PBM Gaming: Expanding the Beachhead

[GrimFinger]

And yet, further down, you say you wish your turns were delivered by the internet. My guess is that if there was enough interest in the game, there would be a mechanism for sending and receiving turns. That there isn't suggests that RSI doesn't believe that an expenditure of time and effort would be worth it.

Of course that I wish that turn results for Hyborian War were accessible via e-mail or the Internet. Of course, there are many things that I wish were changed about the game, too. My wishes and reality are, at times, very distinct things. I don't try to confuse the two.

I believe that, with regarding to the licensing issue, different people control things, now. There's a big online Conan game, now, already.

Where the time issue is concerned, Lee at RSI told me a long while back that there were changes that they would like to make to the Hyborian War code. The issue was time.

Bills are received by mail because it provides legal protection for the biller. There is no such reason for gaming.

Gaming grows up around every medium of communication, or so its seems. Some games have grown up that cross the boundary lines of various forms of communication. I recall one game, from a few years back, that involved e-mail, fax, cell phone, and perhaps more. I never played in it, but I recall reading an article or two about it.

Is postal gaming in need of legal protection?

He'd be one hundred times more likely to conceive of it happening on line. If it was a totally human moderated game, he'd set it up via texting.

Perhaps, so. But, perhaps not, if he wanted to go with something more unique than the standard, common medium of his time. He could use smoke signals for gaming, I suppose, but there would probably be a range of drawbacks to that medium that would dwarf even the drawbacks of the postal medium.

If you build it they will come. Patience in all things, grasshopper.

Sometimes, you build it, and they will not come.

My website is built. It's your game that they're waiting on, now, Jon.

The question isn't whether RSI will ever starting running a web game, or whether a kid would play by mail, by tabletop, or by web if he wanted to have a game with 1/2 dozen friends.

PBM was what it was because it did support a fairly large number of commercial games. It was the commercial companies, starting with FBI, that created the excitement, the sense of community, and the plain old fun that existed from 1985 to somewhere in the 90's. In a capitalistic society, if someone is good at designing games, he wants to be paid for it, not give them away for free.

It doesn't matter whether there are 100 or 1000 PBM players still getting turns by mail. What will keep what was great about PBM gaming alive in the 21st century is whether commercial pbw games that are neither MUDs nor MMPOLRPGs can be designed and operated in such a way as to attract more cottage-industry professionals.

I understand what you're saying. However, PBM's Old Guard holds no monopoly on generating excitement. They also hold no monopoly on interest in postal gaming. What the commercial play by web industry does or does not do, time will ultimately tell. That's something for the future. Rumor has it that some people are waiting to play a play by web version of Rimworlds, but that the programmer is off somewhere spending too much time arguing about postal gaming with a guy hoping to start up an old school correspondence gaming type of game.

And you guys think that I'm crazy.