PBEM Fanzine v93 n1 From: gl8f@fermi.clas.Virginia.EDU (Greg Lindahl) Date: Sat, 16 Jan 1993 22:04:29 +0000 ====================================================================== @@@@@@@@@@@@ @@@@@@@@@@@@ @@@@@@@@@@@@@@ @@ @@ @@``````````@@ @@``````````@@ @@`````````````` @@@@ @@@@`` @@`` @@`` @@`` @@`` @@`` @@``@@ @@ @@`` @@@@@@@@@@@@ `` @@@@@@@@@@@@ `` @@@@@@@@@@@@ @@`` @@ ``@@`` @@```````````` @@``````````@@ @@```````````` @@`` `` @@`` @@`` @@`` @@`` @@`` @@`` @@`` @@`` @@@@@@@@@@@@ `` @@@@@@@@@@@@@@ @@`` @@`` `` ```````````` `````````````` `` `` ====================================================================== A Fanzine for Free Computer-Moderated Play-By-Electronic-Mail Wargames ====================================================================== volume 93, number 1 january 15, 1993 ====================================================================== Greg Lindahl, Editor gl8f@virginia.edu ====================================================================== Table of Contents: Opening Stuff o The Editor's Corner o Short Summary of Available Games Letters o German-Language Games Frank Schmidt o A Galaxy Puzzle Andre Verwey Articles o Converting Face-to-Face Games Into PBEM's Mel Nicholson o TicTactics II Ends Greg Lindahl o Players -- The Most Valuable Asset Luis Sequeira 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 ====================================================================== And so a new year begins. With the new year, we have a new look: I will be trying to put summary information at the start of each fanzine issue. Hopefully some of the new games in beta-test will go into production soon. As always, we are looking for news of new games, or articles on any topic. -- greg (gl8f@virginia.edu) ====================================================================== Short Summary of Available Games ====================================================================== Diplomacy --- Play Avalon Hill's Diplomacy boardgame by email. There are 1000+ players involved in 100+ games, with new games starting continuously on an automatic email server. Galaxy --- An economic/strategic space-opera game. There are around 300 players involved in a dozen or so games. New games start occasionally. Celestial Empire --- a more complicated space-opera game. There 5 games running with about 100 players. New games start occasionally. Sports Simulations --- a variety of different electronic leagues are available. Each game generally does one or two seasons per year. VGA Planets --- a shareware game for PC Clones. There is a review of the game in PBEM v92n06. 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. ====================================================================== Letters ====================================================================== PBEMs in Germany Well, PBEM is no longer the world's only fanzine covering free play-by-electronic-mail games, since Lars Freitag is writing one in the German newsgroup de.rec.games. It is still in the process of being organized; Lars is still searching for a name and format. Some GM's for variant games have been found, but just one of the games has started, and all of the others still need more players. Only one game, Ashes of Empires, is a wargame. All of the games are conducted in German. Another PBEM-Game is the SUBEFL, a soccer simulation which has now 26 teams in two leagues; two seasons have been played, the third will start February/March. The results are posted in the German newsgroup de.alt.games.pbem (which is almost empty). In addition, there is the MAUSnet (domain maus.de), with an active games group. Almost all of their games are PBEM, and I play some games there (Grand Prix, a racing simulation, Golf, "Eastfrisian Dikewandering", a simple game with very funny comments :-) ). Last but not least, Reinhard Schoen, still manager of a cheap PBM fanzine, has put one of the games (all invented by him and his friends) into PBEM. (He cannot put them completely on the net because most of the buyers of the fanzine have no computer.) This is the status for now, but in a month the games will be more active. I will send more information next month. "Frank Schmidt" <fkschmid@cip.informatik.uni-erlangen.de> A Galaxy Puzzle Suppose you are living in a very peaceful galaxy. You home planet is full of capital and colonists and has size 1000, resource 10. At a distance d there is a planet you want to colonize. The size of the planet is S. What is the best ship type to build, to get this planet full with pop and industry? Assume all your tech levels are currently 1.00 and the game parameters are according to Russel's version 3. Andre Verweij [ Send responses to me at gl8f@virginia.edu and I'll compile a summary for next issue. ] ====================================================================== Converting Face-to-face games into PB(e)M's Mel Nicholson ====================================================================== [ Preface: Sorry I missed a few issues. Thanks to all those who sent in fan mail wondering where I'd gone. Here is the long-awaited game conversion article. Enjoy. ] There are many times when it would be nice to have your favorite face-to-face games available in an email format. Sometimes you've moved to a new area and don't have anyone around to play with, or perhaps you have schedule conflicts which make it too hard to get together for a gaming session with your friends. Maybe you want a wider venue of opponents, or perhaps you're under quarantine at the local hospital or sanatorium. Whatever the reason, it *is* possible to make your favorite game into a PBEM, and this article is designed to show you how. Before you get too excited, though, I should warn you that there is a lot of work involved. Start by imagining largest amount of time that this process could possibly take. Double that, and unless you're a lot more pessimistic than I was, you still are going to be short. So unless you have a *lot* of time available, you will need to think twice about running a game, as the cost in time and enthusiasm is very real, and it really hurts the