rec.games.pbm Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) From: Brandon Blackmoor <bblackmoor@spamcop.net> Date: Mon, 04 Jun 2007 22:45:17 +0000 Play by Mail Games Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) Last-modified: 2007-06-04 Welcome to rec.games.pbm! This is a newsgroup for discussing play by mail games, both ordinary mail and electronic mail, and both wargames and non-wargames. There is a PBM WWW homepage at: http://www.pbm.com/~lindahl/pbm.html 1) What is Play By Mail? 2) Are there any mailing lists for PBM games? 3) What are some free, advertising-free web sites for finding and announcing PBEM games? 4) I read German or Russian or Italian. Do I win a prize? 5) How can I generate trustworthy dice rolls? 6) How do I make suggestions for improving this FAQ? 7) Who wrote this FAQ? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 1) What is play by mail? PBM stands for "play by mail". Since this IS the Internet, we use it to mean both ordinary postal mail and electronic mail. Games like Diplomacy have been played via postal mail since the 1960's, starting with John Boardman's 'zine. The US commercial PBM market was started by Rick Loomis of Flying Buffalo in the early 1970's. Now there are commercial PBM companies all over the world. In addition, there is some activity in role-playing games via mail. Why play PBM games? Well, even though the commercial games are expensive, they offer some things that some people have a hard time finding face to face -- good opponents, convenient playing times, and games with lots of hidden information. Non-commercial games can offer the same benefit, as long as the people running it are dedicated. How do PBM games work? Generally you mail in orders to a moderator, human or computer, once a week, and they mail the results back to you. A PBM game can be as simple as a human running an ordinary Dungeons & Dragons game, or a 45,000 line program moderating a fantasy strategic/role-playing game with 50 pages of rules. PBEM games -- those conducted via email -- are generally played by mailing human-readable files back and forth. A few games require special software on your home computer; if so, it will be mentioned in the game description, if there is one. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 2) Are there any mailing lists for pbm games? There are several: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/PBMDesign leads you to an mailing list about game design. These mailing lists concentrate on particular games: Adventurer's Guild -- write majordomo@teleport.com saying `subscribe guild-l' in the body of your letter. BSE (Beyond the Stellar Empire, SMG version) -- write BSE_List-subscribe@yahoogroups.com saying anything in the body of the message (this replaces the RTG version of BSE) BSE (Beyond the Stellar Empire, KJC version) -- write KJC-Phoenix-subscribe@yahoogroups.com saying anything in the body of the message DM (Duelmasters) -- write duel-subscribe@egroups.com DungeonWorld -- write DungeonWorld-subscribe@yahoogroups.com saying anything in the body of the message. EiA (Empires in Arms) -- write majordomo@indiana.edu saying `help' Galaxy-NG -- see http://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/galaxyng-players Godfather -- write godfather-L-subscribe@onelist.com saying anything in the body of the message Legends -- see http://games.groups.yahoo.com/group/whispersofthepalantir/ LOTE (Lords of the Earth) -- write LOTE-L-subscribe@yahoogroups.com saying anything in the body of the message. MI (Monster Island) -- (another newsletter) write abb21@dial.pipex.com Midgard -- write majordomo@midgardusa.com saying 'subscribe midgard' in the body of your message. Mortis Maximus -- write MortisMaximus-subscribe@yahoogroups.com saying anything in the body of the message. Necromancer -- write Necromancer-L-subscribe@yahoogroups.com saying anything in the body of the message. Polaris -- write polarismain-subscribe@yahoogroups.com saying anything in the body of the message. Quest -- write quest-subscribe@onelist.com saying anything in the body of your message SDW (Stars of the Dark Well) -- write majordomo@data1.com saying 'subscribe sdw' in the body of your message. Star Fleet Warlord -- write sfw-list-subscribe@onelist.com saying anything in the body of the message Steel Fury -- write SteelFury-subscribe@yahoogroups.com saying anything in the body of the message. Third Reich -- write goldfarb@texas.net (Chris Goldfarb), he has a list of people interested in PBM play. Victory! -- write victory-L-subscribe@yahoogroups.com saying anything in the body of the message. World War IV -- write ww4-list-subscribe@onelist.com saying anything in the body of the message ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 3) What are some free, advertising-free web sites for finding and announcing PBEM games? PBEM2.0 http://www.pbem2.com/ pbemcentral http://www.gossiping.net/phpBB2/?mforum=pbemcentral PBEM News http://www.pbemnews.org/ PBEM Nexus http://www.pbemnexus.com/ PBEM Portal http://www.pbem.tapirdesigns.co.uk/ PBM/PBEM List http://www.pbm.com/~lindahl/pbm_list/ ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 4) I read German or Russian or Italian. Do I win a prize? There is a newsgroup de.alt.games.pbem with some interesting things going on, but it's all in German. There is a newsgroup relcom.games.pbem, which is mostly in Russian. They play a lot of "Galaxy" in Russia. There is a newsgroup it.comp.giochi.pbem, which is mostly in Italian. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 5) How can I generate trustworthy dice rolls? Many boardgames and other self-moderated PBEM games need lots of dice rolled. One good way to do this is to use an email server: you tell it the address of your opponent, and it rolls dice and sends a mail message to both of you. This way, both sides can trust the answer. One such email server is at pbm.com: dice@pbm.com Send mail with "help" in the body of the message, and it will send instructions. Another source for trustable die rolls is RPG Library's "Secure Dice": http://www.rpglibrary.org/software/securedice/ RPG Library Secure Dice is a free online dice roller which will generate random numbers, generate a MD5 checksum of the results, and email those results to the email address(es) you specify. You can type the checksum into the verification page to ensure that the dice results are genuine. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 6) How do I make suggestions for improving this FAQ? If you think of other useful topics for this FAQ, please send your suggestion to faq@pbem.org . ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 7) Who wrote this FAQ? The rec.games.pbm FAQ in its current form was initially written by Brandon Blackmoor in June of 2007. This version was based on a previous FAQ written by Greg Lindahl, who stopped updating it in April of 2006. -- Brandon Blackmoor bblackmoor@blackgate.net 2007-06-04 Referenced By Up