Re: Moving to PBEM From: madcentral@aol.com (MadCentral) Date: Wed, 06 Sep 2000 10:04:20 +0000 >>I find it amazing that the thought of using email creates so much controversy. << why? mail fans understand why *YOU* like turns by email. why is it so hard to understand other peoples points of view? >>Do you really enjoy waiting days to get your turn?<< yes, lots of people **do** enjoy that. >> Is there a disadvantage to being able to quickly email an ally to set up a plan?<< lots of people like to communite the old fashioned way, by mail and phone, because its got more pizazz. email is quick and easy, but quick and easy has no style or atmosphere. theres room for both. >>While people can go overboard with fancy graphics, it is hard to beat a simple text email turn report with perhaps one graphic in it for a map.<< lucky for me that most commercial players dont agree with you, or id be wasting a lot of time and money <g> in the commercial hobby, the trend has been for higher and higher levels of presentation and graphics in turns, because of consumer demand in that respect. these days, if you put out a commercial pbm that looks like an accountants notebook, you dont get any players. in the old days, loads of games were like that. >>Other advantages of email.... - it is free (to most at least)<< in many games the players need a printed report to work from. mostly they prefer to have it printed *for* them. i think your confusion is that you are thinking of one sort of game... but there are many sorts of games. games with email front ends, or that are designed to 'play from the screen' work well by email. but not everybody wants to play those (rather a lot of people dont, in fact.) >>- turns can be sent and received instantly<< but lots of people dont want to receive their turn instantly. they want to receive it as a nice hefty thump on their doormat that they can run downstairs and pour over at the breakfast table, or on the way to work. >>- makes communication between players easier<< this is a definate plus, but not everybody wants to communicate by email, and people should be free to communicate however they prefer, shouldnt they? >>- makes large alliances much easier (mailing list)<< not everybody wants to be in a large alliance, and some people who do want to be, enjoy the job of managing it all by more old fashioned methods. >>- much easier to search turns for keywords<< if you like searching turns for keywords rather than just poring over them like some kind of ancient alchemist over a mysterious tome. >>- allows computer autochecking of turns<< as far as that is possible. >>- simplifies partial or full computer moderation<< yeah... right. except when the isp decides to mysteriously turn to a text message, mime-encode, uuencoded, zip, convert to binhex, lose, corrupt or make a raspberry fudge sunday out of the file. >>- allows for international (worldwide) games<< there are lots of ways to do that without making games solely email. Dungeonworld, as far as i know, is the biggest international commercial pbm (where players from different countries all over the world are in the same game world) and we support mail turns for anybody who wants them... which, coincidentally, is about 75% of the player base. >>while the main disadvantage is that not everyone has it, which is a good reason for maintaining the option of paper turns if the gamemaster wants.<< the thing is, most of the people who *have it * STILL want paper turns. almost all our players have email, but when we ask 'should we move to email' the answer, time and time and time again, is ''no way''. the numbers, as far as im concerned, speak for themselves. steve t. Referenced By Up