Re: Spellbinder Games - best avoided!

From: David desJardins <desj@math.berkeley.edu>

Date: Fri, 27 Nov 1998 00:00:00 +0000

GGShaw11@aol.com writes:
> Do you think PBM has much future if GM's continue to send ASCII (even
> non-ASCII and badly formatted as in this case) reports to players and
> calls it an email game?

Yes, of course.  In fact if you were to send anything other than
readable ASCII, I wouldn't call it an email game.  If you just use email
as the transport mechanism for some sort of binary data exchange, that's
something else entirely than PBEM, in my view.

I've declined to play several games where what I got in the mail was
formatted non-ASCII junk instead of a simple ASCII turn report.  But I'm
sure that there were some people who were looking for exactly that which
I didn't care for.  I don't have a problem with different mechanisms for
different target groups.

> I'm wondering what the point is of playing by email if the game is
> identical to what it is through snail mail, except that the GM doesn't
> print out anything nicely for you.

1. No delay in turn delivery.
2. Much easier to make and save copies of turn reports.
3. Turn reports are searchable.
4. Possible to write programs to parse turn reports.
5. Possible to retrieve turn reports from anywhere, e.g. while traveling.
6. No delay in submitting orders.
7. No possibility of error by GM in transcribing written orders.
8. Lower cost due to lack of postage, paper, typing.
9. Quick communications with GM regarding any problems.
10. Accessible to blind or low-vision players.
11. Not dependent on a particular operating system.
12. Not dependent on any particular computer hardware.

I could go on, but that's a reasonable start.

> I'd far rather fill in a paper turnsheet than go through that
> nightmare

Then of course you aren't in the target market.  We already knew that,
from your decision to stop playing.  That doesn't imply that no one else
might like it.

> I sent some contributions to their mailing list making some comments
> on the game. They didn't like what I said, because I didn't think it
> was perfect.

I'd guess you were at least as opinionated as in your postings here.  It
doesn't really seem interesting to rec.games.pbm to figure out who
offended whom first.

David desJardins

References

Re: Spellbinder Games - best avoided!
madcentral@aol.com (MadCentral)
Fri, 27 Nov 1998 00:00:00 +0000
Re: Spellbinder Games - best avoided!
ggshaw11@aol.com (GGShaw11)
Fri, 27 Nov 1998 00:00:00 +0000

Referenced By

Re: Spellbinder Games - best avoided!
madcentral@aol.com (MadCentral)
Fri, 27 Nov 1998 00:00:00 +0000
Re: Spellbinder Games - best avoided!
ggshaw11@aol.com (GGShaw11)
Fri, 27 Nov 1998 00:00:00 +0000