PBEM fanzine # 93-03 From: gl8f@fermi.clas.Virginia.EDU (Greg Lindahl) Date: Fri, 16 Apr 1993 21:43:35 +0000 ====================================================================== @@@@@@@@@@@@ @@@@@@@@@@@@ @@@@@@@@@@@@@@ @@ @@ @@``````````@@ @@``````````@@ @@`````````````` @@@@ @@@@`` @@`` @@`` @@`` @@`` @@`` @@``@@ @@ @@`` @@@@@@@@@@@@ `` @@@@@@@@@@@@ `` @@@@@@@@@@@@ @@`` @@ ``@@`` @@```````````` @@``````````@@ @@```````````` @@`` `` @@`` @@`` @@`` @@`` @@`` @@`` @@`` @@`` @@@@@@@@@@@@ `` @@@@@@@@@@@@@@ @@`` @@`` `` ```````````` `````````````` `` `` ====================================================================== A Fanzine for Free Computer-Moderated Play-By-Electronic-Mail Wargames ====================================================================== volume 93, number 3 april 15, 1993 ====================================================================== Greg Lindahl, Editor gl8f@virginia.edu ====================================================================== Table of Contents: Opening Stuff o The Editor's Corner o Short Summary of Available Games Articles o A First Look at Atlantis Greg Lindahl Reader Feedback o Fill me out and mail me back Regular Features o Game Descriptions & Information o Hints regarding sending electronic mail to other networks o What's this "ftp" thing anyway? o Archives and subscriptions by email ====================================================================== The Editor's Corner ====================================================================== Exciting happenings over here in this corner. First and most important, Russell Wallace surprised everyone by starting play in an open-ended fantasy game titled "Atlantis". You can read about it below. This is the 3rd such game to appear on the Internet, and hopefully it will last much longer than the previous 2. It's certainly a lot of work to design and run such a game, and it takes a good crystal ball to predict what kind of game system will work in the long run. I'd like to thank Russell in advance for his efforts. I've taken over the "PBM List" from Bryan McDonald, which means some changes for this magazine. The PBM List is a list of all existing games, commercial or not. OK, no PBEM Wrestling. But all else is there. In any case, the sports games descriptions are going to appear in that list, and not here. The List can be obtained from one of the ftp sites, or is posted on the Internet newsgroup rec.games.pbm twice a month. CompuServe people will hopefully receive an abridged list with just the free games, and not the commercial ones. Finally, speaking of CompuServe, a little bird tells me that the April 1993 issue of CompuServe Magazine has a mention of PBEM on page 37, under a listing of online magazines. It claims that I can be found frequenting the PBMGAMES forum on Compuserve... well, I haven't used CompuServe for over 6 years, but PBEM can be found in the downloads section because Dave (um...) Snell? of Ark Royal Games puts them there for me each month. Thank you, Dave. -- greg (gl8f@virginia.edu) p.s. If you're interested in writing an article, please send me email. I'd especially love to have a review of "Judgment Day", or find out about more games. ====================================================================== Short Summary of Available Games ====================================================================== Diplomacy --- Play Avalon Hill's Diplomacy boardgame by email. There are 1000+ players involved in ~234 games, with new games starting frequently on several automated email servers. Galaxy --- An economic/strategic space-opera game. There are around 500 players involved in a dozen or so games. New games start occasionally. There is a new automated Galaxy server. Judgment Day --- A simple strategic game of economics and warfare, set in the "modern era": tanks, plans, and atomic bombs. Currently in beta-test. Atlantis --- An open-ended economic/strategic fantasy game, that will remind you of Olympia quite a lot. The first turn will run April 11, and new players are still being taken. Celestial Empire --- a more complicated space-opera game. There 5 games running with about 100 players. New games start occasionally. Dougal Scott is looking for someone to take over running these games. Sports Simulations --- a variety of different electronic leagues are available. Each game generally does one or two seasons per year. Decentralized games --- a couple of games are available which are designed for a few players, and the moderation programs are available so you can run your own games. For more information on any of these games, please wade through the "Game Descriptions and Information" section below. It lists ftp sites and the addresses of the moderators. The sports simulations and decentralized games listings are located in the "PBM List", which is a separate document. ====================================================================== A First Look at Atlantis Greg Lindahl ====================================================================== Atlantis is yet-another ambitious attempt at an open-ended fantasy game. However, unlike the