Ideas for increasing the popularity of PBM

[Grainpaw]

One "d" it is, then, Tod.

Welcome aboard! Glad to have you join us here.

You still have time to squeeze in an article submission for the new PBM magazine, if you hurry. It doesn't have to be a lengthy on, necessarily - though that's preferred, of course.

It has been 15 years since I read the article I wrote (which was a long one), but I expect most of what I said still applies, and ought to be reprinted. Look how it inspired you. I quit playing about six years later (Dad died, property sold, moved, got married, it really diverts your time, money, and energy) , and don't have much new to say. I hope you have a copy, because I probably don't. As for publishing rights, I never signed anything giving them up. Just mailed the article in and it was printed. If there was nothing in the fine print of the Paper Mayhem masthead about printing rights, then I should still have them. I sort of expected some kind of letter back first, but he just printed it.
It would be good to have a look back at the origins and high points of the past. Though my article was looking forward, none of that has come to pass, and the great potential of PBM remains unfulfilled. It could be so much more.
I read the Kickstarter page about Takamo Universe with great interest. I played that for a couple dozen turns around 1990, but got tired of paying for every single action. I never had much money to spare. The morph to a full MMORPG would have been great, but it seems that isn't happening. PBM continues to exist in its shrinking bubble having little contact with the rest of the world. That's what has to change, public awareness, and then participation from a new type of player, who didn't grow up playing games. That will be hard to achieve in a faster world of instant gratification.