Re: CALL FOR DISCUSSION: formation of rec.games.pbnfrp (was Re: Broad Axe Tavern

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

Date: Tue, 04 Jul 1989 04:39:21 +0000

Message-ID: <65292@yale-celray.yale.UUCP>
From: Martin-Charles@cs.yale.edu (Charles Martin)
Newsgroups: rec.games.pbm
Subject: Broad Axe Tavern

>I think people would complain about this game a lot less if the originator
>took on the task of collecting all posts (sent to him by email) and posting
>them all at once, once or twice per day.  This seems reasonable, since
>people seem to claim that the posts are just summaries and publicly
>viewable actions.  It might take awhile (1 real day) for some public action
>to get one's attention in this crowded tavern, eh?  And if you wanted to
>get people's attention quicker, you could "shout" at them (i.e., use
>email).  They, in turn, could "nudge" their buddies (forward the message).
>
>Charles Martin // martin@cs.yale.edu

On Tuesday, June 13, 1989 I posted an announcement to
rec.games.frp to run a play-by-mail game, with a twist.  There had
been a few weeks of discussions about various problems encountered
while running standard play-by-mail role-playing-games.  Instead of
having simply 1 gamesmaster and a small handful of players; what I
proposed was to have meta-players involved as well.  Rather than close
off the game at a small handful of people (6-9), I wanted to push the
state-of-the-art in electronic gaming to new levels.  In the first day
or two I received about 35 requests to get into the game.  By Friday,
I realized that to handle the number of people on an autonomous level
(namely, the game could move on at some level, while I was not on the
computer & doing something else like working, eating, sleeping) I
needed an intermediary unit to handle certain aspects of the game.  I
had suggested to the participants that since the level of interest
from rec.games.frp had been so great, that I would use a sub-section
of rec.games.frp to run the game, where people could watch it develop
and make comments as to how to make changes to the style of play
so as to make pbm rpg's a more enjoyable form of entertainment.
No sooner than I suggested using a sub-section of rec.games.frp
then a player suggested moving this to a more appropriate place
rec.games.pbm   So by Friday, June 16 the game was up and running.
By the end of the weekend (little or no sleep, food, etc.),
I had received scores of requests (from both newsgroups)
as to how to get into the game.

Since its inception, I have insisted that postings related to
the game have a consistent heading and that mailings include the
appropriate people to avoid having to waste time forwarding things to
people, unnecessarily.  This allows the information to move about in a
timely fashion, with minimal conflicts.  Personally, I receive about
50-100 letters per day that I need to read, process, respond-to and/or
forward-to the appropriate player/meta-player.  This is approximately
100K-300K of text per day, every day, for the past few weeks
(of which maybe 1% is similarly posted to rec.games.pbm).
This includes requests to join, reading over & critiquing new
character sheets & backgrounds, fitting them into the background
of the campaign (pre-history and on-going), referring them to the
appropriate meta-player for further integration, setting them up
for initial entry into the game, on-going monitoring of all the
actions and sub-plots, synchronizing moves and resolving problems
that arise, and a host of other things that I'm too tired to
figure out how to express.

So far, we have numerous player-characters and organizations
that are independently run by people.  In addition, we've got one
person handling writing up and dispersing an organized registration
packet, and another trying to help keep track of where and when and
what the players are doing.  I fear that some of the early
disorganization on my part and the obvious large numbers of active
participants have kept some interested players at bay.  It seems that
this game/experiment has generated enough interest to get attention
from people at many different perspectives:

people interested in the game:
  - people just interested in playing,
  - people just interested in observing,
  - people interested in helping with the workload,

people not involved in the game:
  - people w/ kill files, or the 'n' key (or the 'ud' function in vnews)
  - people who don't have these features

people that want other solutions:
  - those that ignore it (either by kill files or by perseverance)
  - those that sit back and complain (quietly, privately, or openly)
  - those that try to provide solutions

It is this last group that I find non-self-explanatory and
therefore most interesting (IMHO).  Because of the nature of
role-playing-games, there are a few interesting properties that are not
typically found in any other type of game: players can have their
character act in several modes (the player controls the actions,
control is handed over to another player, or control is assumed by
a game referee); the game can progress asynchronously (that is
certain actions or sub-plots can proceed independently of others,
and only occassionally do the paths crossing have to be anticipated
and handled).  In an electronic game environment, this allows people
to watch the game develop at a rate that they can participate
and follow, while allowing for people from California through Sweden
to play when their schedule permits (9 time zones apart!).
Because of the nature of the game, most players will not realize what
possible complications could occur from their actions; therefore
it makes it very difficult for them to decide who has to be informed
of public & private moves.  Since a large chunk of my time
is reading/sorting/summarizing/redirecting mail messages;
it helps immeasurably when a player assumes that a public move
has to be broadcast to the others (there are some participants
whose email addresses would give away their roles if
another person knew they were interested in certain types
of things).

I have heard many vague references to trying to run this game
only using a mailing list and automatic-mailing-daemons.  So far, I
have not seen any potential solutions that could handle the
content-sensitive redirection in an intelligent fashion.  My claim, is
that as well-meaning as these ideas are, I have yet to see anything
concrete.  In the meantime, as public moves decrease, I still don't
see any significant difference from rec.games.pbm's current useage to
organize, advertise, and post moves of games; except for the only
significant difference being that it is NOT a Diplomacy-pbm-game
(which is not a criteria of the charter of rec.games.pbm).

Now, if there is enough interest in the game,
enough people that want it separated from rec.games.pbm,
and not enough people to shoot it down for whatever reasons
they have (such that they couldn't tolerate it,
like they do: the numerous newsgroups on rec, soc, talk, comp, ...
that are not devoted to hi-tech conferences (I don't think
I need to single any out :-));
then maybe this could be of beneficial use to all concerned.

In summary, there I feel there are a lot of people having
fun;  we are doing are best to comply with the current useage of
rec.games.pbm; and I am very tired and rambling :-)
I think I'll go and try to empty out my mailbox and then
go back to my apartment and get some food & sleep.

Remember, vote either way, but vote!

Good night, happy 4th of July, take care, have fun, etc.,
Steven Gabai
the meta-meta-meta-player
gabai@paul.rutgers.edu

References

Broad Axe Tavern
Martin-Charles@cs.yale.edu (Charles Martin)
Sat, 01 Jul 1989 22:14:28 +0000

Referenced By

Broad Axe Tavern
Martin-Charles@cs.yale.edu (Charles Martin)
Sat, 01 Jul 1989 22:14:28 +0000