Physics:luz (07/07/82)
I have a suggestion. There seems to be quite a few gamers
on the net and I was thinking that an on-line (or on-net) play-by-
mail game might be something novel and exciting. I have heard of
the standard play-by-mail games where the players mail in their
actions once every month and the Game (or Dungeon) Master responds
with the results of such actions and other simultaneous events in
a follow-up newsletter that is sent to all players. Such an concept
is intriguing but has a major fault: the time delay; 12 melee rounds
would take a year! So, with the 'new' technology of electronic mail
that allows individuals to correspond across the planet in a matter
of minutes and days, the time delay could be removed on such a net-
work as "net". Therefore, if enough interest could be obtained, the
net could become the medium for a 'play-by-mail' Adventure.
A typical game would consist of a DM requesting about 5-10
adventurers, the DM posting a scenario on a newsgroup such as net.-
games.frp.Joe's World, the players mailing their responses to events
to the DM {a nightmare in pathnames}, and the DM rewriting the next
scenario on net.games.frp.Joe's {or whoever} World.
A good enough adventure would be interesting to non-playing
spectators; at least I think it would for I like reading fantasy
novels and that is what a good adventure should resemble {or at least
resemble reality...}
Although I have heard that the net is heavily loaded as it
is and such an on-line game might be too much... I don't know...
I would be willing to attempt a trial game but it might not
last more than a month as I am moving to the Univ. Of Illinios U-C
in the fall and I don't know if there is a net path to the campus.
Respond either to me {luz at Purdue University, Physics} or
on the net. I would like to see such a game, eventually.
Lonnie Van Zandt III
{luz}tihor (07/09/82)
#R:pur-phy:-38100:cmcl2:5300001:000:1192 cmcl2!tihor Jul 8 11:41:00 1982 I agree that this is an interesting idea and might be willing to run such an event since my net address SHOULD be stable for some time to come. However I do not expect much of an improvement in responce time over the PBMs; consider the experiences of the Diplomacy by UUCPnet game. Deadlines are only slightly shorter than the tradition play by mail to allow messages to pass from one end of the net to the other. Unfortunately USENET is unlike ARPAnet in that messages will tend to take more than a few minutes to get delivered. This still doesn't mean that it can't be done, but the idea of say fighting a melee in detail over the net is absurd unless the situation was intended as a purely tactical chanlenge. As with most of the qulaity PBMs we will have to fight out melees via General Orders and tactical instructions. Also the broadcast nature of the net means that it will be dificult if not impossible to take advantage of the separation of players to convey different information to them based on their different situations for aded realism. One can not have both separation of perceptions and general readership, although a few bits could be conveyed by separate letter.