Hello from Jim Landes!

[Jim_Landes]

Hello All,

I am Jim Landes. I just discovered this forum and decided to drop in and lend what help I can to shed light on the lifecycle of PBM and my own small contributions to the PBM and computer gaming hobby. Feel free to ask questions and I will answer as I have time.

Kindest regards,

Jim

[GrimFinger]

Wow! Jim Landes, now there's a name that rings all of the bells and blows all of the whistles from the heyday of play by mail gaming. It's great having you to drop by, Jim. It really and truly is.

You had posted your introduction as a reply in an existing thread, so I split it off and turned it into your own thread in the Introduction section.

I remember trying Legends, I think that it was, back when Midnight Games ran it. I didn't play it much, only a turn or two (if memory serves me correctly). However, while my interaction with your company's PBM game offerings was inconsequential, I certainly consider your contributions to the PBM hobby to be anything but small. Man, Jim, you were one of the big dogs of play by mail, back then.

You even took time to post a recent photo of yourself for use as your forum avatar here. You're looking good. You aged well.

Make yourself comfortable, Jim, and just indulge us, if you will, with excerpts at random from your long involvement as both a player and as a game moderator in PBM gaming.

Again, glad to have you aboard the site, here!

[Greybeard]

Welcome indeed! I played Legends by most of the pbm-pbem companies since the late 1980s. One of the best games around.

[Jim_Landes]

Thank you for the warm welcome.

Kindest regards,

Jim

[walter]

Oh man.
Your name brings back memories.
I used to play pbm with the Pbm Express in the netherlands. All the students I hanged out with (still do) played The Northern Island campaign at that time. It was the greatest game I was in, the game was great fun.
I think it was based on a handmoderated game you used to run before the Legend system. Is that even true?

Anyways. Wellcome!

[Jim_Landes]

Oh man.
Your name brings back memories.
I used to play pbm with the Pbm Express in the netherlands. All the students I hanged out with (still do) played The Northern Island campaign at that time. It was the greatest game I was in, the game was great fun.
I think it was based on a handmoderated game you used to run before the Legend system. Is that even true?

Anyways. Wellcome!

Good Morning Walter, thanks for the question.

This is a bit of a long story, so bear with me.

Before Midnight Games, I had spent a great deal of time being a GM for role playing games. One of the accomplishments during this time was to create a very realistic game world called “Pelarn”, complete with hundreds of years a detailed history.

After my first computer game company (Horizon Simulations) folded in 1980, I started life anew in Anchorage Alaska and shortly thereafter started a little hand moderated PBM game called “Swords of Pelarn” under the company “Midnight Sun Games”. This game was based upon the history and players of the role-playing game “Pelarn” and the format was following roughly the model of “Realms of Sword and Thunder” by Empire Games run by Glenn Holiday.

It quickly became evident that hand moderation was not the way to go as it took too long to process turns. When I was evaluating the turns I noticed many similarities between what actions players performed in the game. I started keeping a log of these which eventually became the list of orders for the game “Legends”.

I taught myself how to program by creating the game “Epic”. It took me five months and I started with a program that read a data file and created address labels to understand disk I/O. Epic was just the combat system of Pelarn and later Legends with a light context overlay. It was successful enough to allow me to work full time on bringing the full concept of Swords of Pelarn to life in what would manifest as the mega game “Legends”.

The North Island Campaign was a game module for Legends created primarily by Edi Birsan who had purchased Midnight Games in 1993 and the North Island Campaign was released I believe in 1994.

Best regards,

Jim

[walter]

Thanks Jim,
I got answers to a question I never thought I could get an answer on. Just phoned an old pbm buddy about it..

I never played Epic, it is just one of the games I would like to play but it never happened. I asked Edi to start one more game of Epic. Edi is a nice guy and tried to fill up a game, one last game of Epic with world wide players. Alas, I was the only one interested in the game...

The last company to run Epic was SSV Graz in Austria. Run by Klaus and his friend. He made a new game based on Epic called Mythicor ( Epic in German?). It never got of the ground...

Are you still playing Pbm games yourself?

Regards,

Walter.

(sorry about any english errors, I speak several languages but English grammar is harsh for me...)

[GrimFinger]

Good background details, Jim. I added entries for Horizon Simulations and Midnight Sun Games to the PBM Wiki.

What was the name of the game ran by Horizon Simulations? Was it Pelarn?

[Jim_Landes]

Good background details, Jim. I added entries for Horizon Simulations and Midnight Sun Games to the PBM Wiki.

What was the name of the game ran by Horizon Simulations? Was it Pelarn?

No, our only single game we published was "ShadowHawk One"

I searched and found this..
http://www.atarimania.com/game-atari-400..._4610.html

Keep in mind this was 1980..

Best,

Jim

[GrimFinger]

So, was Horizon Simulations a PBM company, or a computer game company?