gaming community when a person starts a game in a half-assed way, and later is forced to abandon his players, who become frustrated with the PBEM concept as a whole. Despite the hurdles, it *is* possible to run a successful PBEM game, and many people have been able to do so quite successfully, as my own game (SPARF) and many converted games (Mark Purtil's Republic of Rome(tm) comes to mind as one of the successful conversions) attest to. Nevertheless, there have been some disastrous failures, and there are many choices which go into deciding whether *your* game will stand or fall. The first and most important choice, when deciding which game to put into PBEM form, is the choice of game. Some games just weren't cut out for PBEM. One feature to avoid when selecting a game for PBEM form is a game in which there is involved trading or negotiations which require detailed interactions in a sequential form. For example, if a game has an important trading phase in which large numbers of items change hands, and in which small details of the trades are significant, and which lead to further trades, then this game is probably a poor choice. Negotiations among players in which only a single item need be resolved, rather than an ordered sequence of transactions, is much easier. This is why Diplomacy, in which a single set of orders result from the negotiations, is so successful in PBEM form while other games which involve many ordered transactions have failed. Another danger is a poorly designed set of rules, with loopholes and ambiguities that each gaming circle will have solved in its own way. Because PBEM audiences generally draw from a wide base, wherever ambiguity exists, contradictory solutions will exist. For this reason, it is important that you be familiar with the game. You should also have a good eye for ambiguity, so that these sorts of problems can be headed off and reduced. I personally have seen a game of PBEM Pax Brittanica turn into a total disaster because of arguments. Also, if the moderator has a good feel for justice and an ample supply of patience and tact, he or she can often reduce the blow which these problems inflict by keeping a level head. There are also some problems with live gaming that vanish in the PBEM format; this makes some games good candidates, and perhaps even improve them with the transition. Since the pace of PBEMs is slower, problems which arise from having to sit and wait for other players to hurry up and make their move just don't arise. Also, since the players need not all be present for the whole game, one player being eliminated early doesn't pose the awkward social situation common to face-to-face gaming. Finally, since the transactions are done on a computer, the automation of bookkeeping which might otherwise bog the game down is much easier to accomplish. After the game selection is made, the primary questions facing the converter involve HOW the player will interact with the moderator (whether that be a person or program). A good starting strategy for this is to consider the sequence of play of the game and think of all the situations in which a player has a choice. For each choice, determine all the information which the player may use to help make that choice, and identify all the cases where some other player's choice provides that information. If this is an interesting game, it is likely to be a very long list with many interactions. An example should help to clarify the dark art of list-making. The game we will use is the board-game Monopoly, which all of our US readers should be familiar with, and which is available elsewhere in the world under other names. The object of the game is to acquire the most money, and the players do this by moving around the game board, buying properties, and building buildings on the properties to charge the other players rent. Here is our first draft of the list of player choices: Buy an unowned property when it is landed upon. Bid on an unowned property which is up for auction. Mortgage or unmortgage a property. Build or demolish buildings on a monopoly. Pay to get out of jail. Collect or refuse rent. Make a binding deal or transaction with another player. Gee. There are "only" seven things a player can do. Sound simple? I can guarantee it won't be, because wherever the word "deal" shows up, you have a major problem. Deals in Monopoly must be valid and are binding, and so keeping track of them would be a nightmare in a PBEM form. I'm afraid that this problem is going to take more time to solve and involve more philosophical questions than fit into the scope of this article, so for the sake of expediency, we'll pretend all deals are illegal. Next, we make a list of the information which must be available to all the players: Position on the board of all markers Who just moved, and whether they rolled doubles $$$ owned by each player Ownership and mortgage status of all property Current high bid for a given property (during auctions) Furthermore, there are things a player must NOT know before a given decision is made. Rather than going through the whole list, I will just give one example: a player may not know his or her dice roll before deciding whether to pay to get out of jail. Using the list to determine when information may be released, plus the timing constraints asserted by the rules, we can write a general timeline for the game. Once this timeline has been worked out, group as many decisions as you can into blocks (which we'll call "interactions" for want of a better name), making sure that no decision in a block requires a player to have information that another decision in the same block prevents him from having. For example, the decision whether to buy St. James at face value cannot be grouped into the same interaction with the decision of whether to pay to get out of Jail, as the former requires knowledge of the die roll, while the latter requires ignorance of the die roll. Once you have all of the interactions and timing considerations worked out, and you have developed any needed protocols for communication and automated whatever