Discussion, part 2 of 3, PBeM FRPG

From: gabai@paul.rutgers.edu (Steven Gabai)

Date: Sat, 16 Sep 1989 08:41:40 +0000

Jeff Young and I have been discussing certain things in email,
and I thought it appropriate to bring up here.

>        Not that I mind sharing the newsgroup, so to speak.  If I can
>do it with the Diplomacy people , I can do it with you.

Well, the charter of rec.games.pbm is for the discussion
of play-by-mail games.

>WHAT I DO SUGGEST:
> Please (and I am going to do this too) run a disclaimer article
>in the news saying that the two groups are not one and the same.

done already

>The reason is this:  Despite the fact that the Subject is different,
>(BAT vs. Alternate Realities)  I still got a piece of hate mail from
>someone who thought we were you.  I really don't need that...

Those people have a wierd sense of timing, which takes longer:
  - hitting the 'n' key, or
  - writing out a 'hate' letter
	btw: did you consider the possibility that you posted an
article in triplicate?  Its size was only 76 lines (including header
that's 91 lines, 4758 characters); however, your first few paragraphs
don't read like some of the other games in this newsgroup, so I don't
think they had to read very far to discover this and hit the 'n' key.

>ALSO:(and this is a biggie) PLEASE DO NOT have EVERYONE post to the
>newsnet!  The way we are running things is that ONLY the Guardians
>(the Gamemasters) post to the net!

Notice that I don't suggest to you guys, how to run your game.
The ground rules that we try to use are:
  - only approved participants should post anything
  - only public moves are posted
    private conversations shouldn't be posted,
    thought processes/motivations shouldn't be posted
    significant actions need to be preapproved and/or handled by a GM
    AND to save HUGE bandwidths, stuff outside the Broad Axe Tavern
      is not posted, nor are most internal meta-player discussions]

>        I think the main problem is that people are getting annoyed at
>your players who are one-lining their article/moves!

Since when has this become a moderated newsgroup?  I thought
anyone was permitted to post articles of reasonable length and
content.  Where 'reasonable' means appropriate to the readership
levels.  May I remind you that you had the opportunity to vote in the
recent news.group elections, but did not?  Roughly, it was about the
formation of a separate newsgroup, rec.games.frp.pbn, whose charter
had included running on-line RPGs as well as discussions.  The vote
was 178 yes votes and 79 no votes.  Since this missed the 100 vote
margin, AND several outspoken Diplomacy PBM'ers voted NO or abstained;
IMHO, this means that the games were not viewed as dissimilar enough
to warrant a separate newsgroup.  Also, IMHO, they didn't mind using
the 'n' key or the 'kill' switch to skip articles that weren't of
interest to them.

>        We post to the net for peoples enjoyment, not to annoy them.

perhaps, this belongs under alt.conspiracy :-]

>        (A more colorful expression comes to mind at this point, but I
>AM a Unicorn, after all...)  I am forced to admit that even I hit
>"kill " when I saw the BAT Subject because it was getting annoying.

You mean you had to hit the 'n' key twice in the last few
days?  For this, I most humbly apologize.  I think I would not be
stepping on Sara Shriner's pride if I apologize in her behalf as well.
I assume that you've already complained to the following people as
well:
 IND FILE LINES Newsgroup rec.games.pbm, 31 articles

