rec.games.pbm Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) From: lindahl@pbm.com (Greg Lindahl) Date: Wed, 12 Sep 2001 19:01:00 +0000 Archive-name: games/play-by-mail Last-modified: 2001/01/12 Play by Mail Games Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) Play by Mail Games Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) Welcome to rec.games.pbm! This is a newsgroup for discussing play by mail games, both ordinary mail and electronic mail, and both wargames and non-wargames. There is a PBM WWW homepage at: http://www.pbm.com/~lindahl/pbm.html 1) What is Play By Mail? 2) What games get talked about here? 3) What other games are there? 4) Are there any FTP sites for PBM games? 5) Are there any mailing lists for PBM games? 6) Are there any free e-magazines for PBM games? 7) What if I can't FTP or WWW? 8) I read German or Russian or Italian. Do I win a prize? 9) Is commercial advertising allowed here? 10) How do I ftp that list of all PBM games? Be precise. 11) How can I generate trustable dice rolls? 12) How do I find oponents for board games? 13) Why do so few postings in this group identify what game they're for? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 1) What is play by mail? PBM stands for "play by mail". Since this IS the Internet, we use it to mean both ordinary postal mail and electronic mail. Games like Diplomacy have been played via postal mail since the 1960's, starting with John Boardman's 'zine. The US commercial PBM market was started by Rick Loomis of Flying Buffalo in the early 1970's. Now there are commercial PBM companies all over the world. In addition, there is some activity in role-playing games via mail. Why play PBM games? Well, even though the commercial games are expensive, they offer some things that some people have a hard time finding face to face -- good opponents, convenient playing times, and games with lots of hidden information. Non-commercial games can offer the same benefit, as long as the people running it are dedicated. How do PBM games work? Generally you mail in orders to a moderator, human or computer, once a week, and they mail the results back to you. A PBM game can be as simple as a human running an ordinary Dungeons & Dragons game, or a 45,000 line program moderating a fantasy strategic/role-playing game with 50 pages of rules. PBEM games -- those conducted via email -- are generally played by mailing human-readable files back and forth. A few games require special software on your home computer; if so, it will be mentioned in the game desription, if there is one. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 2) What games get talked about here? Many postings on this group will have a game name mentioned in the subject line. If you post, please mention the game in the subject so that others who are interested in the same game will actually read your postings. Some frequently mentioned games are: Adventurer's Guild (AG): a commercial fantasy arena combat game. It has its own FAQ posting. Atlantis: a free or commercial strategic fantasy PBeM. Duelmasters (DM): a commercial fantasy arena combat game. Galaxy: a free PBeM written by Russell Wallace, with a space setting. Legends: a commercial D&D-type simulation in which 200 players wander around a large map trying to become more powerful. Middle Earth (ME-PBM): a commercial strategic simulation of J. R. R. Tolkien's fantasy universe. Olympia: an open-ended commercial fantasy PBEM game. There's also a beta-test of a new Olympia version going on. Quest: an open-ended commercial fantasy PBM game. Detailed information about all these games is in the PBM List, which is discussed in question (3). In addition, other PBM games are discussed in separate newsgroups: Core Wars and C++ Robots: a game of battling programs. An email server is available for an ongoing tournament. Discussion about Core Wars generally takes place in rec.games.corewar. Diplomacy: a boardgame often played by email. Discussion for this game generally takes place in the group rec.games.diplomacy. Board games: games such as Empires in Arms, Third Reich, and Axis and Allies are discussed on rec.games.board, and are sometimes played by mail. Chess: discussed in rec.games.chess.play-by-mail Fantasy Baseball and Football: discussed in rec.games.sport.baseball.fantasy and rec.games.sport.football.fantasy ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 3) What other games are there? The PBM List is a list of all PBM Games on the planet, pretty much. It has details about all the free games that I know of, plus a paragraph each on a bunch of commercial games, plus a list of all PBM Games on the planet courtesy of Flagship Magazine. In addition to being on the web in searchable for, the PBM List is available for anonymous ftp on ftp.pbm.com:/pub/pbm/PBM.list.gz. If you need detailed instructions on ftp, see question (11). The PBM List is also posted to rec.games.pbm once a month. