Re: FLAGSHIP #88 - AD

From: madcentral@aol.com (MadCentral)

Date: Tue, 12 Dec 2000 18:59:24 +0000

>>Pretty strong evidence there, Steve, although I would suspect that
there is an element of conservatism there.  After all, you do a good job with
your turns and people like that, so most of them will
be happy not rocking the boat.<<

I dont think saying ''yes'' to an offer a GM makes would be considered 'rocking
the boat''.  I offered them the option to have a HTML *or* a PDF as they
preferred, and nobody wanted anything else, so I didnt bother converting the
print function.

I think that the sort of players who want to write programs to manipulate data,
who want to have easily-manipulated turns that they can do stuff to, represent
the 'old school' of PBM.  I feel that, increasing, the 'old school' are being
replaced by new players with different ideas of what they want, garnered from
other branches of the gaming hobby.  Of course, many of the old school are
still around and still playing the sort of games they love, which is exactly
the way it should be.  Everybody choosing the game style which suits them best!

Not that I think there's anything wrong with the 'old school' approach.
Absolutely not.  I think that people should be free to enjoy their games
however they choose.  If they like their game pretty, thats cool, if they like
thousands of numbers they can decipher in millions of ways, thats cool too.

The really kick-ass thing about PBM is that its so *wide*, it covers all these
possibilities and more.  There are games out there of all styles, for all
people.  More power to them!

>>  Besides, I'd imagine that most of
the people with strong views the other way will have dropped out
already.<<

Quite possibly some of the 'old school' PBMer, or even the 'hard core' number
cruncher is long gone from my games (and, truth be told, from *yours* too).  I
can't fault them for it.  There are some absolutely fantastic games out there
which offer them all the things that mine wont.  Fair play to them!

>>That said, I also have a sneaking suspicion that the games that
are most likely to have players wanting the text/html option are
the big, number-crunching games (Legends being an obvious, if
extreme, example -- although that already has its own front end).
Not the sort of game you run, really?<<

Well, I've run most sorts of games, Rob.  I ran Odyssey for several years, and
thats *exactly* that sort of game.  But its not the sort of game I choose to
run these days, although in truth there are more statistics, numbers and
information in DungeonWorld, or in Riddle of the Sands, than in all the
Odysseys and their ilk put together, so I suspect we have kept quite a few of
the 'old school' and 'hard core' gamers despite all that.

Steve T.

References

Re: FLAGSHIP #88 - AD
"Rob Harper" <rob@stateofmindgames.co.uk>
Tue, 12 Dec 2000 13:07:40 +0000

Referenced By

Re: FLAGSHIP #88 - AD
"Rob Harper" <rob@stateofmindgames.co.uk>
Tue, 12 Dec 2000 13:07:40 +0000