Re: Play by E-mail??

From: ingram@dirac.phys.washington.edu (Doug Ingram)

Date: Mon, 26 Oct 1992 17:37:10 +0000

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

>In article <1992Oct25.001436.27255@samba.oit.unc.edu> Jesse.Taylor@bbs.oit.unc.edu (Jesse Taylor) writes:

>>Har har... What do you think 90% of these articles are about?! HUH?!? I'd
>>think it'd be awful darn hard to charge for a play by e-mail game, tho.

>Actually, there are commercial games that take emailed turns on Genie
>and Compu$erve -- it's an excellent way of reducing the cost of typing
>in turns and the cost of errors in typing in turns.

Genie and Compu$erve are certainly nice services, but to be honest,
they are a tremendous waste of money if you have free access to Internet,
in my opinion.  I guess a lot depends upon how well connected your site
is and what kind of news feed you get as well.  Even if I weren't a student,
I would opt for a Unix connected bbs of some kind at some fixed rate before
shelling out the Megabucks for either of the above-mentioned services
or Prodigy.  The biggest advantage the commercial services have is that
they have extensive documentation that is easy to use in finding what you
want, but if you're familiar enough with Usenet and Unix (or VMS) to post
news and so on, you should know by now that you can also find the answers
to the questions you have by posting or asking a friend.

There are enough games on Internet to keep you busy for free.  The
ones I am involved in involve soccer, but all of those are in the midst of
seasons that won't be completed for at least another couple of months.
The Experimental Electronic Football League has a waiting list for managers
to replace drop-outs and accepts some new managers at season breaks, so
if you're interested, write to wickart@ichips.intel.com, but don't expect
a response for a few days since he is on vacation and will be running
matches as top priority in his free time after he gets back.

To get on the waiting lists for other leagues, write to the
following two addresses, but be warned that you will face at least a
two month wait for WEFL and a year-long wait for UEFL, simply because
of the timing of your request.  Even then, a spot is not guaranteed.
	WEFL: sarge@cs.uq.oz.au
	UEFL: billones@grebyn.com

There is also a game called SPARF which has to do with Australian
Rules Football.  To find out more about that one, send a null message body
with the subject line "help" (no quotes) to munch@soda.berkeley.edu.

Also, there are about a million Diplomacy-by-email games being
run.  I haven't been involved in that in a while, but if you're interested,
try sending a "help" message to judge@u.washington.edu.  If that doesn't
work, send email to Eric_S_Klien@cup.portal.com for more help.  Perhaps
another PBM reader who is more familiar with the current Diplomacy setup
than I am can help out here if I am mistaken about something.

Finally, there is a new and kinda complex hockey simulation being
started by Ian Brown (creare!inb@dartmouth.edu).  I am not sure that there
are openings in that league, since it is just about underway, but at least
you can get on a wait-list to replace drop-outs, if there are any.

I should also mention that there are always prediction contests
that are run in the major sports newsgroups (football, baseball, etc) as
well as various other types of contests, including Usenet polls and such.
You just have to subscribe to the appropriate newsgroups and watch for those
as they crop up.  Along these lines, there are also some role-playing-type
games that start up periodically in either this group or the frp groups,
but those typically fill up within about 24 hours of the posted request.

And there is always Galactic Bloodshed.  That's more of an inter-
active game that takes a HELL of a lot of time to play if you want to be
successful.  Unfortunately, there aren't too many active games of that going
on right now, so it takes some patience to get involved in a good game.
There is a FAQ sheet for alt.games.gb that is posted periodically by me
and is also available at the same archives that all FAQS can be found
(see news.answers for more info, I can't recall the site name right now).
Check out the alt.games.gb newsgroup if you're interested.  I'll probably
repost that FAQ sheet in a few days since it's about time I did that.

Hope all this helps.  I'd love to hear any other suggestions that
people have to offer because I know I haven't covered everything!

Doug Ingram -- ingram@u.washington.edu // "Carpe Datum."

References

Play by E-mail??
10706747@eng2.eng.monash.edu.au (ANDREW BENNETT)
Sat, 24 Oct 1992 07:35:04 +0000
Re: Play by E-mail??
Jesse.Taylor@bbs.oit.unc.edu (Jesse Taylor)
Sun, 25 Oct 1992 00:14:36 +0000
Re: Play by E-mail??
gl8f@fermi.clas.Virginia.EDU (Greg Lindahl)
Sun, 25 Oct 1992 00:44:32 +0000