Re: What sort of PBM game would you like to play...

From: Carol Mulholland <carol@flagship-pbm.co.uk>

Date: Sun, 05 May 2002 14:27:17 +0000

Ragnar Krempel wrote:

> I was thinking of a game in which each player can pick his own pace,
> but still compete with the others. Well, naturally, the first thing
> that comes to mind is any kind of game that is essentially played
> solitaire, but pherhaps that doesn't necesarily exclude player-player
> interaction. Some of the games that use action points already tend
> towards that, especially if you can "save up"  a lot of "turns", but
> afaik, there is no game out there where your "turns" are truely
> independant of realtime.
>
> Such a mechanism, if it could be made to work(sofar I haven't hade any
> really productive insights), would immediately solve a lot of the
> usual problems of deadlines, players dropping out, etc.

I ran such a game for many years, and flatter myself that it worked
pretty well. An absence of deadlines does have its own problems,
however:-
- Some players prefer the structure that deadlines provide, for their
own play: weekly, fortnightly, monthlyu, whatever...
- Players will suspect that those who put in more turns do better in the
long run,
- With deadlines, it's much easier for the moderator to know how much
work (and money!) is coming in regularly, and to notify the players if
there will be a delay,
- Dropouts still occur, and still affect the active players, so there
has to be some system of checking whether a silent player has dropped
out or not. We'd send a reminder after (I think) 6 weeks.

Hope this helps, Carol

References

What sort of PBM game would you like to play...
"Domestos" <Domestos@rahrahrandel.fsnet.co.uk>
Mon, 29 Apr 2002 12:46:17 +0000
Re: What sort of PBM game would you like to play...
rkrempel@hotmail.com (Ragnar Krempel)
Thu, 02 May 2002 11:42:28 +0000