Its amazing, isn't it? In 1987 I started running The Isles in my parents spare bedroom to 1990 when I had 170 regular players and just about enough income to run the game full-time. I was reliant on a dot matrix printer, a terribly under-powered Amstrad word processor and really nothing in the way of resources to make the game more eye-catching or stand-out amongst the other games in the same genre.
What I DID have was a large base of players (believe me, 170 players for a hand-mod RPG was HUGE in those days) and the potential for even more amongst the thousands of regular players in the UK and around the world.
What really 'killed' the RPG PBMs in the 90s were a number of factors including the limited potential income of the game, maintaining an ongoing storyline and new ideas for the players, but more significantly the rise of computer games that allowed players more graphical play combined with the ability to play NOW rather than when the next envelope arrived
For The Isles in particular it was the onset of more technology that put the game into decline,
Surprisingly, its the same technology that killed the game in the 90s which gives PBM or at least PBeM even more potential to be 'good'! And thats what is so infuriating now the big player base is just about gone
I can produce Newsletters and turnsheets with embedded links, with images and sounds in seconds. Where once I was drawing plans with a felt-tip pen on paper I can now fire up Photoshop or CorelDRAW and in minutes I can produce maps of towns or caves or encounters. I have databases and spreadsheets that can show me who is where and what is happening in every place and every chance for an encounter and I have free software which allows me to write out a players turn without worrying how much this high quality software will impinge on my ability to pay my bills / rent (Wordperfect in the 90s was $100s to purchase, and a simple laser printer to poroiduce attractive turns were in the $100s)
I just wish we had the tech that we had today in the 90s.
What I DID have was a large base of players (believe me, 170 players for a hand-mod RPG was HUGE in those days) and the potential for even more amongst the thousands of regular players in the UK and around the world.
What really 'killed' the RPG PBMs in the 90s were a number of factors including the limited potential income of the game, maintaining an ongoing storyline and new ideas for the players, but more significantly the rise of computer games that allowed players more graphical play combined with the ability to play NOW rather than when the next envelope arrived
For The Isles in particular it was the onset of more technology that put the game into decline,
Surprisingly, its the same technology that killed the game in the 90s which gives PBM or at least PBeM even more potential to be 'good'! And thats what is so infuriating now the big player base is just about gone
I can produce Newsletters and turnsheets with embedded links, with images and sounds in seconds. Where once I was drawing plans with a felt-tip pen on paper I can now fire up Photoshop or CorelDRAW and in minutes I can produce maps of towns or caves or encounters. I have databases and spreadsheets that can show me who is where and what is happening in every place and every chance for an encounter and I have free software which allows me to write out a players turn without worrying how much this high quality software will impinge on my ability to pay my bills / rent (Wordperfect in the 90s was $100s to purchase, and a simple laser printer to poroiduce attractive turns were in the $100s)
I just wish we had the tech that we had today in the 90s.