Re: PBeM

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

Date: Tue, 25 Mar 1997 00:00:00 +0000

In article <33381F02.2A0C@geocities.com>,
Shawn Williamson <swilliam@geocities.com> wrote:
>mike79@ix.netcom.com wrote:
>>
>> I have seen ads charging a fee per round to play a PBeM AD&D game.
>> Does anybody know what the standard cost is to play and how long is
>> the average round?
>
>Abandon the pay games.  There are always free games out there.  Go to
>http://www.pbem.com  and you'll find a load of games looking for players
>- free.

Oh, good.  It's been awhile since we've had this go-round.
(Phil, get your posting fingers warmed up.)

There are pluses and minuses to pay and free games.  You join a
free game, you take your chances.  The GM might quit after a few
months, you usually have *no* idea what the game's really going
to be like, and you've got this big confusing email mess with
everyone trying to carbon-copy each other.

The pay games, at least those run by reputable companies who
will, no doubt, jump into this thread shortly, offer somewhat
more of a promise of stability... in some cases, the gamemaster
is even full-time (which I think would be a really spiff job,
except that I like to eat and pay the bills).

Somewhere in the middle you have oddballs like me.  I run, as
might be gleaned from my header and .sig, the Phoenyx, which
(aside from being a mythical bird that had a run-in with line
noise) is a ten-year-old PBeM site.  Started out as a BBS
(remember bulletin boards?  No, I suppose most of you don't),
grew up into a special-purpose Internet provider - we do free
mailing lists for roleplaying games.

To make a long story short, we do our darndest to make the
Phoenyx *run* like a pay site, without actually charging
anything.  (Why?  Because we're idiots.)  I keep tabs on my
gamemasters, and if someone's falling behind I find someone else
to step in and help out or pick up the game altogether.  We run a
majordomo-like list server (with customizations so people can
keep track of who's playing what character and other things) so
nobody has to mess with giant CC lists.  And we make sure the
gamemasters provide as much information as possible up front so
you're not stepping blind into a game - everything from how fast
the pace will be to what kind of assumptions the gamemaster will
or won't make about your actions.

(Of course, the punchline is that we haven't got any AD&D
games... but we've got darn near everything else.)

--  Karen Cravens      | Phoenyx PBeM RPG Listserver: majordomo@phoenyx.net
    silver@phoenyx.net | http://www2.southwind.net/~phoenyx/
                       | Home of the RPG Industry Discussion List
           Life is a simile.  Life is like a metaphor.

References

PBeM
mike79@ix.netcom.com
Sat, 15 Mar 1997 00:00:00 +0000
Re: PBeM
Shawn Williamson <swilliam@geocities.com>
Tue, 25 Mar 1997 00:00:00 +0000

Referenced By

PBeM
mike79@ix.netcom.com
Sat, 15 Mar 1997 00:00:00 +0000
Re: PBeM
Shawn Williamson <swilliam@geocities.com>
Tue, 25 Mar 1997 00:00:00 +0000