FAQ: rec.games.pbm Frequently Asked Questions From: gl8f@fermi.clas.Virginia.EDU (Greg Lindahl) Date: Mon, 03 May 1993 22:17:42 +0000 Archive-name: games/play-by-mail Last-modified: 1993/04/02 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? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 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 western world. 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. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 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 common games are: Galaxy: a free PBeM written by Russell Wallace. More details in (3). 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 belongs in the group rec.games.diplomacy. Monster Island: a simple commercial game in which player characters wander around an island farting and hitting each other. ... and bunches of others. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 3) What other games are there? I post a list of them separately, or you an ftp this list from ftp.erg.sri.com. % 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 uncomprss or zcat command in order to read it. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 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. Referenced By Up