Playtest Invitation: St. Vals III From: John Merrells <john.merrells@octel.com> Date: Sun, 28 Jan 1996 00:00:00 +0000 Hi there, This is an invitation to join a playtest of 'St Valentines Day Massacre III', the PBeM version. ============================= StVals III - History =================================== For those of you not familiar with the history, StVals started way back in the mid eighties as a hand moderated PBM game. It was designed and run by Bob Middleton of Rampage and much praised by Flagship, and the PBM zines of the time. Around 1988 I got involved in playing the game and put my inexperienced hand into creating a computerised version. Thus StVals II (the eternal playtest) was launched, again to much praise, despite the continual bugs, delays, errors, problems, etc. A licence was sold to Vortex Simulations (Robert Stock) and a few games were started in the US. However, for various reasons - bugs and finances - both companies wound up thier games. That was all about four years ago. With the explosion of interest in the Internet last summer I decided to revive StVals as a PBeM game. Having found a couple of old players through rec.games.pbm, who spurred me on, I started a quick hack to get the game running.... six months later and a massive rewrite... here we are. StVals III. ============================= StVals III - Background ================================= St. Vals is set during the American gangster era, the �Roaring Twenties� and �Troubled Thirties of crime-ridden Chicago, Illinois. On January 16th, 1920, the National Prohibition Act, otherwise known as the Volstead Act (after the Republican politician who engineered it�s introduction) was passed by the Federal Government, prohibited the manufacture, transportation or sale of alcohol except under strict, licensed conditions for medicinal and industrial purposes. The Volstead Act was to remain in force for almost 13 years, until finally, abolished in December, 1933. With the coming of Prohibition, gangs of former bank robbers, auto thieves, illegal gambling operators and the like turned to �boot- legging�, the manufacture, transportation and/or sale of illegal �bootleg� or �booze�. Such notables as Al Capone, Johnny Torrio, �little� Hymie Weiss and many others grew to dominate the Chicago underworld�s bootleg rackets, during the Prohibition years and earned literally millions. St.Vals is set in Chicago of the early/mid twenties, a time when the gangs were becoming increasingly better organised and forming Syndicates and loose alliances for mutual protection and prosperity. Gang wars over control of bootleg territory were frequent and bloody, and many notorious Chicago gangsters fell to the flaming guns of rival mobsters. St.Vals allows you to begin the game leading a small gang of perhaps a dozen or so men, with the leading members named by yourself, and to build up to a massive underworld organisation of potentially hundreds of men. Every aspect of your organisation is under your absolute control. With your faithful few, you will need to expand upon your bootleg territory and learn new rackets to operate and build up your income. In next to no time rivals will be found pressing against your borders, sniffing out your turf and probing for openings and weaknesses. With many other gangs seeking the same goal as yourself (basically, to belong to the most powerful Syndicate in Chicago), the odds are against you, and you will need to call upon every ounce of ruthless and devious skill you process in order to merely survive, never mind actually prosper and expand! ============================= StVals III - Playtest ================================= If you are interested in participating, and feel you might have something to contribute, then fill out the questionaire below and email it to 'john.merrells@octel.com' with the subject line 'stvals questionaire'. I'll collect the addresses of everyone interested and pass on the rulebook and setup details. Turn orders will be received by email in a plain text form. You do not require any special software or hardware, just an email account. Also, turn results will be mailed to you and be in a plain text form. ============================= StVals III - Questionaire ============================= In order to provide the best service I need to know a few details about you, your computing resources and your internet connection. If some of the questions are too technical enter the text 'What are you talking about, you techie twit?'. NAME: EMAIL ADDRESS: COUNTRY: {eg uk, usa, switzerland, denmark, etc} PBM EXPERIENCE: {eg game moderator, flagship editor, reviewer, 10 year veteran, etc } COMPUTER TYPE: {eg Amiga, PC 386, PC 486, PC Pentium, Sun workstation, etc} PRINTER: {eg Citizen 120D, HP Laserjet, HP 5si, etc} INTERNET PROVIDER: {eg work, AOL, Demon, etc } INTERNET CONNECTION RATE: {eg 64k leased line, 28.8 modem, 14.4 modem, etc } CONNECTION AVAILABILITY: {eg work hours only, term time only, home hours only, always} EMAIL SOFTWARE: {eg Pegasus, Eudora, MS Exchange, Unix mail, CC:Mail, etc} SUPPORTS MIME: { eg Eudora and PINE do. } EMAIL LENGTH LIMIT: { eg unlimited, 100 lines, 200K } EMAIL ATTACHEMENTS: { eg Can you receive and send email with attached files. } WORLD WIDE WEB SOFTWARE: {eg Netscape, Spry, Mosaic, Procomm, etc} PREFERED RULE BOOK FORMAT: {eg ASCII, HTML, WORD 6.0} ============================= StVals III - Bye ====================================== Thanks for your time and bandwidth... Cheers John Up