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+--- Thread: The Archeology of PBM Gaming (/showthread.php?tid=735)
The Archeology of PBM Gaming - GrimFinger - 07-23-2013
The excavation of PBM sites long lost to the modern day PBM gamer is a cross between finding the El Dorado and unearthing a curse. These Pyramids of Hypertext have many hallways, and more than just a few lead to the silent chambers of dead ends.
And so it was that I spent many a minute, tonight, shoveling my way through the ancient ruins of PBM games and PBM companies that made their way to the Internet, back in the early years of yesteryore.
For all of the priceless gems of PBM gaming either lost forever, or still buried in the ever-falling sands of time, what's still out there, even still, are some choice pieces of the puzzlefied play by mail legacy.
Where's Indiana Jones when you need him?
I really wish that Carol Mulholland was around, to help me to sift through it all. Old PBM sites have become broken and discarded. Hell, if it wasn't for our techno-equivalent of a time machine, we wouldn't be able to access them, at all. All hail the mighty wonder that is the Wayback Machine! Come, all ye weary denizens of the play by mail genre, and pay homage to this technological marvel that helps us to roll back the Shroud of Mystery from at least a few things PBM.
Hopefully, site visitors to the PlayByMail.Net website will have an appreciation for what such trinkets from the PBM past mean. They are accessible on the left hand side of the front page of this site.
Hidden on the sites unearthed, thus far, are countless other links - links that lead off into the the Abyss of the Forgotten. Clearly, the foul sorcery of the Vor'Koon played a role in the loss of so many early PBM entrants into the Trans-Dimensional Information Portal that is the Internet. Could even the famed Krulang-Krang track down all PBM sites that once were?
In any event, I believe that what I have unearthed portends much good, for PBM gaming fans. Perhaps others shall see them as ghosts best left undisturbed, relics from the PBM past that shall turn upon us, becoming unto us as Pandora Boxes that would have been best to have left closed.
Eventually, we shall all be buried far beneath the ever-falling sands of time. But, until such time as our respective Hours of Reckoning arrive, let us recommit to surfing up into the sandstream, defying it, even as we continue to defy a world that seems all too content to continuously go about its business, with eyelids welded shut by indifference towards the genre that was, is, and ever shall be, postal gaming.
The Postman cometh!
RE: The Archeology of PBM Gaming - Fallen Empires - 07-23-2013
Thanks for tracking down Fallen Empires, a new game but based on Tribes of Crane and moved from snail mail to email. New players have already found us and joined the game
RE: The Archeology of PBM Gaming - MaxMayhem - 07-23-2013
The wayback machine is great to dig up old pbm websites. It is a shame that it only captured the pages and not any of the files that were on them. It would be interesting to read some of those old player created newsletters on various sites
RE: The Archeology of PBM Gaming - GrimFinger - 07-23-2013
(07-23-2013, 08:40 AM)MaxMayhem Wrote: The wayback machine is great to dig up old pbm websites. It is a shame that it only captured the pages and not any of the files that were on them. It would be interesting to read some of those old player created newsletters on various sites
Actually, it just depends on the particular link. Many files are still accessible, though, at times, entire pages of links end up being dead ends.