Re: PBeM RPG's: Free or Pay?

From: silver@phoenyx.net (Karen J. Cravens)

Date: Sun, 22 Jun 1997 00:00:00 +0000

In article <19970621061001.CAA11751@ladder02.news.aol.com>,
soliiigm@aol.com (Sol III GM) wrote:
>  Apparently I hit the one exception.  I signed up for the Baroque Futures
>PBeM RPG from your server to lurk on it.  (That's the only one of the
>games that appealed to me enough to subscribe to, but the others looked
>interesting and well done)  The Victorian era is one of my favourites, and
>I was considering joining to play after I had seen what the flavour of the
>game was like, since there was very little information on the web site.
>In the last two months, the list has consisted of one round of
>introductions, one bad attempt (about 30 messages over 3 days) to get off
>the list and precious little else.  Where is the GM for that game, and
>what is going on?  It sounded good from the blurb, but I have still seen
>no activity that would indicate a game.

Nick is in the process of moving, and hasn't really got the game
started up yet (he's his own provider, since his other choice is
a really annoying university server).  I've been on his case a
bit about the speed thereof, but since he cut us a good bit of
slack a year or so ago when we were having server problems (read:
our upstream provider was dropping, on the average, one message
out of ten.  Or more.  This was a Bad Thing.  I spent about an
hour each day seeing which messages hadn't yet made it through to
my test account and manually re-submitting them as many times as
it took), I've cut him more slack than the usual gamemasters.
Besides, I'm not sure where I'd find another GM for such a...
um... quirky setting.

>  Well, let's see here.  Your web site, although minimalist (A major plus
>in my book!) puts most of the 'professional' companies to shame.  The

Thankyew, thankyewverymuch.  I believe in being Lynx-friendly,
and my test machine is a 386DX40 with a 512K SVGA card.  I figure
if I can tolerate it on that, 95% of the rest of the world can,
and the rest probably are or ought to be using Lynx anyway.

I do have a very pretty bandwidth-sucking version of it with
full-fledged graphical text with drop shadows for every option,
and all sorts of nifty gewgaws here, there, and everywhere.  I
just got Paint Shop Pro and pretty much had to go crazy with it.
It'll never see the light of day, but it was fun to do...

>Mailing list server is a boon to free gaming, and the worlds you have
>presented appear to be well constructed.  I can not speak to the quality
>of the games for the above stated reason, but am perfectly willing to
>figure that I lucked out and picked the only slow one.  I shall have to
>sign up on another one just to check it out.

CHROME is the other slow one, and that's altogether my fault,
since I'm the original GM.  I turned it over to Jason Knight,
whom you may recognize as one of the curmudgeonly types on
roleplaying-L... unfortunately, he started up Westwind about that
time, and the success (and corresponding workload) of the latter
took us all by surprise.  (I'm going to start up Westwind III
Real Soon Now. Honest.)  So he's just handed it off again to a
friend of his who has run a fairly similar game (in fact, I
borrowed a good few of the ideas from his campaign for my F2F
CHROME game).

Do you use a mailing list for your games, or just CC?

>  I have said it before, and I will say it again.  I consider my main
>competition to be Free RPG's.  Your's in particular.  As it is, you give
>me a great goal, and that is making sure that Sol III is always improving
>and evolving to stay on the cutting edge of PBeM RPG's.  You keep me
>honest.

Good.  At times I feel vaguely guilty about doing for free what
other people depend on for a living, but at the time I started
(1985*), it never occurred to me that anyone *could* get paid for
it.  And if I'd gone commercial then, I'd have had to deal with
Southwestern Bell's business vs. home phone rates, and... heck,
it's enough of a hassle just trying to keep everything running,
let alone trying to figure out if I was making a profit.

(* I know this date because I bought the Amiga that originally
ran the Phoenyx just before I bought my first new car, a 1986
Mercury Capri.  I am still driving the Capri, although I don't
have the Meeg anymore.  However, if I were trying to make a
living off PBeM, I suspect I would still be driving it by
necessity rather than choice.  Ditto the aforementioned 386.)

--  Karen Cravens      | Phoenyx PBeM RPG Listserver: majordomo@phoenyx.net
    silver@phoenyx.net | http://www2.southwind.net/~phoenyx/
                       | Home of the RPG Industry Discussion List
                   Wit is educated insolence.

References

Re: PBeM RPG's: Free or Pay?
silver@phoenyx.net (Karen J. Cravens)
Thu, 19 Jun 1997 00:00:00 +0000
Re: PBeM RPG's: Free or Pay?
soliiigm@aol.com (Sol III GM)
Sat, 21 Jun 1997 00:00:00 +0000

Referenced By

Re: PBeM RPG's: Free or Pay?
silver@phoenyx.net (Karen J. Cravens)
Thu, 19 Jun 1997 00:00:00 +0000
Re: PBeM RPG's: Free or Pay?
soliiigm@aol.com (Sol III GM)
Sat, 21 Jun 1997 00:00:00 +0000