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 4) Are there any FTP sites for PBM games? Two ftp sites are available with identical PBM information: ftp.pbm.com:/pub/pbm ftp.funet.fi:/pub/doc/games/play-by-mail The files on these sites are compressed using the "gzip" compression program. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 5) Are there any mailing lists for pbm games? There are several: http://www.egroups.com/group/pbmdesign leads you to an egroups mailing list about game design. PBM-AGORA is general PBM discussion focusing on moderator interests such as game design and marketing. To subscribe, write pbm-agora-subscribe@onelist.com saying anything in the body of the message. The PBMDEV mailing list is intended to serve game developers by offering a forum to talk about game design, to share resources, and to offer help and support. You can subscribe to the mailing list by sending an email to listserv@mindshiftdesign.com saying subscribe PBMDEV your-email-address@somewhere.com in the body of your letter. [ CURRENTLY DOWN. ] These mailing lists concentrate on particular games: Adventurer's Guild -- write majordomo@teleport.com saying `subscribe guild-l' in the body of your letter. BSE (Beyond the Stellar Empire, RTG version) -- write majordomo@pbm.com saying `subscribe bse-list' in the body of your letter. BSE (Beyond the Stellar Empire, KJC version) -- write majordomo@pvv.ntnu.no saying `subscribe uk-bse' in the body of your letter. DM (Duelmasters) -- write duel-subscribe@egroups.com DungeonWorld -- write DungeonWorld-subscribe@onelist.com saying anything in the body of the message EiA (Empires in Arms) -- write majordomo@indiana.edu saying `help' Godfather -- write godfather-L-subscribe@onelist.com saying anything in the body of the message Legends -- write majordomo@listbox.com saying `subscribe legends' in the body of your message LOTE (Lords of the Earth) -- write lote-L-subscribe@onelist.com saying anything in the body of the message ME-PBM (Middle Earth) -- (actually a newsletter) -- write kazandar@ix.netcom.com or mason@chara.gsu.edu MI (Monster Island) -- (another newsletter) write abb21@dial.pipex.com Midgard -- write majordomo@midgardusa.com saying 'subscribe midgard' in the body of your message. Mortis Maximus -- write MortisMaximus-subscribe@onelist.com saying anything in the body of the message Necromancer -- write necromancer-L-subscribe@onelist.com saying anything in the body of the message Polaris -- write polarismain-subscribe@onelist.com saying anything in the body of the message Quest -- write quest-subscribe@onelist.com saybing anything in the body of your message SDW (Stars of the Dark Well) -- write majordomo@data1.com saying 'subscribe sdw' in the body of your message. Star Fleet Warlord -- write sfw-list-subscribe@onelist.com saying anything in the body of the message Steel Fury -- write SteelFury-subscribe@onelist.com saying anything in the body of the message Third Reich -- write goldfarb@texas.net (Chris Goldfarb), he has a list of people interested in PBM play. Victory! -- write victory-L-subscribe@onelist.com saying anything in the body of the message World War IV -- write ww4-list-subscribe@onelist.com saying anything in the body of the message ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 6) Are there any free e-magazines for PBM games? Yes, the PBEM Fanzine is available by email or other means, and has articles about all sorts of free PBEM games. If you only have email you can subscribe to a mailing list which distributes this fanzine by writing majordomo@pbm.com saying "subscribe pbem-fanzine". There has been at least one false start on an e-magazine covering all sorts of PBM games. The biggest problem is probably a dearth of articles. I certainly can never get enough for the PBEM Fanzine! There is a newsletter focusing on human-moderated role-playing PBeM games. Back issues are at the ftp sites. Email riba@magic.mb.ca with the subject "I subscribe" to receive new issues. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 7) What if I can't FTP? There is a way to use ftp via email. For details: On the Web at http://www.netservs.com/mrcool/stats.htm By FTP at ftp://ftp.cix.co.uk/pub/net-services/stats.txt Mail to mailserv@netservs.com and say get file stats.txt ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 8) I read German or Russian or Italian. Do I win a prize? Yes! There is a newsgroup de.alt.games.pbem with some interesting things going on, but it's all in German. Some German-language games are included in the PBM List mentioned in section (3) above. Likewise, there is a newsgroup relcom.games.pbem, which is mostly in Russian. They play a lot of "Galaxy" in Russia. Likewise, there is a newsgroup it.comp.giochi.pbem, which is mostly in Italian. