PC go! 1996 January/Image.iso/pcgo/extra2/faq/pbm.txt

Internet Message Format | 1994-07-13 | 10.9 KB

From: [e-mail] (Greg Lindahl)
Newsgroups: rec.games.pbm,rec.answers,news.answers
Subject: rec.games.pbm Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
Summary: information about various play-by-mail (snail & email) games
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
Date: Fri, 1 Jul 1994 04:44:01 GMT
Sender: [e-mail]
Followup-To: rec.games.pbm
Organization: University of Virginia
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Approved: [e-mail]

Archive-name: games/play-by-mail
Last-modified: 1994/06/08

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://fermi.clas.virginia.edu/~gl8f/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 mailing lists for PBM games?
5) What if I can't FTP?
6) I'm a student and lose email access over the summer. Help!
7) I read German. Do I win a prize?
8) Is commercial advertising allowed here?
9) How do I ftp that list of all PBM games?


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1) Why 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 for many years. 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.

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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.

Arena: a free PBeM written by Scott Turner; fantasy arena combat.

Atlantis: a free PBeM by Russell Wallace; a strategic fantasy game.

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.

Monster Island: a simple commercial game in which player characters
                wander around an island farting and hitting on each
                other.

Olympia II: a PBeM by Rich Skrenta, with a fantasy setting. Currently
        in alpha-test, going commercial in June.

Quest: an open-ended commercial fantasy PBM game.

In addition, other PBM games are discussed in separate newsgroups:

Core Wars: 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.


Detailed information about all these games is in the PBM List, which
is discussed in question (3).

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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.

The PBM List is available for anonymous ftp on
ftp.erg.sri.com:/pub/pbm/PBM.list.Z. If you need detailed instructions
on ftp, see question (9). The PBM List is also posted twice a month.

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4) Are there any mailing lists for pbm games?

The commercial game Duelmasters has a mailing list. To join, send mail
to [e-mail].

The free game Galaxy has an automated mailing list which announces
game openings. FTP & read the rules before you join -- see the PBM
List in part (3) for details about this. The mailing list has an
address of "[e-mail]" -- send it email with the
word "help" in the subject, and it will explain how to join the list.

The commercial game Middle Earth (ME-PBM) has a mailing list. The
human who runs it is [e-mail].

The commercial game Monster Island has a mailing list with about 150
players on it. The list is run by a human; his address is
[e-mail].

The commercial game Quest has a mailing list. To be added to it, write
to [e-mail].

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5) What if I can't FTP?

For those of you who DON'T have ftp access, Frits Kuijlman has the
Squirrel mail server installed at his FTP site. This mail server can
be used through email or interactively via telnet, but all replies
will be sent via email. To get the help file either:

    telnet ftp.cp.tn.tudelft.nl 2001
    MAIL    (e.g. mine is [e-mail])
    HELP        (for small help file)
     or
    SEND HELP   (for big help file)
     or
    INDEX       (for the index)
    QUIT

or mail to [e-mail] (not ftp.cp...) with the
following body:

    BEGIN
    HELP or SEND HELP or INDEX
    END


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6) I'm a student and lose email access over the summer. Help!

If you live in the USA, you can sign up with any one of a large number
of nationwide commercial services that provide excellent Internet
email connectivity. In particular, GEnie, America Online, and Delphi
all provide email to the Internet at no extra charge. Compu$erve has
an extra charge, and I think Prodigy does also.

In addition to these, there are a lot of smaller, some local, services
that provide Internet email. You can get a list of these services via
ftp from VFL.Paramax.COM:/pub/pubnet/nixpub.long or via email by
sending email to [e-mail] with the body of the message
containing:

get PUB nixpub.long

The nixpub list contains 125 sites in the USA and 14 outside the USA.

In addition, there is a separate list of services which are directly
connected to the Internet, so they will have faster email links and
also might provide ftp and other services. You can get a list of these
services via ftp from VFL.Paramax.COM:/pub/pubnet/pdial or via email
by sending email to [e-mail] with the body of the
message containing:

send PDIAL

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7) I read German. 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.

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8) 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_ 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
[e-mail] and I'll tell you what information I need to put you
on the list.

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.

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9) How do I ftp that list of all PBM games?


% ftp ftp.erg.sri.com
Connected to ftp.erg.sri.com.
220 sparkyfs.erg.sri.com FTP server (Version 6.16 Thu Nov 5 10:24:57
PST 1992) ready.
Name (ftp.erg.sri.com:gl8f): 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.Z
...
226 Transfer complete.
91 bytes received in 0.0098 seconds (9 Kbytes/s)
ftp> binary
200 Type set to I.
ftp> get PBM.list.Z
200 PORT command successful.
150 Opening BINARY mode data connection for PBM.list.Z (14925 bytes).
226 Transfer complete.
local: PBM.list.Z remote: PBM.list.Z
14925 bytes received in 2.6 seconds (5.6 Kbytes/s)
ftp> quit
221 Goodbye.
hydra ~ % zcat PBM.list.Z | more

Note that the file PBM.list.Z is in compressed format. You will
need access to the uncompress or zcat command in order to read it.

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If you think of other useful topics for this FAQ, please send me mail
at [e-mail]. If you're tired of seeing this posting, add the
subject line to your kill file.

Greg Lindahl ([e-mail])