Newsgroups: rec.games.pbm,rec.answers,news.answers
Path: senator-bedfellow.mit.edu!bloom-beacon.mit.edu!hookup!news.mathworks.com!uunet!hearst.acc.Virginia.EDU!murdoch!fermi.clas.Virginia.EDU!gl8f
From: gl8f@fermi.clas.Virginia.EDU (Greg Lindahl)
Subject: rec.games.pbm Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
X-Nntp-Posting-Host: fermi.clas.virginia.edu
Message-ID: 
Followup-To: rec.games.pbm
Summary: information about various play-by-mail (snail & email) games
Sender: usenet@murdoch.acc.Virginia.EDU
Organization: University of Virginia
Date: Sat, 15 Apr 1995 04:44:32 GMT
Approved: news-answers-request@MIT.Edu
Lines: 319
Xref: senator-bedfellow.mit.edu rec.games.pbm:17118 rec.answers:11343 news.answers:41998

Archive-name: games/play-by-mail
Last-modified: 1995/01/15

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 FTP sites for PBM games?
5) Are there any mailing lists for PBM games?
6) Are there any free e-magazines for PBM games?
7) What if I can't FTP?
8) I'm a student and lose email access over the summer. Help!
9) I read German. Do I win a prize?
10) Is commercial advertising allowed here?
11) How do I ftp that list of all PBM games? Be precise.
12) How can I generate trustable dice rolls?


----------------------------------------------------------------------

1) What is 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.

PBEM games -- those conducted via email -- are generally played by
mailing human-readable files back and forth. A few games require
special software on your home computer; if so, it will be mentioned in
the game desription, if there is one.

----------------------------------------------------------------------

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: an open-ended commercial fantasy PBEM game.

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.

Board games: games such as Empires in Arms, Third Reich, and Axis and
             Allies are discussed on rec.games.board, and are
             sometimes played by mail.


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

----------------------------------------------------------------------

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.gz. If you need detailed
instructions on ftp, see question (11). The PBM List is also posted to
rec.games.pbm once a month.

----------------------------------------------------------------------

4) Are there any FTP sites for PBM games?

Two ftp sites are available with identical PBM information:

ftp.erg.sri.com:/pub/pbm

ftp.funet.fi:/pub/doc/games/play-by-mail

The files on these sites are compressed using the "gzip" compression
program.

----------------------------------------------------------------------

5) Are there any mailing lists for pbm games?

There are several:


BSE (Beyond the Stellar Empire) -- write majordomo@io.com saying
           `subscribe bse-list' or `subscribe bse-digest'.
DM (Duelmasters) -- write dm-request@cumbnd.bioc.columbia.edu
EiA (Empires in Arms) -- write majordomo@indiana.edu saying `help'
Kingdoms -- write kingdoms-digest-request@netcom.com
Legends -- write listserv@matrix.resnet.upenn.edu saying
           `subscribe Legends Your Name' in the body of your message
ME-PBM (Middle Earth) -- write kazandar@aol.com
MI (Monster Island) -- write warden@rt66.com
Quest -- write quest-request@soda.berkeley.edu
Third Reich -- write goldfarb@texas.net (Chris Goldfarb), he has a
               list of people interested in PBM play.


----------------------------------------------------------------------

6) Are there any free e-magazines for PBM games?

Yes, the PBEM Fanzine is available by email or other means, and has
articles about all sorts of free PBEM games. If you only have email
access, you can get on a mailing list by writing gl8f@virginia.edu.
Back issues are available at the ftp sites listed above, in the
magazines subdirectory.

----------------------------------------------------------------------

7) What if I can't FTP?

FTP is an acronym for "file transfer protocol", and it is only
directly available to the privileged few who are directly hooked to
the Internet using heavy-duty hardware. There is a way to use ftp via
email, and if you can get email to me, I will send you a document
explaining how to use it, or you can get this information by yourself
by sending email to any of the following addresses with the word
"help" in the body of the message, and they'll send back instructions:

bitftp@pucc.princeton.edu            (USA/New Jersey)
ftpmail@sunsite.unc.edu              (USA/North Carolina)
ftpmail@decwrl.dec.com               (USA/West Coast)
ftpmail@doc.ic.ac.uk                 (Europe/United Kingdom)
bitftp@vm.gmd.de                     (Europe/Germany)
ftpmail@cs.uow.edu.au                (Pacific Rim/Australia)

----------------------------------------------------------------------

8) 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 with no per-message charge, although
they may charge you for having Internet access. Compu$erve has an
per-message 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 mail-server@bts.com 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 info-deli-server@netcom.com with the body of the
message containing:

send PDIAL

----------------------------------------------------------------------

9) 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.

----------------------------------------------------------------------

10) 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
gl8f@virginia.edu 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.

----------------------------------------------------------------------

11) How do I ftp that list of all PBM games? Be precise.


% 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.gz
...
226 Transfer complete.
91 bytes received in 0.0098 seconds (9 Kbytes/s)
ftp> binary
200 Type set to I.
ftp> get PBM.list.gz
200 PORT command successful.
150 Opening BINARY mode data connection for PBM.list.gz (14925 bytes).
226 Transfer complete.
local: PBM.list.gz remote: PBM.list.gz
14925 bytes received in 2.6 seconds (5.6 Kbytes/s)
ftp> quit
221 Goodbye.
hydra ~ % gzcat PBM.list.gz | more

Note that the file PBM.list.gz is in compressed format. You will
need access to the gunzip or gzcat command in order to read it. These
utilities will probably already be installed on your system if it's a
Unix system, or if you are using MS-DOS, an executable is available
from this same ftp site.

----------------------------------------------------------------------

12) How can I generate trustable dice rolls?

Many boardgames and other self-moderated PBEM games need lots of dice
rolled. One good way to do this is to use an email server: you tell it
the address of your opponent, and it rolls dice and sends a mail
message to both of you. This way, both sides can trust the answer.

One such email server is "dice@danpost4.uni-c.dk". Send it mail with
"help" in the body of the message, and it will send instructions.

----------------------------------------------------------------------

If you think of other useful topics for this FAQ, please send me mail
at gl8f@virginia.edu. If you're tired of seeing this posting, add the
subject line to your kill file.

Greg Lindahl (gl8f@virginia.edu)