Victory

[Victory]

Thanks for the kind words.

This web site was just a walk down memory lane for me. I can remember all the crazy times and then the boom years followed by the convention when I picked up a bunch of Magic (alpha) cards. That was a turning point for PBM when Adventures By Mail decided to get into the Magic card craze and their PBM games suffered a bit as they found the collectible card game bubble and discovered that the niche of PBM was so small compared to the CCG wave. I think quite a few other PBM companies saw that same light and had to look hard within themselves to decide if the love of the hobby was worth skipping out on financial rewards.

And after that slowed down a little the internet took off and the big companies with large art departments were able to get their subscription based games with huge advertising budgets and economies of scale that the little shops had difficulty competing with.

Your website has me wondering where my box in the basement is that contains all my StarMaster, etc materials. I wrote so many newsletters for SuperNova and I think I still have a bunch of the old Schubel and Son newsletters too somewhere down there. That was such a long time ago...

Ironically enough, I've never played a game of Magic. It looks intriguing, as many CCG card games do, but I never took the bait.

I also never played a Schubel and Son PBM game. I still recall being aware of them, as a PBM company, back when play by mail was still a relatively new thing to me.

Schubel and Son were the big thing along with Flying Buffalo way back when. FBI ran their games well and priced them fairly while Schubel seemed to run the megagames that had hundreds of people in them (Tribes of Crane, StarMaster, etc) and started the price gouging that scarred the industry. They found that they could charge customers an arm and a leg and did not hesitate to do so. Playing in a game with 200 people per galaxy and alliances declaring war against other 30 person alliances that spanned the universe were so epic that people were willing to pay for a while.

S&S finally crossed the line when they charged the defender in a battle a fee to receive their battle report (ostensibly to cover their costs of printing and mailing) and started a brief flurry of players teaming up on someone with multiple tiny scout ship attacks just to generate a fee twenty times that would break the real life budget of a player and force them to drop from the game. Looking over some of those old game advertisements that refer to 'hidden fees' and such refer directly to this S&S practice (movement orders cost extra, production sheets cost extra, etc).

The Magic craze was so big for a time. It carried the company to the heights that they could buy TSR and take over Dungeons and Dragons. At that point every PBM company was just stunned that what was such a small company at the prior convention had taken off like a rocket and in a manner of a few years had eclipsed and acquired the company that probably every founder of a PBM company had idolized and started their RPG hobby with.

Adventures By Mail jumped onto that craze as a distribution dealer and rode it while shedding some of their games (like Beyond the Stellar Empire which ended up being taken over by Rolling Thunder Games for quite a few years) that required manpower and did not return anywhere near their investment compared to the CCG craze. That is how RTG started running BSE and how Thad Catone joined Rolling Thunder for a while. BSE had such a history and following, but it was doomed due to the sheer amount of manpower it required to process a turn -- you just can't charge that much anymore. Thad was a major player in BSE who agreed to come run BSE as a moderator at Rolling Thunder Games in an attempt to save the game. Another of the people that had the passion for PBM games.

Wow. It has been so long since I talked PBM to anyone. It feels strange.

[GrimFinger]

My God, man! You're just oozing at the seams with PBM history. Perhaps the saddest part of what you last wrote, is that I don't even know who Thad Catone is. Clearly, he must have been an individual of some importance in the overall PBM scheme of things. Surely, you will not leave me hanging on a limb, to die of thirst for more knowledge about this icon of which you speak.

I believe that Paul Brown III, formerly of Reality Simulations fame, also got involved in the CCG (collectible card games) craze. I think that the company that he started to pursue that venture ended up going out of business, at some point thereafter.

[Victory]

My God, man! You're just oozing at the seams with PBM history. Perhaps the saddest part of what you last wrote, is that I don't even know who Thad Catone is. Clearly, he must have been an individual of some importance in the overall PBM scheme of things. Surely, you will not leave me hanging on a limb, to die of thirst for more knowledge about this icon of which you speak.

I believe that Paul Brown III, formerly of Reality Simulations fame, also got involved in the CCG (collectible card games) craze. I think that the company that he started to pursue that venture ended up going out of business, at some point thereafter.

Thad joined RTG late in its history to run the Beyond The Stellar Empire game. There were so many diehard BSE players that I thought I might name drop him in case it struck a chord with any of them (if they ever read this post). I think Thad was only around at RTG from probably 1995-1998 and he passed away in 1998. Along with Russ (who you know from the RTG website) and Pete and myself he was probably one of the best known GMs at RTG. Gary Hughson also worked at RTG as a Supernova GM for a long time and brought a lot of life to the games there.

RTG was primarily Russ, Pete and myself, but Gary and Thad poured a lot of energy into the company as well. At it's high point there were probably three or four additional GMs at any one time doing data entry for the company, but they got phased out as things became more automated. Russ, Pete, myself, Thad and Gary were the ones that answered the phones, talked to players, attended conventions, etc.

