Game preservation is becoming increasingly popular; the restoration of
old games, not only making them available for sale but ensuring they
can be played on modern hardware. It's been GOG's modus operandi for a
while, but other publishers are increasingly realizing that it's a potentially profitable way to make money off their back-catalog. It's
good for gamers too; there are some ancient classics that haven't been
seen by gamers in decades, and deserve another chance to shine.
But it occurred to me --whilst thumbing through the back pages of an
old copy of "Computer Gaming World"-- that there is one genre of games
that will /never/ be preserved and, in fact, seems likely to be
forgotten forever. And that's the world of PBM/PBEM games.
Now, while it is likely some of the regulars here at least know about
these games, a lot of modern games might have no idea what those
initials even mean! (It stands for "Play By Mail / Play By E-Mail).
Before the Internet, it was one of the only ways to play multiplayer
games without physically lugging your Commodore-64 to your neighbor's
house and using a null-modem cable, or squeezing two or more onto a
computer keyboard. With a PBM/PBEM, you'd get a status update of the
game (usual a photocopy of the 'game board') and a selection of moves
you could make in your turn. You'd fill out the appropriate form, pop
it in an envelope, and send it off to the bloke running the game. Said central dispatcher would enter your moves into his computer, then send
the next player an updated copy of the game status, and the game
proceed round-robin through each player until the turn was complete.
It was slow, it low-fidelity, often arbitrary in options and results,
and it often made Infocom games look impressive with their visual
fidelity. But if you wanted to play against a group of people from
around the world, it was usually your only alternative. The games were comparatively cheap too. Sure you might find similar options with a
BBS Door game, or if you were in university... but the rates for
either of those in the 80s and early 90s could be exorbitant! PBM/PBEM
games were cheap in comparison (although still not THAT inexpensive.
Rates of $5 for initial set-up and $2 per turn were common).
Because they relied on proprietary software --often run by a single individual-- there was no wide-spread distribution of the game code.
When the companies running them went belly-up (even by the early 90s
they were a dying breed) no attempt was made to preserve the code.
Even if there was, these games often didn't run on home micros, but
ran concurrently with other games on re-purposed PDPs and other old mainframes. And even if they could be preserved, they aren't something
you could easily run on your own. So a lot of the games are just gone forever.
(Technically, the PBM/PBEM genre isn't completely dead*;
in fact some modern games still include a PBEM option!
But all those services advertised in the back pages of
gamer magazines are lost)
Which is a shame because --while they weren't very good-- they were a
part of gaming history that deserves to be remembered, and it seems a
shame they've been tossed into the dustbin and forgotten.
I tried PBM games a couple of times; one was a role-playing game of
some sort, another was a strategy title. I didn't stick very long with
it because it was just so limited in options and the responses were so
trite and arcane that it didn't seem worth the cost. Sure, the idea of multiplayer gaming was neat, but since you weren't really interacting
with the other players it didn't feel much different than playing
against the computer. Maybe some PBM games were better, but the ones I experienced quickly put me off the concept.
Do you remember PBM games? Did you ever try one of the services? Did
you RUN one? Is there any hope, you think, of preserving the software
from this lost era of gaming?
* here's a list of active games
https://www.pbm.com/~lindahl/pbm_list/all4.html
But it occurred to me --whilst thumbing through the back pages of an
old copy of "Computer Gaming World"-- that there is one genre of games
that will/never/ be preserved and, in fact, seems likely to be
forgotten forever. And that's the world of PBM/PBEM games.
On Fri, 13 Jun 2025 21:10:12 -0000 (UTC), candycanearter07
<[email protected]> wrote:
also i think i played one on ham radio once?
Play-by-Ham-radio? I think you just won the Internet today with that
idea.
The idea still fascinates me though, it has the same kind of appeal as >>TTRPGS. Being able to control and play a whole videogame by just writing >>some words down and sending them off to a gamemaster is such a cool
idea, and I really wish it caught on more.
Waaaay way way back, when dinosaurs still roamed the earth and
bandwith was measured in characters-per-second, our tabletop group did something similar. Separated by Life-Events for nearly a year, we kept
gaming through email, passing orders over a slow connection. Well, I
say "email"; really it was just uploading a text file telling me (and
the other players) what they were doing, and my responding (in
excessively long prose, naturally!) the result of those actions. The
players had pretty much freedom to do anything they wanted (or at
least try), and since we'd (mostly) split-the-party, they usually
didn't have to wait to see what the other players were doing (I did
encourage them to email amongst themselves behind my back, though).
