Commune - Report from a PBM Gathering From: johnlee@hinterland.fesnet.co.uk (John Lee) Date: Sat, 18 Dec 1999 00:00:00 +0000 I'm posting this mainly because I was asked to by a couple of people who can't attend, but also to highlight an aspect of the hobby which perhaps some PBMers have never partaken-of (they should) Any flames should be abandoned - I don't care. I'm posting anyway. :-) TO SET THE SCENE Well, I'm sat in a very large room in quite a big house out in the sticks on the border between Notts and Derbys in England. I'm a bit wasted because I drove here for four hours after getting up at an ungodly hour to get here for 10.30 I'm sat on the floor infront of my laptop, logged onto the net thru my Nokia mobile, trying to look like a flash, affluent git who can face-down any of the other players who are here. Sat in front of me is a large, Golden Retriever called Stan who I understand is very partial to eating mobile phones when his owner (one of the GMs) is at work. I'm watching Stan very carefully as I type. There are about twenty other people here (including three GMs) - Most of them are sat out in the yard drinking coffee, showing each other their recent turns and (almost certainly) plotting my downfall The reason I'm here is to be part of Commune COMMUNE Its named after an aspect of a pretty big PBM RPG (the GMs would call it IF) run over here in the UK. Its run as a regular thing for players of the game who live close enough or are willing to travel here to spend two or three days playing Face-To-Face, chatting, drinking whatever they like and playing network games if there's any time for them. I've spoken to most of the people who are here (a lot arrived yesterday evening) and as always I'm amazed at what a nice bunch of people game-players are. A lot of the major heroes and villains of the game are here. A couple are older than me (I'm mid thirties) but most are about the same age-group or younger. Under eighteens have been banned because of obvious reasons including the availability of alcohol etc here. The breakdown in sexes is a strange one - One of the GMs is female, as are four players (all of them friends of the GMs but also players in their own right) Most of the players have done at least ten turns - a lot have done more. I'm hoping that they're using their game personas as I know four of them within the game, so an alliance is on right from the start - if we can rig it past the GMs. Its a big gathering of people who enjoy one particular game and already everything seems right with the world. The Coffees hot and strong, the Donuts are warm.. and if Stan doesn't stop eyeing-up my phone I'm going to log off and hide it. THE ITINERARY 1.00 - Food - a big chat with the GMs to dicuss the scenario, then we're putting up some tables, dragging some crash mats and chairs out of the garage and starting to play - We've no idea what we're supposed to be doing other than there are five PCs setup with very impressive looking ComSec Login screens. 1.00 Play thru to 5.00 More food and the GMs get to attempt to destroy us on a few net games until 7.00 - The face to face continues until we fall over from lack of sleep or excess of alcohol. More to come, if anyones remotely interested. Have to go as three more have turned-up from Derby and I need to see if they want to be my characters friend... John Lee "The devils in the Dreaming He tells you I'm not sleeping in my hotel room alone With nothing to believe in You dive into the traffic rising up And its so quiet You're surprised And then you wake." Referenced By Up