Beyond the Stellar Empire had been running as a game since before even I knew PBM and has now become replaced with Phoenix in the modern era if I am not mistaken. I believe BSE was acquired by another company after RTG couldn't make it work economically without Thad (after he passed away and got replaced by Neal somebody or other), couldn't update to modern equipment/languages and got rewritten and rebooted.

I think you are right in that RSI got involved in the CCG industry. From what I recall they got into the game too late to make any mega money and I think ABM also got pushed out of the industry by bigger dealers, but not before they made a small killing due to their early connections.

I never talked with the RSI folk, so I only know about them from the old Flagships and Paper Mayhem articles. I don't know why I didn't talk since they were one of the big companies back then, but it just never happened. Sometimes I wonder what happened to all the old coders at the companies (Bill Combs who recoded Legends, Jim Landes the original Legends hacker, etc). It is stunning that Loomis is still around after all the dust has settled and outlasted so many that entered the industry years after his games had already been around. Amazing.

[GrimFinger]

Sorry to hear about Thad's passing. Maybe your mentioning of him will stir some memories of other PBM players, at various points in the future, assuming that this site survives for a bit.

I tried Phoenix a while back, but just never got into the game. I noticed a couple of days ago that Bob Bost (a name that will likely ring a bell with you, Terry) had recently resigned from his faction in Phoenix (which is run by KJC Games). I wrote him, and asked if he would submit to an e-mail interview, and he agreed to do so. I will try to come up with a list of questions for him, before the weekend is over.

You said that you programmed Victory! Did you program it solo, by yourself? How long did it take you, from start to completion?

From your perspective, who were Rolling Thunder Games' biggest competitors, back then? Any thoughts on what some of your thoughts are on some of the best or worst PBM games, that you encountered? Also, any recollections on new PBM companies that entered the arena, after you became involved, and what kind of a splash that they each respectively made, and how they were perceived by the PBM player community at large??

[Victory]

Sorry to hear about Thad's passing. Maybe your mentioning of him will stir some memories of other PBM players, at various points in the future, assuming that this site survives for a bit.

I tried Phoenix a while back, but just never got into the game. I noticed a couple of days ago that Bob Bost (a name that will likely ring a bell with you, Terry) had recently resigned from his faction in Phoenix (which is run by KJC Games). I wrote him, and asked if he would submit to an e-mail interview, and he agreed to do so. I will try to come up with a list of questions for him, before the weekend is over.

You said that you programmed Victory! Did you program it solo, by yourself? How long did it take you, from start to completion?

From your perspective, who were Rolling Thunder Games' biggest competitors, back then? Any thoughts on what some of your thoughts are on some of the best or worst PBM games, that you encountered? Also, any recollections on new PBM companies that entered the arena, after you became involved, and what kind of a splash that they each respectively made, and how they were perceived by the PBM player community at large??

I remember Bost. He was a big money player. Man, so many people I haven't thought of in so long.

I programmed Victory completely by myself. I can't really think how long it took from start to completion since it always had something that had to be done. To get it off the ground probably took 7-8 months of coding after a few months of designing and then we announced the release for financial reasons. During the coding process we always had back and forths about design issues as well so the coding would briefly stop while those topics were hammered out.

I still hadn't written the combat routines when we announced the release, but the rest of the game was finished. Since players could not attack anyone for the first two turns (to prevent attacks before players had gotten alliances formed, setups returned, defenses built, etc) that gained me four weeks to finish up the ground and air attack routines. Plus, the time after the announcement to the first game filling (forty players per game) was a couple weeks.

I think ship combat (by FAR the most complicated routines) got finished two weeks after that (in a miracle no enemy ships spotted each other for that one turn even if they could have been at war -- ). After that time was spent making player entry programs, GM moderation utilities (being able to inspect or change the database), printing to text files rather than dot matrix printouts, etc. Plus, by then I was back to daily work stuff as part of my day to keep the company running and never really got full days to code again until early work on SuperNova Rise of The Empire started up again in 1996 or so.

I think Rolling Thunder's biggest competitors back then are difficult to tell. Midnight Games had the same type of client base as we did, but we were friendly with them and even played in their games at the time. Other companies were large (GSI, ABM, RSI, FBI, etc) but they didn't fight for the same type of customers we did. A game like It's a Crime or Duelmasters attracts a different person than SuperNova does for the most part.

I think Russ was more interested in the competitors aspect of the business than I was. He and Pete had more experience in the industry and I was still under the impression that the problem was more growing the industry than fighting to keep a customer away from a competitor. I'm still not sure which is right, but at the time I was under the impression that exposure was the most important thing and the quality of our games would retain customers.

It is also difficult to tell the best/worst games. The worst are easy I guess -- there were always companies that started up with the best of intentions and folded up shop when things got difficult and kept their customer's money. Those things just hurt the niche and turned away so many potential lifetime players in one single bad first time experience. Any company that stayed around for a while or refunded their accounts can't be said to have had a bad game IMHO, even if I didn't particularly like playing their product.

