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+--- Thread: The Habitual Habit of PBM Gaming (/showthread.php?tid=130850)
The Habitual Habit of PBM Gaming - GrimFinger - 02-17-2024
In life, we do many things as a matter of habit. We habituate ourselves to a lifetime of habits. PBM gaming is but one of them.
Take myself, for instance? I have a habit of writing about PBM gaming. In fact, I write about PBM more than I play PBM. And maybe that's one of the problems? Perhaps I should play more and write less.
Or better yet, perhaps I should not write about PBM, at all?
That sounds odd, huh? It even seems quite counter-intuitive, at first glance. But the whole point of PBM is not to play PBM games, simply because PBM games exist.
Or is it?
Not in my book, certainly. My mind continually runs the gauntlet that is thinking about play by mail gaming. The three letters, PBM, are quicker to type, than are the then letters and two spaces that comprise play by mail. Yet, those three letters were chosen to stand for that term, as a way to distinguish in a nutshell gaming via a particular medium. Yet, way back when, PBM also basically stood for hundreds and hundreds of different games that there were no board game equivalents of, for the most part.
And this worked well, for quite some time.
But what about now? What about here in the current era, an era that seems quite dystopian, compared to many different aspects of what life was like back when play by mail gaming was booming?
You are able to read this, at all, because technology changed. Now, there are easier ways to write, than what existed way back when. There are quicker forms of communication, now compared to then, without question. Yet, when the play by mail gaming industry prunes itself almost to the point of non-existence, there ends up being considerably less to write about, to talk about, to ponder.
My sister's recent death did not turn out to be a PBM revelation. But then again, no one ever really expected it to. In fact, she probably was never even aware that PBM gaming existed. She did like receiving letters in the mail from me, in recent years, but those are few and far between. And now, the opportunity to send her more is gone forever.
While PBM Chaos readers wait with bated breath (ahem!) for the next issue (#33) of that PBM quasi-publication to land in their e-mail in-boxes, here I site typing this nonsense, instead of doing something that is more PBM-constructive, you might say.
But so what?
The world is in no danger of ending, because if it. And PBM gaming is not in danger of dying because of it, either.
Again, so what?
The PBM industry doesn't appear to be inclined to save itself, and I'm certainly in no shape nor position to save it from itself. The temptation is great to just unilaterally declare that I have simply run out of things to say about play by mail gaming, but a part of me somewhere deep inside of me knows that such simply isn't true.
But then again, so what?
If PBM gaming were to enjoy a massive resurgence, would I even cover it? Would I dare even try to report on it? Or would I toss my literary meanderings on the subject of PBM to the wind, and dive right back in to this particular field of gaming?
Probably not.
Then why should anyone else out there reading this herald their own return to play by mail? Maybe they shouldn't.
Or maybe they should.
On the one hand, I don't really care what anyone else thinks, but simultaneously, I very much tend to enjoy learning what they think. Again, we're talking about PBM gaming, here, folks. Don't get lost, just because I take you on a long and winding stroll to nowhere.
Because the current PBM state of things is a lot like being nowhere, right?
Oh, sure, there's still PBM games left. There's quite a few of them, in fact. There's probably more than most might realize, if they were inclined to look, at all.
Imagine if all PBM companies and PBM GMs and PBM games consolidated into a single entity. What would that look like? Would it be the salvation of play by mail gaming? Probably not.
Or just for the sake of thinking for thinking's sake, imagine if no single entity in PBM gaming ran more than a single PBM game. Now, would that save PBM gaming? I seriously doubt it.
Some recent PBM efforts seem have collapsed. Some PBM undertakings appear bent on imploding. And all the while PBM Chaos remains, unsurprisingly, in a state of perpetual chaos. Well, at least the name seems to fit, huh?
Where is PBM Chaos Issue #33? No idea. It's in stasis. It must be, because no real progress of consequence has been made on it. If I wanted to just kill it, I could do that quite easily. I think that the real problem is that I'm not really sure what it is that I want to write, what I want to publish. Maybe I really just need some new hobbies.
But what's wrong with this hobby?
Nothing. Everything. Who knows? Who cares? Why bother?
Yesterday, Randy Ritnour of Takamo fame wrote over in the PlaybyMail.Net Discord, "I am going to try to get additional content to each issue of PBM CHAOS online magazine. If anyone wants to place messages, empire notices, or trash talk (keep it clean), please email the messages to me and I will add them to my Takamo Updates."
Of course, if you don't ever go there, then you don't end up reading things like that. In fact, it would be very easy to miss out on all kinds of different PBM-related things, if one chooses to not enter the PBM Matrix, so to speak.
But who am I to talk? After all, I've sort of "detached" myself from a variety of different PBM places in recent years.
Say what?
No doubt, it's Richard Weatherhead's fault. Or Wayne "Smitty" Smith's fault. Or Richard Lockwood's fault. Hell, it might even be Daniel J. Fisher, Sr.'s fault. No way that it could jsut be my own fault, right?
Yeah? Well, what about you? Whose fault is it that you have become so detached from play by mail gaming in recent years? If only we could capture in a bottle Wayne Smith's enduring vigor for the PBM games that he continues to clench tightly to. Now, that would be something, something indeed!
But we can't.
At least, I can't. Maybe you can. Perhaps it is you who possesses a certain ability to connect with others, in such a way as to ignite within them a curiosity, a spark, an energy that can kickstart something within them that will set the stage for a new golden era in PBM gaming here in the modern era.
But no one really expects that, now do you?
The Internet is everyone's favorite whipping boy, these days, in spite of the fact that the Internet is the very thing that allows you to maximize your PBM gaming pleasure, currently. Without the Internet, you couldn't read this. Without the Internet, PBM Chaos would never have been brought into existence. Without the Internet, no one would even know or realize that Richard Weatherhead still owes me that article about Austerlitz PBeM.
Yeah, well, I've got to write about something, you know.
Hey, what can I say? It's a habit.
.