11-15-2013, 01:46 AM
You could have tried Google. That's how I found this thread. I'm Tod Lewark (with one d).
I appreciate your appreciation. That's about the only feedback I ever got on that article, which took me ten days to write. I never heard from David Webber ( who was busy dying), but a few months later there was my article in an issue. I think I got a free one year subscription. I'd like to have a copy of the article in some form, as my magazines were damaged in a flood, and the original is on a floppy for an Atari 800XL computer which may also have been damaged. Maybe you should post it on this site. When I Googled Paper Mayhem, I saw a result where someone claimed to have all the rights to the PM material, but I never signed anything about transferring rights. I just sent off the article because I had something to say, and any small magazine always needs filler.
I haven't played PBM since I finished the game I was playing when I got married 8 years ago, but will go back to it when I retire in a few years, if not sooner. I'm out of touch with the current scene.
I was one of the top ten players in Nuclear Destruction, from Flying Buffalo. It was the earliest PBM game, and is still running. The mechanics of play were so simple (it was originally programmed on a 4K Raytheon computer that used paper tape) that the maneuvering and diplomacy became the star of the show. Simple but subtle. And cheap. I played a dozen or so other games over the years (since 1977) (I could rarely find chess opponents, not that I'm very good), but my all-time favorite was A National Will, from Simcoarum Systems in Salt Lake City. The premise was that to field a strong military, you need a strong economy. Theoretically, you could win without fighting. It was not super detailed as some games are, just enough that you had to have agricultural labor to produce food points, and a food point, oil point, and iron point to produce a tech unit, and so on. The military was just ships and soldiers, I think with tech levels. The various maps were fictional. The moderator was collecting material for a WWI version when they just gave up. He had trouble getting programming done by the partner who was doing that (they were all part-timers with real jobs), and I think they saw increasing competion coming from video games. I don't know of anyone who got rich doing PBM. I considered it once, but I'm not a programmer, and you can imagine what the banker thought when I wanted to borrow $1,000 for a PC to run games in the late 90's.
Anyway, if we had a game something like that, maybe where the food module or soldier module or whatever could have more detail in the advanced levels according to the player's interest, updated to the modern era, with computer NPCs until there is a large group of experienced players, that's the game in which I want to see the scores of the presidential candidates every four years. I think it would quickly weed out the blatherers and nitwits, and we'd have some capable candidates to choose from. Let them all play out their pet theories in the media for months, and we'll find some things that would actually work. That's one good thing about PBM, it calls for long-term real time planning and pondering, not quick shoot-'em-up reactions.
And yes, I assure you that I will be a benevolent despot when the time comes to acclaim me Emperor.
I appreciate your appreciation. That's about the only feedback I ever got on that article, which took me ten days to write. I never heard from David Webber ( who was busy dying), but a few months later there was my article in an issue. I think I got a free one year subscription. I'd like to have a copy of the article in some form, as my magazines were damaged in a flood, and the original is on a floppy for an Atari 800XL computer which may also have been damaged. Maybe you should post it on this site. When I Googled Paper Mayhem, I saw a result where someone claimed to have all the rights to the PM material, but I never signed anything about transferring rights. I just sent off the article because I had something to say, and any small magazine always needs filler.
I haven't played PBM since I finished the game I was playing when I got married 8 years ago, but will go back to it when I retire in a few years, if not sooner. I'm out of touch with the current scene.
I was one of the top ten players in Nuclear Destruction, from Flying Buffalo. It was the earliest PBM game, and is still running. The mechanics of play were so simple (it was originally programmed on a 4K Raytheon computer that used paper tape) that the maneuvering and diplomacy became the star of the show. Simple but subtle. And cheap. I played a dozen or so other games over the years (since 1977) (I could rarely find chess opponents, not that I'm very good), but my all-time favorite was A National Will, from Simcoarum Systems in Salt Lake City. The premise was that to field a strong military, you need a strong economy. Theoretically, you could win without fighting. It was not super detailed as some games are, just enough that you had to have agricultural labor to produce food points, and a food point, oil point, and iron point to produce a tech unit, and so on. The military was just ships and soldiers, I think with tech levels. The various maps were fictional. The moderator was collecting material for a WWI version when they just gave up. He had trouble getting programming done by the partner who was doing that (they were all part-timers with real jobs), and I think they saw increasing competion coming from video games. I don't know of anyone who got rich doing PBM. I considered it once, but I'm not a programmer, and you can imagine what the banker thought when I wanted to borrow $1,000 for a PC to run games in the late 90's.
Anyway, if we had a game something like that, maybe where the food module or soldier module or whatever could have more detail in the advanced levels according to the player's interest, updated to the modern era, with computer NPCs until there is a large group of experienced players, that's the game in which I want to see the scores of the presidential candidates every four years. I think it would quickly weed out the blatherers and nitwits, and we'd have some capable candidates to choose from. Let them all play out their pet theories in the media for months, and we'll find some things that would actually work. That's one good thing about PBM, it calls for long-term real time planning and pondering, not quick shoot-'em-up reactions.
And yes, I assure you that I will be a benevolent despot when the time comes to acclaim me Emperor.