brand new open-ended PBeM game set in a fantasy world.

The stats page for their forums can be found here:

http://www.fateofanation.net/forum/index...tion=stats


And that concludes this News Blurb. Happy gaming!

Edit: Oops! Sorry Grim, I forgot this subforum was for current/active PBM games. I could have sworn there was a graveyard forum for older PBMs. Feel free to move this thread wherever you think appropriate.

Star Empires v3.0 was a PBEM game that ran from at least 1992-1994. It was originally created by one Al Green from UMass/Amherst, and recreated by Roger Lincoln.

I never actually played Star Empires, rather I found the information below on a FTP archive and found the game pretty interesting. All the information in this post can be found at a FTP Archive. I have a mirror (with the extracted plain text files) here.

A quick summary of the game in the game master's words:

Quote:Star Empires is a simple version of the traditionalspace domination games. It was designed to be quick and easy to play; Star Empires is to Galaxy what Checkers is to Chess :-)

Quote:Star Empires is a multi-player strategy wargame in
which you compete against other players (up to 50) to
control the known universe. The "known universe" consists
of up to 250 planets. To accomplish this you will build a
space fleet and maneuver your ships to destroy your
opponents fleets, conquer his planets, and rape his women
and children (just kidding about the women and children,
what you do on your own time is not my concern). This game
is designed around the ships it uses. Ship designs are
preset and available to all players, you can't design your
own ship (but you can suggest changes to me). Planetary
economics, resource management, and politics were purposely
avoided or minimized; you assume the role of Fleet Admiral
and focus solely on the fleet itself.

Quote:Star Empires is unique in that, except for the initial setup of the universe, there is no randomness (randomninity?) involved in the game. The only uncertainties are those of your opponents strategies.

Quote:In order to conquer the universe you will build a mighty starfleet, to do this you will need raw materials, Resource Units, hereafter referred to as RU's. Every planet has a certain Production potential, this is the number of RU's it creates per turn.

Quote:1. Dreadnaught
2. Battleship
3. Battlecruiser
4. Attack Cruiser
5. Heavy Cruiser
6. Light Cruiser
7. Destroyer
8. Corvette
9. Raider
10. Frigate
11. Corsair
12. Escort
13. Fleet Carrier
14. Light Carrier
15. Transport
16. Strike Wing
17. Fighter Wing
18. Patrol Wing
19. Scout
20. Orbital Fort
21. Orbital MkII
22. PDC
23. Missile
24. Probe
25. Fleet Base

Quote:To conquer a planet you must be the only player with a ship (other than a scout, probe, or missile) in that star system.

• Final report for games 3 and 4.
  
• Game 5 Report
  
• Game 6 Report (with player anecdotes).
  

Last year Mark Wardell of WyEastGames.com and PBMGamer.com of fame indicated he would be resurrecting Galactic Empires.

Yet, I haven't heard anything from him in several months. Emails go unreplied to, and his blog hasn't been updated since Jan.

Has anyone heard from him, particularly when it comes to GE? I must admit, GE looks like a fantastic game, and if it wasn't for the obvious copyright/intellectual property rights issue, I would implement the game myself.

As I sit here in my Fortress of Solitude, safe from the crazed masses of play by mail gamers who, fortunately for myself, are busy with other pursuits, these days, I find that it is time to reflect upon things PBM, once more.

Whatever the future of postal gaming might or might not be, I cannot help but to question whether there is any substantial point in bothering with trying to renew interest in play by mail gaming with the remaining remnants of commercial play by mail's Old Guard.

It would certainly be nice to capture their memories of play by mail, both at its Genesis moment and at its high points and low points over the span of time of the genre's existence. But, I tend to be neither pessimist nor optimist. Rather, I tend to be more of a realist, by nature, and the simple reality is that we, the fans of play by mail, either make the best of what appears to be a bad situation, or we make preparations to abandon the hobby for a life pod to other forms of entertainment.

What play by mail needs is new games. Build them, and they will come. Granted, they might not stay, but they will come. There may not be as many of them as you like, but nonetheless, they will come. This is what I believe.

Fancy computer-programs take time and effort and energy and resources to complete. What play by mail needs is something with a better prospect of actually taking root - even if it is only a single root or three of dozens or hundreds or thousands that actually survive and grow and prosper. This vision, while perhaps somewhat on the meager side, is better than the likely alternatives.

If the first several new PBM games suck, then we build on it, or at least glean lessons of value from it. In the meantime, we might even herald the dawn of a new age of PBM fun for at least a few of us, even if not for mass legions and hordes of PBM gamers all frothing at the mouth and beating down the proverbial doors clamoring to play these new play by mail games.

With that in mind, I honestly feel like things are beginning to look up for the hobby of play by mail gaming. I may not can impact every PBM gamer's entertainment quotient, but I am certainly more than capable of impacting my own entertainment quotient.

Why will I create new PBM games? Because I can, by God. That's why!

PDF version of the PlayByMail.Net interview with Rich Van Ollefen.