functions you want computer help with, you are ready to get your players and go, right? Well, almost. Next, you need to document all those considerations and protocols for your players. Trust me, you NEED to do this, especially in a game with lots of players, or else you'll end up answering the same question repeatedly. Once you've answered it twice, you might as well have written it down once in the rules. All in all, the experience of preparing a game and converting it for PBEM play is a good exercise in game design and may yield a lot of insight into how games work and why they fail or succeed. In particular, this is a very good way to force yourself to break a set of rules down into the bare essentials of how the game proceeds and how the rules interact at the level of player interaction and timing. Good luck, and see you next issue, when I'll try to talk about some of the principles of game modification, especially when issue of continuity arise with a pre-existing database. ====================================================================== TicTactics II Ends Greg Lindahl ====================================================================== It is very timely that Mel Nicholson's column this issue is about game conversion. Anthony Lovell, who produces the funniest games in PBEM, has produced games based on the children's games Battleship and Tic-Tac-Toe. And they are lots of fun to play in. Tony just finished running his second edition of TicTactics, and I was the winner (ssssh). The game is played on a 20x26 grid, and the object of the game is to capture all the squares. You receive new armies proportional to the number of sets of 3 squares in a row that you own. Sounds simple? It is. Fun? You bet. I plan on setting up an automated server to moderate future games. If you'd like to hear about it the minute I get it going, send me email at the address "gl8f@virginia.edu" with the subject "I wanna play Tictactics!" ====================================================================== Players - The Most Valuable Asset Luis Sequeira ====================================================================== The quality of PBEMs (and PBMs) is often judged by many different factors, such as their rules, complexity, the degree of flexibility the player has when dealing with the "things" which he commands in the game (be they medieval armies or starship fleets), and the support the player can get from the GM (e.g., rules, tools, etc.). It is usual for new games to claim "a flexibility unlike any other game", "full so-and-so support", "lots of rules for the most demanding player to always be able to do what he wants", etc. This is normal, and all comparisons between games are done using similar concepts. Some of these concepts can be subjective and a matter of personal taste (such as realism and playability), but many others (such as support and rules) are not --- they are quite objective and have a great influence on the immediate success (or failure) of the game. However, as some readers have already discovered in some of my previous articles, there are other important issues, which are never mentioned on the "praise list" of the games I've found. One of these issues is the players. After all, complex or simple, realistic or purely abstract, large or small, the players make the game a fun experience --- and it's rarely the other way round. You can have the most complex and realistic game ever designed, but if your players aren't up to it, the game will quickly be forgotten and discarded. On the other hand, very simple games with a handful of (badly written) rules can be a lot of fun, just because the players are a exceptional bunch of guys, who give their best, even in a poorly designed game. Why is that so? Well, to be perfectly honest --- and I'm not adding anything new here --- games were created so that players could enjoy playing them! This may sound terribly trivial, but it seems that some games out there have forgotten this simple and universal truth. It also seems that game designers painfully add new features which don't appeal to any one else but a programmer, and use these new features as a "marketing statement". Say, "this game is written in C++ and has over 3 Mbytes of object-oriented code, having been successfully ported to over 300 different environments". Very impressive indeed, but how many players have actually joined the game? If it's written in Microsoft's GW BASIC (1983 version), and has a few hundred lines of spaghetti code, it can be as fun as any other masterpiece of programming. I've seen a game written for the Commodore Amiga using a database manager, which runs from diskettes, that is loved by its 50+ players. Perhaps a bit of world history can shed some new light on the subject; I won't be very extensive, as I'm barely familiar with the subject, but there have been some events in the past which can be shown to conform to some aspects of games. Consider, for instance, the World War II period. I've read in the 2300 AD role-playing game from GDW (which itself has evolved from a PBM run by the staff of GDW for a few years, to get them an interesting background on future events) that this was the "Strong Leader" period. The many countries had different political views, and different government forms --- but all of them (at least those which have an entry in the history books) had a strong leader. In a game, the situation has some parallels: all the decisions, all the embodiment of power over the "land" (or the stars) is centered on the player. He is the ultimate leader of his people, and his decisions, right or wrong, will influence the outcome of future events. That is why it is so frustrating when a player quits the game and is replaced by another with different views and opinions. In a PBEM, a player must do a lot of role-playing, whether one is aware of it or not. If five players unite themselves under the same overlord, and achieve some success in the game, what will happen if the overlord suddenly quits the game --- or worse, engages in suicidal attacks against others? Will there be