A few days ago, I decided to launch a new blog, one that I titled Voidspeak. You can find it over on the Flagship magazine website, in the Blogs section of their forums.

With Flagship's editor, Carol Mulholland, presently sidelined by health considerations, and with hardly anyone else posting in the forums there, I really felt that it was a shame for Flagship's forums to become the equivalent of a ghost town. So, I opted to create a blog there, something to post some short entries about something PBM related.

I titled it Voidspeak, since I view it to be a blog from across the vast void of the play by mail universe, one speaking to a PBM diaspora scattered to the furthermost reaches of the play by mail universe. Since most PBM gamers will likely never even know about this blog, much less read it, I view it to be akin to speaking into a void.

Welcome to the fifth issue of the Norberg bulletin! In this issue we are proud to present the first part of the Kigal game example written by Glom. We’ll also look at some numbers and have a look at an example technology description…

The bulletin can be found at:
http://www.fateofanation.net/download.php

This is the entry for Galaxy: Alpha, a play by mail game from Intergalactic Games.

On a personal level, I do not tend to view myself as either an optimist or a pessimist. Rather, I tend to view myself as a realist. This is one of the reasons why I do not feel that it I am being overly optimistic, when I discuss the possibilities for the dawning of a new era in play by mail gaming. And, yes, I am referring to gaming of the postal genre variety.

I think that it is beyond dispute that the postal medium is well suited to gaming, including multi-player gaming. Multi-player gaming has been one of PBM gaming's core assets and key attractions over the duration of the postal gaming medium's existence.

The downsides of the postal medium are well known, insofar as they relate to the running of, and participation in, play by mail games. Costs, delays, and poor graphics tend to be among the top reasons why PBM gaming seems, to many, to be going the way of the dinosaur.

The strong suit of play by mail gaming was never graphics. It was imagination. Even now, in today's day and age, video cards and computer graphics continue to lag well behind the imagination of human beings. Oh, sure, the computerized eye-candy has continued to improve, and new video cards dazzle and wow all who behold them. Some games even manage to garner a ten out of ten score form those who review them. Impressive, huh?

Not really. It's not that such games are not fun. Sure, they' fun. Games have always been fun. Games will always be fun. But, that's the inherent nature of games manifesting themselves before us as entertainment pieces. Games entertain. Games delight. Games make life a bit more pleasant.

Ask any die-hard Stephen King fan if imagination is dead. When you're not playing your favorite game, but you think about it, your imagination is likely to perk up and spring to life.Imagination isn't dead, in this day and age, and imagination was a primary ingredient in the play of old school PBM games.

As far as delays that have long been associated with postal gaming, we encounter delays in most every facet of our lives. Postal gaming co-opted delay, and turned what we often associate with being a negative in our lives (namely, that we have to wait for that something that we are wanting - i.e.: our PBM game's turn results) into a positive. What is the positive? It's called anticipation.

Checking your mailbox time and time and time again, as the days and weeks pass, builds the anticipation factor higher and higher. By comparison, in the electronic mediums, delay tends to retain all of the vestiges and trappings of being an inherently negative thing. That does not mean, however, that delay is incapable of being a positive in our lives - and in particular, in the entertainment aspect of our lives. Anticipation has, for decades on end, been a strong staple of play by mail life. It has not gone out of style, even now. Where inducing the anticipation factor into a game, modern computer games are still playing catch-up with postal gaming.

Costs, though, tend to be touted as the big killer of PBM gaming. There is no way, whatsoever, around some of the costs associated with postal gaming. Take postage, for example - it's just a ordinary fact of life that PBM gaming has to live with, in order for old school play by mail gaming to survive.

Why bear the burden of postage costs, turn fees, set-up fees, and whatever other fees and costs that PBM companies and their moderators pile high on your plate? Why not just skip straight over to various electronic mediums, and be done with the postal medium, once and for all?

Well, you can. The Internet and modern technology empowers you - the individual - to do just, exactly that. But, that's not to say that you don't lose something in the process, in the transition away from the postal medium to electronic mediums. Rest assured, you do lose something!

One of the reasons that I want to create, and run, a new PBM game of the postal genre variety is to demonstrate that very point - that and the fact that gaming by mailbox can still be a lot of fun, even in the mish-mash world of technology unfurled that we live in and stress in in the here and now moment of current existence.

I don't intend to use that game to save the genre. Rather, I intend to use it to make, and to underscore, a point about the genre. It's about fun, people - good, old-fashioned fun, the kind that requires no hardware and no software on the player's part.

The fun factor in a play by mail game is what ultimately trumps cost considerations, where PBM gaming is concerned. Fun is the anti-cost. Fun isn't dead. Fun lives on. Long live the fun factor!

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

I go by paway on the Hyborian War forums and One Armed Bandit on the Duel2 forums (the game formerly known as Duelmasters).

My first PBM game was about 20 years ago. I read an ad for Hyborian War in a Savage Sword of Conan magazine and played Amazonia to game end. From that, I tried out Duelmasters and stuck with that for a number of years. I worked at the local Renaissance Festival over the summer and a movie theater during the school year and I'm pretty sure the majority of my minimum wage went to PBM companies. After a year of college, I stopped playing PBM games for over ten years, but I eventually rediscovered the online communities of Duel2 and Hyborian War and am once again an enthusiastic player of both games.

There are other games that I remember from my youth, that I wish were thriving as much as these two games. In particular, I recall reading the rules of Its a Crime! and Monster Island and thinking that they would be great fun to play. I've dabbled with PBeM games and MMORPGs, but for me, nothing beats the excitement of receiving a turn in my mailbox.

David

I was able to partially register with Adventure Kings, getting a user name and password. However I have not been able to log into their forums.

I have looked over the web site and I think the next step is for me to email with a request for registration on the AK admin site. I sent emails to methusalah@sympatico.ca and bonzo.akgm@gmail.com but got no reply.

Has anyone else had this problem or better yet know how to get around this?

Thanks
Beast

I was able to partially register with KJC games, getting a user name and password. However I have not been able to log into their forums or join a game, “It’s a Crime” in particular.

I have sent emails to kjc@kjcgames.com, enquiry@kjcgames.com, and orders@kjcgames.com getting a single reply from enquiry@kjcgames.com only asking me what game I was trying to join.

Has anyone else had this problem or better yet know how to get around this?

Thanks
Beast

Over on The Road of Kings, site user Beast has posted a thread titled, "… the death of PBM/PBEM …"

In order to read the posting that he made, you will probably need to register on that site. Just tell them that GrimFinger sent you.