Re: hhhmmmm.... Ads on rec.games.pbm

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

Date: Tue, 03 Jun 1997 00:00:00 +0000

In article <19970603133101.JAA08045@ladder02.news.aol.com>,
soliiigm@aol.com (Sol III GM) wrote:
>  Ok, I think I might be stirring a bad pot here, based on some of the
>comments I have been seeing.  You folks are going to have to excuse me for
>that, but although I have been in this business for over 8 years, all of
>it PBeM, I have generally tended to ignore this newsgroup.
>  Why?
>  Well, that's easy.

Actually, I don't think it's quite *that* easy.

Part of the problem I see is that the group has a strong overlap
with other groups.  If you want to talk about a play-by-email
roleplaying game, you have a choice:  the rec.games.frp.*
hierarchy, for the "roleplaying" half, or rec.games.pbm for the
"play-by-email" half.

Ditto "pbem chess."  Do you have more in common with people who
play other games by email, or people who play chess by other
methods?

I suspect that there are several possibilities when people show
up here:

1.  "I play roleplaying|sports|war games.  They're all talking
     about sports|war|roleplaying games.  I'm outta here."

2.  "This group is full of big digests of stuff I don't
     understand.  I want conversation.  I'm outta here."

3.  "There's more conversation about my game in rec.games.mygame,
     even if they don't play it via email.  I'm outta here."

4.  "That Greg guy will yell at me if I talk.  I'm outta here."

I don't exactly think #4 is a large contributing factor.  The
first time I hit this group, #1 was the chief reason I took a
miss, closely followed by #2.  I've gotten killfiles since then,
but I still find the weird big digests/newsletter thingies a
really strange thing to have in this group.  #1 is still a
problem depending on which type of PBeM you're into, but I
decided to stay around and change it since the Phoenyx is one of
the net's bastions of organized PBeM roleplaying - Greg pretty
much has the sports/war angle covered.  And #3 is a problem or a
blessing, depending on how much volume you *want*.

--  Karen Cravens      | Phoenyx PBeM RPG Listserver: majordomo@phoenyx.net
    silver@phoenyx.net | http://www2.southwind.net/~phoenyx/
                       | Home of the RPG Industry Discussion List
          Digital circuits are made with analog parts.

References

hhhmmmm.... Ads on rec.games.pbm
soliiigm@aol.com (Sol III GM)
Tue, 03 Jun 1997 00:00:00 +0000