stability afterwards? Are your neighbors to be trusted? What about "temporary" alliances? Will one benefit from them later on? So, if a game has a surprisingly large number of good players, deeply involved with the game, everyone benefits from it, even if you lose some battles. There is a distinct satisfaction from being defeated by a clever player, and not by a soulless machine which constantly throws fighters blindingly and without purpose against you. --- The net has been busy for a while with the question of "automatic players", i. e., to put some measure of artificial intelligence in the "things" the players control. In other words, to get some things to automatically run by themselves without the players having to bother with them. My own opinion on the subject is a quite positive one - as long as such changes improve the quality of the player interactions instead of degrading them. If the players can have more time to spend on conversations between themselves, and can concentrate on diplomacy instead of having to run a spreadsheet to calculate their best moves, then the change will be a welcome one. If, on the other hand, what is accomplished is a means of turning the player in an unnecessary figure on the game, that is, a mere "spectator" of the scenario played by the computer, then forget it. While several "boring" tasks can - and should - be automatic, the most important thing in the game is the player, and he must feel that he is in charge. Thus, if he is relegated to a role where he can give his "underlings" (computer-played agents) several commands to relieve his burden, and can instead plot treason and backstabbing against other players, well, then the game is going in the right direction. There are a few games where the player seems to be just an inconvenience for the game to run well. That is, his "stupid" orders and commands just slow the flux of play, and are restricted to the minimum. I'm talking about games where you just give the orders, see what the computer has done with them, and watch the reports with all the fascination of one reading a newspaper's article about the rainfall in Mongolia (or Portugal, for that matter! :-). This clearly isn't what PBEMs are about. To finish, I'll add the main reason why I insist so often on the importance of the players in PBEMs. As a teenager, I discovered the world of computer arcade games, and liked it a lot - but it always infuriated me when I just couldn't do what I wanted. Computers being the mindless machines they are, there's just about a limit on the different things one can perform. While "migrating" to role-playing games, I enjoyed the wonderful experience of being able to do _exactly_ what I wanted - because I was dealing with human players, limitless in their imagination. Many "good" wargames permit similar "freedom". PBEMs are the kind of games that permit you the largest amount of players possible, and coming from all corners of the world. Thus, one would expect PBEMs to be able to mimic the "real world" more and more, at least with what concerns player relations (on a RPG, it's always the GM who plays the "bad guys"...). Thus, players is what PBEMs are really about. Pity they are so often neglected... ====================================================================== Game Descriptions and Information ====================================================================== Galaxy -- Galaxy is a closed-ended strategic economic/military space simulation. 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. Games are being run by the author, Russell Wallace, and also by Rob McNeur, Howard Bampton, and the Generic Association of Gamers at Western Washington University. Announcements of new games have been generally posted to the Usenet newsgroup rec.games.pbm. However, you can always write the people moderating games and ask to be place on their wait list. The rules and source code are available for ftp on ftp.erg.sri.com, directory /pub/pbm/galaxy. The addresses of the moderators are: RWALLACE@vax1.tcd.ie rob@ccc.govt.nz bampton@cs.utk.edu. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Diplomacy -- 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 it 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. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Celestial Empire -- Celestial Empire is a closed-ended strategic economic/military space simulation. Empires 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. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Sports Simulations -- While these aren't wargames, they are PBEM games. Generally these games have long seasons so you can't join in the middle, but if there's an opening, you might get in early. - Experimental Electronic Football League (EEFL): wickart@ichips.intel.com - United Electronic Football League (UEFL): billones@grebyn.com - World Electronic Football League (WEFL): sarge@cs.uq.oz.au - World Email Hockey Association (WEHA): creare!inb@Dartmouth.edu - S. P. Australian Rules Football (SPARF): mel@soda.berkeley.edu - Ultra Cricket: astley@franklin.cc.utas.edu If you'd like to see a sample set of rules, our popular columnist Mel Nicholson has an email server... for details, send email to munch@soda.berkeley.edu with the subject "help" to receive information about his game. And yes, I refuse to publish contact information for any form of PBEM Wrestling. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- VGA Planets -- A shareware game for PC-Clones. Players use a graphical interface to enter their turns, and then send a binary file to the moderator, who runs them through a program that processes the turn. FTP from ftp.ucsc.edu in the directory /PC/vgaplanets-2.1. ====================================================================== 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 (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. 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". 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. PLEASE CONTRIBUTE! Our focus is primarily on free wargames, but we're interested in articles about anything relevant. Up