numerous games that preceded it, two of which ran for free on the Internet (T'Nyc and Olympia), Atlantis was written by Russell Wallace, who has a minimalist philosophy on game design, and a willingness to learn from past experiments. Does the feature add a lot to the game, or just it just make it complex for no reason? Throw it out! So, instead of a list of what Atlantis includes, I will instead list what it doesn't have: Cities. Towns. Markets, other than what players set up. Complex movement -- you may only move one region per turn. Stacks. Random encounters. Orc invasions. A large map. What Atlantis does have is simple game mechanics, with some checks and balances. You want a sword? Either find a player who will sell you one, or make one yourself. How do you make a sword? Find some mountains. Train some men in ironworking. Mine some iron. Train more men in weaponsmithing. Produce swords. Despite the simplicity, there are some twists. Food and money are the same thing in Atlantis. The only way to produce food is either to set your people to work growing it, or to tax the peasants. Taxing peasants requires armed men, and a local environment in which there are few enough local peasants, so that they aren't starving. If the local peasants are starving, you aren't going to squeeze anything out of them. If that happens, you can't eat your swords, so you're in trouble. You also can't turn swords into new recruits -- only money can entice recruits. This is unlike most games, in which it's relatively easy to turn assets into money and back into assets again. It requires a bit more planning than normal to prevent your people from starving, and balance production of material possessions like swords and armor against production of money to feed your people and recruit new people. Atlantis contains a magic system. Since none of the spells are in the rules and the game just started, I can't tell you about it. The combat system is totally explained in the rules. It has some features that must be carefully watched, such as the fact that unarmed people are easy pickings for armed soldiers. Troops in fortifications look very difficult to beat. Since many things are left out of Atlantis, they will have to be provided by the players. Olympia provided the flavor of a fantasy world by having GM-controlled pixie and orc units wandering about -- Atlantis doesn't have this. Conflict over resources will drive this game. Players must make their own market for swords and armor. Players who enjoy exploration are not likely to find Atlantis that interesting. I said that the map is small not because I know this for a fact, but because if there were many regions per player, the total production available would be very large and there wouldn't be conflict over resources. So, my guess is that Russell intends on keeping the size of the map small. Atlantis does fit my biases well. Most of the information needed to play the game are in the rules, and all you need to do is sit around, think hard, and play with some numbers to figure out what your starting strategies are. Unlike some games, you won't have to go into combat several times before you begin to understand why you got wiped out repeatedly. The magic system is hidden, but I hope it will be moderate in nature. There are a couple of things that I think might become odd "features" in the future; for example, it seems to me that periodically massacring your peasants could _increase_ your taxation income. However, this is a minor nit, and we'll have to wait and see how it works in practice. The conclusion is: if you like open-ended games, join this one. I hope that it isn't a victim of its own success. ====================================================================== Fill me out and mail me back ====================================================================== I'm curious about who reads this fanzine, and what games they play. I will use no names in any summaries. Please email this to me at: gl8f@virginia.edu (note the ell, not a one) 1) Where did you find this copy of PBEM? 2) Do you play games face-to-face? If so, which ones? 3) What games do you play over postal-mail? Which is your favorite? 4) What games do you play over electronic mail? Which is your favorite? 5) Do you have access to electronic mail year-round, or do you lose it during the summer? 6) What do you like or dislike about electronic-mail games in general? How could they be improved? 7) What do you like or dislike about PBEM? How could I improve it? ====================================================================== Game Descriptions and Information ====================================================================== FTP Site: ftp.erg.sri.com username: anonymous Directory: pub/pbm Contains back-issues of this magazine, source for Galaxy, and rules for a whole bunch of games. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- FTP Site: ftp.cp.tn.tudelft.nl username: anonymous Directory: pub/pbm The same stuff as sri.com, often a little more up-to-date. ====================================================================== Game: Atlantis Type: strategic economic/military, fantasy setting Duration: open-ended Turns: one per week GM: rwallace@vax1.tcd.ie (Russell Wallace) Status: accepting new players For those of you who are familiar with Olympia, Atlantis is Russell Wallace's answer. It is a _very_ simple game, one in which the players have to provide most of the flavor. Other than the players, there is no one but peasants in the world. The only economy is that which exists between players. A magazine is generated weekly and is posted to rec.games.pbm. It should also be available at the ftp sites. The rules are also available for ftp. The first turns were mailed in April, 1993. The game is now accepting players... send email to the GM to join. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Game: Celestial Empire Type: strategic economic/military space-opera Duration: close-ended, 30+ turns Turns: one per week GM: Dougal.Scott@fcit.monash.edu.au Status: occasionally starting new games Description: Players compete to capture worlds which produce many different types of resources, of which different amounts are needed to manufacture various items. The author, Dougal Scott, is currently running several games, and he periodically starts new ones. The rules may be ftp-ed from yoyo.cc.monash.edu.au in the directory /pub/celemp. After you've read them, if you still want to join a game, send your name to Dougal.Scott@fcit.monash.edu.au. He's also looking for a new administrator to take over running his games, so he can finish his degree. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Game: Diplomacy Type: email version of Avalon Hill's pure strategy game Turns: frequency varies from one per day to one per 2 weeks for different games. Email Server: judge@morrolan.eff.org, HELP in body of message Email Server: judge@u.washington.edu, the subject is ignored. Description: The Diplomacy Adjudicator is a fully computer-moderated gamemaster for Avalon Hill's Diplomacy boardgame. To get more information from the moderator, send email with the word "HELP" in the body of the message (the subject is ignored) to judge@morrolan.eff.org. Some information is available via FTP from milton.u.washington in the public/misc subdirectory. All of the information up for ftp is also available via the email server. There is also an older diplomacy Judge at judge@u.washington.edu, which is not starting any new games but has lots of standby positions available. Diplomacy is probably the biggest PBEM game out there, with 234 games going as of March 15, a 10% increase over the past month. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Game: Galaxy Type: strategic, economic/military, space opera setting Duration: typically 50-80 turns Turns: typically 1 or 2 per week GM: rwallace@vax1.tcd.ie (Russell Wallace) GM: bampton@cs.utk.edu (Howard Bampton) Email Server: beast-serv@acca.nmsu.edu, Subject: HELP Description: The game typically takes place on a 100x100 2D map, with a few hundred planets and 20 to 50 players. Players compete to capture planets, which can be used for economic expansion. You may purchase technology in several different areas, allowing your ships to fight harder and move faster. Galaxy turns range in size from 10kbytes early in the game to 100-200kbytes late in the game. The rules and source code are available for ftp. There is now an automated email server which presumably will be handling a large fraction of games in the future. You can talk to it by sending email to beast-serv@acca.nmsu.edu with the word "help" in the subject. Note: in the subject. This email server runs games as well as mailing lists for the "Galaxy PBeM Development Group", and will let you get at the latest GPDG source code. You can help develop, if you like. If you have problems or want to talk to a human, try beast@acca.nmsu.edu. You can also write to humans who run games; they start games occasionally and also have standby positions. They are: rwallace@vax1.tcd.ie bampton@cs.utk.edu Howard Bampton has a variant called "blind" galaxy. You can ftp the source for it from cs.utk.edu:/pub/bampton. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Game: Judgment Day Type: strategic economic/military, present day setting Turns: one per week GM: rwallace@vax1.tcd.ie (Russell Wallace) Status: beta test. one game running. standby positions available. Description: Judgment Day is a game for up to 25 players. Each player controls an empire which can build weapons and attack each other. When the nukes start flying, remember to duck and cover. Judgment Day is in the first beta-test. Dropout positions are occasionally available; after you have read the rules (available at the ftp sites), write the GM to ask for a position. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Sports games and Decentralized games are on the PBM List, distributed separately on the Internet, and at the end on CompuServe. ====================================================================== Hints regarding sending Electronic Mail to other networks ====================================================================== OK, so now you're wondering, "I'm using FidoNet or CompuServe or FoobieBlech and those email addresses he keeps on talking about sure look funny to me!". Welcome to the modern world of networking. See, there's this big amorphous network called the Internet that lots of other networks, like FidoNet and CompuServe and DELPHI and America Online (but not GEnie, yet) are hooked up to. And you can send email between all of them, if you know the right incantations. Often size or cost limitations will keep you from being able to play games on another network, but at least you can send me letters to the editor or articles. Compuserve: If your ID is [76515,1122] then your canonical Internet address will be 76515.1122@compuserve.com. The comma is replaced by a period, and that's your username. Compuserve.com is the name of your site. The .com on the end means that Compuserve is a business, and also generally means it's in the USA. This address is the one that non-compuserve people will use to talk to you. To send mail from CompuServe to the Internet, you use this sort of address: >INTERNET:gl8f@virginia.edu In this example, the ">INTERNET:" part indicates that the email is going to the Internet, and gl8f@virginia.edu is a normal Internet address (mine). Compuserve users have to pay extra for mail to or from the Internet. If you're a flat-fee user, the cost is 5 cents per 2500 characters, minimum 15 cents, and the first $9 per month is free. This can add up to a bit of money if you send frequent messages, or get into a Galaxy end-game where your turns are large. In addition, the maximum size for a given message is 50kbytes, and most Internet games do not split their game turns into pieces if they are too large. But you can try. Diplomacy, for example, should definitely be ok in size and volume if you play a no-press anonymous game. BTW, the 50k limit will be upped to 2 megabytes sometime during the spring of 1993. America Online and DELPHI tell me that they don't charge extra for sending email to the Internet. So you might want to investigate them as an alternative to Compu$erve. To go from FidoNet to the Internet and back is a similar process. Actually, it's not so simple. I have a document that describes this, but since FidoNet seems to be a bit of an anarchy, you can't even send netmail from some nodes and others may not be configured properly to send mail to and from the Internet. And, when you send email, someone is paying to send it, or maybe there is a local gateway and it's free. So, you should probably talk to your sysop first to figure out what's going on. Anyway, the long and the short of it is this: FidoNet users can send mail to the Internet by sending normal netmail to the user UUCP, and then on the first line of the message, put the line: To: gl8f@virginia.edu To send email from the Internet to FidoNet, you take an address such as "Dale Webber at 1:105/55.0", and turn that into dale.weber@p0.f55.n105.z1.fidonet.org. Again, this is subject to the same caveats above about the gateway and the costs involved. From what I've gathered (but I haven't asked recently), they ask that you keep messages under 10k bytes and to only send two or three a day. This is a fairly small amount that would limit your ability to play Internet games, but you can still submit articles to this fanzine (hint, hint). If you want to avoid the limitations, yet don't know how to get directly on the Internet, I can mail you a list of public-access Unix sites with Internet email capabilities. Just send me a short note, using the above info, to "gl8f@virginia.edu", and I'll mail a copy back. ====================================================================== What's this "ftp" thing anyway? ====================================================================== ftp is an acronym for "file transfer protocol", and it is only directly available to the privileged few who are directly hooked to the Internet using heavy-duty hardware. There is a way to use ftp via email, and if you can get email to me, I will send you a document explaining how to use it, or send email to ftpmail@decwrl.dec.com, with an empty Subject: line, and the word "help" in the body of the message. ====================================================================== Archives and subscriptions by email ====================================================================== PBEM is archived at "ftp.erg.sri.com" and "ftp.cp.tn.tudelft.nl". I will also be setting up a mailing list to distribute this magazine, but keep in mind that it will be posted on a regular basis to at least Usenet and CompuServe, so if you're reading it now, you probably won't need to get on the mailing list to receive it in the future. ====================================================================== PBEM is published monthly. Please redistribute it far and wide, but do not modify or delete any articles. Write me if you want to redistribute it in other forms; such permission is easy to obtain. For example, some old articles are being translated into German. PLEASE CONTRIBUTE! Our focus is primarily on free wargames, but we're interested in articles about anything relevant. Up