1 1426   11 Re: Diplomacy -- questions about rul Xorg@cup.portal.com
   2 1427   11 Re: Diplomacy -- questions about rul Eric_S_Klien@cup.portal.com
   3 1433   10 Re: Diplomacy -- questions about rul Xorg@cup.portal.com
   4 1438   55 Re: Diplomacy -- questions about rul savage@tramp.Colorado.EDU
   5 1448   21 Re: Diplomacy -- questions about rul Eric_S_Klien@cup.portal.com
   6 1428  138 Diplomacy game opening!              Eric_S_Klien@cup.portal.com
   7 1429   69 Dutch National(Open!) Championship   henk@cs.eur.nl
   8 1430   31 BAT still open for business (and pla SHRINER@osu-20.ircc.ohio-st
   9 1446   68 Re: BAT still open for business (and gabai@paul.rutgers.edu
  10 1432  926 Diplomacy zine -- Chapter Three      Eric_S_Klien@cup.portal.com
  11 1431  322 Diplomacy Zine -- Issue 95,Chapter   tedward@svax.cs.cornell.edu
  12 1434    8 Machiavelli by e-mail                ssmith@ms.uky.edu
  13 1435   11 Broad Axe Tavern                     cmoir@wpi.wpi.edu
  14 1439   18 Re: Broad Axe Tavern                 raulmill@usc.edu
  15 1436   10 Re: Broad Axe Tavern                 scorpion@titan.rice.edu
  16 1442    8 Re: Broad Axe Tavern                 jdoty@eagle.wesleyan.edu
  17 1437    7 Broad Axe Tavern                     rwilley@eagle.wesleyan.edu
  18 1440   31 Broad Axe Tavern                     cfg@romeo.cs.duke.edu
  19 1441  495 Diplomacy zine -- Chapter One        daybell@sal-sun36.usc.edu
  20 1443   75 Re: Alternate Realities              jefyoung@pawl.rpi.edu
  21 1445   75 Re: Alternate Realities              jefyoung@pawl.rpi.edu
  22 1450  118 Diplomacy Zine -- a short chapter in tedward@svax.cs.cornell.edu
  23 1456  295 Alternate Realities                  jefyoung@pawl.rpi.edu
  24 1444   76 Alternate Realities                  jefyoung@pawl.rpi.edu
  25 1447  848 Diplomacy zine -- Chapter Three      Eric_S_Klien@cup.portal.com
  26 1449    2 re:broard axe tavern                 rwilley@eagle.wesleyan.edu
  27 1452   12 Re: re:broard axe tavern             jdoty@eagle.wesleyan.edu
  28 1451 1563 Complete transcript of 1914 diplomac matt@oddjob.uchicago.edu
  29 1453   17 Broad Axe Tavern                     jdp@PacBell.COM
  30 1455   32 Re: Broad Axe Tavern                 raulmill@usc.edu
  31 1454   11 Re: Broad Axe Tavern                 gabai@paul.rutgers.edu

Funny thing, I notice that your one posting #23
is larger than all of our articles for the past week.

And look at this:
   7 1429   69 Dutch National(Open!) Championship   henk@cs.eur.nl
                                     ^^^^^^^^^
a kill file containing Champions would accidentally pick this up :-]

>        What you might want to do is to have the players, meta players
>and whatever you call them mail to the main person running (or,
>perhaps the least busy one)

The participants have each others email addresses,
and it's their responsibility to not make some one else into
a courier.  Allowances are naturally made for honest mistakes. :-)
And certainly, I ask to be cc'ed in on EVERYTHING happening;
and other meta-players get cc'ed on things in their domain.
Of course, this means I get tons of mail to sort through.

Sparing you some gory details, let me assure you that I have
about 0.5 MByte to read and respond to in the next 48 hours, alone.
Also, I have about 3.5 MBytes (compressed) as on-line archives;
about 1.5 Mbytes on paper printouts; and I have read, processed,
responded to, and removed another 1.5Mbytes that didn't need archiving
on my end.  Certainly, this much information shouldn't be made public.:-)

>        When he gets enough postings, he puts the whole thing up in
>one big article.

And what if somebody slips a 'mickee' on someone, or picks
their pocket, or whispers a private comment; do you post this for all
to read?

>        That is why you haven't seen very much of us-- we're running
>the whole show behind the scenes... besides the fact that posting news
>articl;es wastes lots of net money and if it isn't really worth
>posting, don't do it.

prompt% cd ../
prompt% fgrep rec.games.pbm *list*
news.lists.all.july.vnews:305  5300   251 92%   83 476.7  8%  0.15  1.0%  rec.games.pbm
news.lists.all.june.vnews:330  4100   202 93%  163 480.9  7%  0.19  0.8%  rec.games.pbm

which means that the planet Earth was charged
4100 est. readers * 0.19 $/reader = 820-41  = $779 in June, and
5300 est. readers * 0.15 $/reader = 530+265 = $795 in July
to run rec.games.pbm

If we assume that the BAT ran for the last half of June through the
present, then does this mean that we cost the planet Earth
2*(795-779) = $32 per month?  golly, even
uucp and rutgers receive about 30% each of the planet's total cost.
What percentage of the remaining $11/month does your node
get charged?

have fun
Steven Gabai
gabai@paul.rutgers.edu

References

Discussion, part 1 of 3, general PBM
gabai@paul.rutgers.edu (Steven Gabai)
Sat, 16 Sep 1989 07:54:04 +0000

Referenced By

Discussion, part 1 of 3, general PBM
gabai@paul.rutgers.edu (Steven Gabai)
Sat, 16 Sep 1989 07:54:04 +0000