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 9) Is commercial advertising allowed here? Usenet is traditionally a non-commercial place, because many people who read the Net are actually paying to receive articles. Posting an advertisement is somewhat like sending them junk fax. However, there are three exceptions to this rule: A) There is an entire hierarchy of commercial groups, called "biz.*". These groups allow advertising. But this group isn't in that hierarchy, and biz.* isn't well propagated because no one wants it. B) Traditionally, a single, short, tasteful, fact-filled (not hype-filled) advertisement for a product will be favorably received. C) Most groups, like this one, have some informational postings which will list, in one place and in a consistent format, commercial information. In this case, the list is the "PBM List", mentioned in section 4 above, which is posted twice a month and is available via WWW and ftp. So if you are a commercial company and wish to make information about your game available on Usenet, (C) is your best bet. Send email to lindahl@pbm.com and I'll tell you what information I need to put you on the list. [ For more information about this Usenet tradition, please see http://www.cs.ruu.nl/wais/html/na-dir/usenet/advertising/how-to/part1.html. ] Other than posting basic information about your game, supporting your game on the group is encouraged -- if folks have questions, post and answer them. It's only repetitive hype-filled postings, or perhaps repetitive answers of the same question, that will tick off Usenetters. If you did post an advertisement, it might pay to use the [AD] keyword for it, but you might not want to use that for a single, fact-filled advertisement ((B) above) because people might ignore it, thinking it's a repeated ad. I haven't seen much use of this keyword yet, so I don't have much practical advice to give regarding it. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 10) How do I ftp that list of all PBM games? Be precise. % ftp ftp.pbm.com Connected to ftp.pbm.com. 220 ftp.pbm.com FTP server (Version 6.16 Thu Nov 5 10:24:57 PST 1992) ready. Name (ftp.pbm.com:lindahl): anonymous 331 Guest login ok, send e-mail address as password. Password: (here I typed "guest") 230-Welcome, archive user! [...] 230 Guest login ok, access restrictions apply. ftp> cd pub/pbm 250 CWD command successful. ftp> ls 200 PORT command successful. 150 Opening ASCII mode data connection for file list. PBM.list.gz ... 226 Transfer complete. 91 bytes received in 0.0098 seconds (9 Kbytes/s) ftp> binary 200 Type set to I. ftp> get PBM.list.gz 200 PORT command successful. 150 Opening BINARY mode data connection for PBM.list.gz (14925 bytes). 226 Transfer complete. local: PBM.list.gz remote: PBM.list.gz 14925 bytes received in 2.6 seconds (5.6 Kbytes/s) ftp> quit 221 Goodbye. hydra ~ % gzcat PBM.list.gz | more Note that the file PBM.list.gz is in compressed format. If you don't know how to read that format, just get PBM.list instead, and the ftp server will uncompress the file for you. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 11) How can I generate trustable dice rolls? Many boardgames and other self-moderated PBEM games need lots of dice rolled. One good way to do this is to use an email server: you tell it the address of your opponent, and it rolls dice and sends a mail message to both of you. This way, both sides can trust the answer. One such email server is: dice@pbm.com Send mail with "help" in the body of the message, and it will send instructions. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 12) How do I find oponents for board games? Eric Pass maintains a directory of gamers who want to play various board games by mail. You can contact him at epass@nyx.net or you can check out his WWW pages at: http://www.nyx.net/~epass/pbemlist.html ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 13) Why do so few postings in this group identify what game they're for? They actually do label their topics -- but your newsreader may be the guilty party. You see, several frequent postings on this newsgroup are digests of mailing lists, and some newsreaders split digests into individual messages, many of which won't have the appropriate words in the subject line. If your newsreader is "nn", you can tell it to stop doing this by editing your ~/.nn/init file and adding the line "set split off". If you DO want a digest split, you can split it by typing "G" when you're looking at it. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- If you think of other useful topics for this FAQ, please send me mail at lindahl@pbm.com. If you're tired of seeing this posting, add the subject line to your kill file. Greg Lindahl (lindahl@pbm.com) Up