The best games are tough. It just really depends on what you are looking for in a game. I liked playing the grand epic games so I leaned towards Legends, StarMaster, etc that had hundreds of players in any given region. Some games are run like clockwork though and ones like StarWeb have a lot going for it in this area -- very professional and balanced. Others broke barriers in the industry -- GSI getting LOTR license in a niche industry and doing massive advertising in mainstream publications like Dragon magazine, games like The Next Empire and Monster Island bringing in laser printed turn results rather than dot matrix, Legends getting a relatively full featured player turn editor program, etc. I remember when RTG set up our bulletin board system and upgraded our modem from 300 baud to 1200 baud and players flocked to it with long distance phone calls to download/pickup their turns rather than using the postal service.

Many of the best games IMHO also just couldn't scale well. The ones that were a labor of love had a great intensity for a time, but eventually that GM would burn out/financial difficulties or something and be unable to continue. In hindsight it seems inevitable that hand moderated games were fated to only be a hobby that burned brightly but then would fade.

Some companies in the industry that popped up are still around. I'm not sure when Madhouse started, but it is great to see they are still moving along. I wasn't that familiar with overseas companies outside of the ones I had to deal with for licensing issues. At the time playing overseas was just too restrictive in time and postage costs.

I had to write some software that kept track of how many turns were processed by our licensees since there was always a bad apple who didn't want to pay the correct fee or in some cases said they already had the software and wouldn't be paying. Luckily we had put in some checks into the main program so that it shut down and that usually got us the correct royalty checks on time in the future.

[walter]

Your website has me wondering where my box in the basement is that contains all my StarMaster, etc materials. I wrote so many newsletters for SuperNova and I think I still have a bunch of the old Schubel and Son newsletters too somewhere down there. That was such a long time ago...

LOL!
I wish I could take a look at it!
Really I always wanted to play Starmaster. The stories you tell me make it even better. I think the handmoderation made it such a great game...

[Victory]

It was a lot of fun. It had such a history. Starting off, getting huge, becoming big money where players even did things like forge documents from Schubel and Son to gain in-game currency, empires being sold off to a new owner for (IIRC) over a thousand dollars when someone decided to quit and leave the game. The mighty Dragorn Empire leaving their own galaxy after conquering most of it and spending (IIRC) over a year sending in turns travelling between galaxies to invade another one where players had been setup and sparking a war there. Then the price gouging controversies ($200 every two weeks for some empires back in the 1980s!), cheating accusations, feuds spilling out and eventually Schubel and Son giving up on the game and selling it back to the original creator of the game. He was based on the east coast I believe and wanted to bring back more hand moderation, but it just never took off again due to some of the bad blood at the end and the transfer of boxes upon boxes of papers and documents that had to be sorted through. I think only a handful of turns ever got processed ever again and it disappeared into the mists of times only to have some of it's spirit carried on in SuperNova and SuperNova:ROTE. I wish I could remember the name of the original company, but I can't think of it now.

Those special actions were unique though. Exploring abandoned temples and tombs with your spacecraft in hand written RPG-style paragraphs.

If I can remember I'll see if I can find some of my boxes. I think I had every single tech sheet for the entire game, but it is a question of whether the boxes survived being hauled around for the last 20+ years. Next time I'm in the basement I'll dig around a little. I think it is all buried with my original Traveller RPG game stuff.

I just did a quick look and found this article about StarMaster. KSK Concepts was the company that bought Starmaster back from Schubel and this article is apparently from someone who worked there.

http://greyhawkgrognard.blogspot.com/200...games.html

I found some PDFs of the old Dragon magazine. There sure were a lot of PBM games advertised in this magazine back then.

[walter]

Hmm,
I bought some old Paper Mayhems from someone who used to run "'A little pbm space game" in the past. He was the owner of the company KSK Concepts..
I will look at my old shelves tomorrow, I am sure I know the owners name as I spoke to him several years ago....

A little space game... Grumble. I did talk to the creator of Starmaster and I did not know it...

[Victory]

Hmm,
I bought some old Paper Mayhems from someone who used to run "'A little pbm space game" in the past. He was the owner of the company KSK Concepts..
I will look at my old shelves tomorrow, I am sure I know the owners name as I spoke to him several years ago....

A little space game... Grumble. I did talk to the creator of Starmaster and I did not know it...

Funny! I remembered the company name had a K in it and KSK Concepts is definitely the company that reclaimed StarMaster. I didn't remember it lasting as long as that blog says, but I have no reason to doubt him.

If you have the KSK owner's name I will recognize it. I can almost think of it now even after all these years, but I can't quite come up with it.

[Ramblurr]

I just did a quick look and found this article about StarMaster. KSK Concepts was the company that bought Starmaster back from Schubel and this article is apparently from someone who worked there.

http://greyhawkgrognard.blogspot.com/200...games.html

Ah! This is Joe (the article author), he is actually playing in the game of Far Horizons that started today. I don't think he has created a forum account yet, but I can send him an email asking for the fellow's name if walter cannot remember.