FAQ: rec.games.pbm Frequently Asked Questions

From: gl8f@fermi.clas.Virginia.EDU (Greg Lindahl)

Date: Tue, 15 Feb 1994 05:44:03 +0000

Archive-name: games/play-by-mail
Last-modified: 1994/02/07

Welcome to rec.games.pbm! This is a newsgroup for discussing play by
mail games, both ordinary mail, electronic mail, and both wargames and
non-wargames.

1) What is PBM all about?
2) What games get talked about here?
3) What other games are there?
4) What if I can't FTP?
5) I read German. Do I win a prize?

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1) What is PBM all about?

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 for many years. 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.

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2) What games get talked about here?

Many postings on this group will have a game name mentioned in the
subject line. If you post, please mention the game in the subject so
that others who are interested in the same game will actually read
your postings. Some of the most mentioned games are:

Adventurer's Guild (AG): a commercial fantasy arena combat game.
                         It has its own FAQ posting.

Arena: a free PBeM written by Scott Turner; fantasy arena combat.

Galaxy: a free PBeM written by Russell Wallace, with a space setting.

Legends: a commercial D&D-type simulation in which 200 players
         wander around a large map trying to become more powerful.

Duelmasters (DM): a commercial fantasy arena combat game.

Diplomacy: a boardgame often played by email. Discussion for this
           game generally takes place in the group rec.games.diplomacy.

Middle Earth (ME-PBM): a commercial strategic simulation of J. R. R.
                       Tolkein's fantasy universe.

Monster Island: a simple commercial game in which player characters
                wander around an island farting and hitting on each
                other.

Olympia II: a free PBeM by Rich Skrenta, with a fantasy
            setting. Currently in alpha-test.

Atlantis: a free PBeM by Russell Wallace; a strategic fantasy game.

Detailed information about all these games is in the PBM List, which
is discussed in question (3).

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3) What other games are there?

I post a list of them separately around the 1st and 15th day of every
month, or you an ftp the list from ftp.erg.sri.com. The list includes
both commercial and free games, including information about all of the
free play-by-email games mentioned in question (2).

% ftp ftp.erg.sri.com
Connected to ftp.erg.sri.com.
220 sparkyfs.erg.sri.com FTP server (Version 6.16 Thu Nov 5 10:24:57
PST 1992) ready.
Name (ftp.erg.sri.com:gl8f): anonymous
331 Guest login ok, send e-mail address as password.
Password:                                             (here I typed "guest")
230-Welcome, archive user! [...]
230 Guest login ok, access restrictions apply.
ftp> cd pub/pbm
250 CWD command successful.
ftp> ls
200 PORT command successful.
150 Opening ASCII mode data connection for file list.
PBM_List.Z
...
226 Transfer complete.
91 bytes received in 0.0098 seconds (9 Kbytes/s)
ftp> binary
200 Type set to I.
ftp> get PBM_List.Z
200 PORT command successful.
150 Opening BINARY mode data connection for PBM_List.Z (14925 bytes).
226 Transfer complete.
local: PBM_List.Z remote: PBM_List.Z
14925 bytes received in 2.6 seconds (5.6 Kbytes/s)
ftp> quit
221 Goodbye.
hydra ~ % zcat PBM_List.Z | more

Note that the file, PBM_List.Z, is in compressed format. you will
need access to the uncompress or zcat command in order to read it.
The name of the file may not necessaily be PBM_List, so use your head.

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4) What if I can't FTP?

For those of you who DON'T have ftp access, Frits Kuijlman has the
Squirrel mail server installed at his FTP site. This mail server can
be used through mail or interactively, but all requests will be
handled through mail. To get the helpfile either:

telnet ftp.cp.tn.tudelft.nl 2001
    MAIL <your mail address>   (e.g. mine is gl8f@virginia.edu)
    HELP        (for small help file)
     or
    SEND HELP   (for big help file)
     or
    INDEX       (for the index)
    QUIT

or mail to pbm-server@cp.tn.tudelft.nl (not ftp.cp...) with the
following body:

BEGIN
    HELP or SEND HELP or INDEX
    END

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5) I read German. Do I win a prize?

Yes! There is a newsgroup de.alt.games.pbem with some interesting
things going on, but it's all in German. Some German-language games
are included in the PBM List mentioned in section (3) above.

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If you think of other useful topics for this FAQ, please send me mail.
If you're tired of seeing this posting, add the subject line to your
kill file.