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+--- Thread: The Gauntlet of the Damned (/showthread.php?tid=130)
The Gauntlet of the Damned - GrimFinger - 04-01-2011
"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."
- The Book of Untold Damnation
The sheer extent of the carnage was staggering. All around me lay the corpses of game after game after game. This was the graveyard of a once proud Play-By-Mail industry. The stench of the dead rose to the heavens, and filled my nostrils with a smell that was a cross between burnt skin and nostalgia. 'O woe unto those that gather here, for great is the agony of the PBM damned!
Ghosts of countless PBM players, some dead but others still alive, mingled with one another on this great plain of desolation. Like postal zombies, entire hordes of them just milled around aimlessly, waiting for turn results that would never arrive. Never destined to win in games that no longer existed, but unable to bring themselves to just fade completely into the past, where the heyday of Play-By-Mail gaming lives forever in the memory of all good PBM soldiers.
They have fought bravely in thousands of battles. They have waged war in untold campaigns. Their conflicts have spanned the stars, and stretched across the universe, itself. Dimensions of time and space have been mere pawns in their hands, and they have wielded magics and mastered the dark arts. A select few of them have even battled the gods, themselves. Damn! How things change. How did men and women so powerful end up with so little to show for it?
The death of PBM has been predicted many times by men who are greater in the gaming world than I. Surely, we should have seen the writing on the wall, when so many seers and gurus of gaming have sought to enlighten us for so long. The final nail has not yet been driven into our coffins, though, and so, like vampires of the night, we rise to greet the dawn of a new day. Perhaps this shall be the day of our revival, we think, when the Children of PBM reclaim their rightful place in the House of Gaming.
Surely, we are not relegated to this sobering plane of existence for all eternity? Surely, this shall not be our fate always? Or are we chained and shackled to a gaming destiny that is neither alive nor dead? Alas, alack, the indignity of lacking even the courtesy of a proper epitaph is perhaps the greatest misery of them all.
OK, enough of the lamentations, already. The reason that Play-By-Mail is not completely dead and long since buried is because, even today, people still find the genre to be interesting. For all of the pronouncements of PBM being dead, like the gamers who keep the genre going, it continues to defy the expectations of the gaming hive mind.
For the die-hard PBM fans, the ones who would like to see the PBM genre spring back to life, the cold, hard reality is that the fate of the industry and the genre is in your hands. It always has been, you see. Like the characters that you have played in adventures and quests throughout the PBM realm, the power to overcome lies deep within your own hearts. If you would like to see Play-By-Mail rise from the depths of gaming memory, then do something about it. Who knows? It may just be the most exciting adventure of your career as a PBM gamer.
These days, there are more tools than ever before at the disposal of the masses. Computers may not be in every home, but they permeate the societal landscape, nonetheless. The main difference is that the computers of today are far and away more powerful than the computers that existed in the proverbial heyday of Play-By-Mail gaming. Computer printers of today offer resolution and graphics capabilities that the founding fathers of the PBM industry could only dream about. The postal system, for all of its many shortcomings, still exists, also. Is the current generation of PBM gamers wholly and utterly incapable of new creative PBM undertakings? If so, then it is only because they lack the will - not because opportunities and capabilities no longer exist to create and to introduce a new generation of Play-By-Mail games.
For those who dream about what it would be like to see the dinosaurs of PBM walk the Earth again, have you considered excavating the bones, yourself? Or, better yet, have you considered creating a new PBM behemoth from scratch, so that you might then unleash it upon an unsuspecting gaming world? You might not get rich, but you may still yet preserve your own little space in the annals of the PBM infamous.
Is there not a one amongst you who has fire burning in their hearts, even now? Are there no fearless souls still stirring, yet, here in the midst of this PBM desolation? Have all possible great PBM games already been thought up and churned out, only to be cast aside like infinite grains of sand in the hourglass of time?
Let the call to arms be sounded! Let the gauntlet of creative genius be thrown down! It is the greatest quest of our time. Will you take up that gauntlet? Are you up to the challenge? Have you resigned yourself to the fate of the damned? Or will you breach Heaven and invade Hell to bring PBM back from the edge of the abyss?
You've faced oblivion before, haven't you? It greets you now with open arms. Do you not have one last ounce of fight left within your heart, within your very soul?The world of PBM, while teeming with desolation and mired in plagues of every sort imaginable, is still a world waiting to be conquered.
You can invade this PBM world and claim it for your very own. Or, you can languish in the desolation of this land...forever!
NOTE: Originally posted in 2010 on the old PlayByMail.Net forums.