09-13-2013, 07:10 PM
(09-13-2013, 06:59 PM)ixnay Wrote: Not quite. I get the focus on traditional PBM. But does that exclude, say, Cluster Wars or Far Horizons, which use client software and email respectively to get turns sent back and forth? Some of these games use a web interface to the same effect. The concept is still the same -- turn-based, multiple player, hidden movement, diplomacy, game plays out over time (ie: not in one day), etc., but they are not strictly-speaking PBM.
If this is a magazine that will encompass all the "PBM-likes" out there, just with a special emphasis on traditional PBM, then that's one thing. If it is about Hyborian War and Cruent Dei and Alamaze and that handful of other old-school turn-sheet-and-print-out style of gaming, then that's another.
As per my many posts on this forum, I am highly optimistic about the future of the former, and not so much about the latter. I love it, and I still look over my turn sheets from 20 years ago with fondness. But it's not a realistic channel anymore, as far as newbies are concerned. I would love to contribute to the larger community of "PBM-likes", and would be somewhat less enthusiastic if the scope were limited to just the "PBMs". I love them, but I think an exclusive focus on them would doom any such projects to the present cloistered enclaves.
Cluster Wars and Far Horizons are both ancestral descendants of that which came before. They are like-companions, they offer an equivalent experience.
My interest lies not in excluding contemporary games, per se, but rather, in focusing the bulk of my personal energies on the postal genre. I don't dislike technology. My interest in undertaking such a project, at all, originates with PBM gaming of the postal genre variety.
I am not opposed to others advocating for technological contemporaries.
(09-13-2013, 06:59 PM)ixnay Wrote: More practically, if I wrote a "PBM is dead, long live PBM" article that elaborated on (among other things) the PBM-likes, would it be in-scope for your zine?
Sure. I don't take a narrow view. The point isn't to exclude, for purity's sake. If it were, then there would be no way to bridge eras.