+- PlayByMail Forums (https://forums.playbymail.dev)
+-- Forum: Play-By-Mail Games (https://forums.playbymail.dev/forumdisplay.php?fid=1)
+--- Forum: Games (https://forums.playbymail.dev/forumdisplay.php?fid=4)
+---- Forum: The Isles PBM (https://forums.playbymail.dev/forumdisplay.php?fid=42)
+---- Thread: In hindsight (/showthread.php?tid=130726)
In hindsight - Roy Pollard - 01-30-2021
Ok, well that's The Isles running steadily for about the past year for 15 friends and old players from 'back in the day' - The reasons it was stopped for what few 'new' players were enjoying the game are detailed below
1. Hardly anyone was playing. I spent a lot of time setting people up in the game and most played a couple of turns before disappearing - Most of them without telling me why
2. Of the few players who did play, a small proportion of them were throwing real tantrums when events in the game weren't going exactly how they wanted.
3. Players appeared to be struggling to understand the concept of a hand moderated game - as an example, where I was expecting people would know how to play a PBM RPG game a number of players were expecting to fill in boxes with complex computer code that I'd then input into a glorified spreadsheet with a result emitted onto a computer print (????)
4. The amount of effort I was putting in to try and run the game didn't really justify the amount of satisfaction I was getting for the above 3 reasons
So what's the status of The Isles at the moment? Its the same status as for PBM in general I guess - Its running with a limited hardcore of players with no significant input of new blood - The Isles is currently like an old D&D session that I used to run as a kid, with a small group clustered around a table in a dark spare room. Its just that the spare room is about 4000 miles wide and the light is always on. Oh, and the 80s Heavy Metal music is turned down a little bit, in consideration for those who don't like Metallica.
Peace.
RE: In hindsight - Lugh - 03-19-2021
I saw your example turn on your Facebook page...
https://www.facebook.com/theislespbm/photos/a.102070351517277/122709459453366/
WOW!
Kudos to you! That is exceptional. Players in your game get to be the main character of their own fantasy book.