Alas, I've lost most of the transcripts from those adventures over the years... which is a shame, because I remember some pretty good writing
in those dialogues (mostly from the players, of course. My responses
were notable only for their length ;-)
My experience with "proper" PBM games weren't anything like that. The
RPG I remember playing basically gave me a (very) brief description of
the location (including X-Y coordinates... so I could map where I was,
I guess?) and a handful of commands I could pick from. It was so
barebones and limited that it made "Zork" look futuristic in
comparison. Looking back, I'm guessing the software was some primitive
MUD and the admin just plugged my commands into the computer and
printed out its response. In the few turns I played, I never met
another player. I wasn't impressed and didn't stay with the game very
long. I don't know if that was a typical experience for PBMs
computer-RPGs of the time or if I just picked a really awful one, but
it didn't encourage me to go looking for alternatives.
The advantage to this method was you didn't have to remain connected
through an entire match (as any 4X player will tell you, a campaign
can take a /long/ time to finish). You also aren't reliant on a
third-party server to connect; all the communication is done by email
(heck, if you really wanted you could put the file on a floppy and
send it back and forth by postal mail!). But it was slooow.
I wonder if there are any modern games still offering PBEM support.
Side note: the other day I learned that the classic 4X strategy game,
"Alpha Centauri" still supported PBEM gaming. You'd play a turn, then
email a special file to your friend, who would import the file into
his game to see what you did, and then react accordingly and send you
back a new file.
The advantage to this method was you didn't have to remain connected
through an entire match (as any 4X player will tell you, a campaign
can take a /long/ time to finish). You also aren't reliant on a
third-party server to connect; all the communication is done by email
(heck, if you really wanted you could put the file on a floppy and
send it back and forth by postal mail!). But it was slooow.
I wonder if there are any modern games still offering PBEM support.
On Thu, 19 Jun 2025 09:06:05 +0100, JAB <[email protected]> wrote:
On 18/06/2025 16:51, Spalls Hurgenson wrote:
I wonder if there are any modern games still offering PBEM support.
The Field of Glory II games do have a PBEM option but it's more
integrated into the game and uses Slitherine's servers to exchange the
'e-mails' for each turn.
I don't know why, but that makes me weirdly happy that such an old
game-play model is still supported. I'm halfway tempted to install the
game just to try it out.
It's a shame it relies on Slitherine's servers though, although I like
how its integrated the capabilities into the game itself. That was
always one issue I had with other PBEM games. You always had to drop
out of the game to use your email client to send the save-file rather
than their integrating the feature into the game itself (preferably
allowing you to specify your own mail-server information).
On Thu, 19 Jun 2025 09:06:05 +0100, JAB <[email protected]> wrote:
On 18/06/2025 16:51, Spalls Hurgenson wrote:
I wonder if there are any modern games still offering PBEM support.
The Field of Glory II games do have a PBEM option but it's more
integrated into the game and uses Slitherine's servers to exchange the
'e-mails' for each turn.
I don't know why, but that makes me weirdly happy that such an old
game-play model is still supported. I'm halfway tempted to install the
game just to try it out.
On 19/06/2025 16:01, Spalls Hurgenson wrote:
On Thu, 19 Jun 2025 09:06:05 +0100, JAB <[email protected]> wrote:For old school features try Conflict of Heroes: Awakening the Bear. That
On 18/06/2025 16:51, Spalls Hurgenson wrote:
I wonder if there are any modern games still offering PBEM support.
The Field of Glory II games do have a PBEM option but it's more
integrated into the game and uses Slitherine's servers to exchange the
'e-mails' for each turn.
I don't know why, but that makes me weirdly happy that such an old
game-play model is still supported. I'm halfway tempted to install the
game just to try it out.
has the option of a dice cam. As its name suggests you get a dice cup, position your camera over it and then roll the dice.
If you want the blend of modern and new then you can get physical dice
(with LED's of course) that know what number was rolled and then
transfer that to a VTT. They are stupidly expensive and there's been
concerns raised about how unbiased they are compared to a normal die.
Going back a step, when we briefly tried playing by 'email' (as I
described in an earlier post in this thread), one of my concerns was
how to handle die rolls. I was worried the players would feel I was
fudging the rolls to favor 'my' preffered outcomes and was considering
all sorts of alternatives which would let them see the rolls were
properly randomized. But one player put a stop to all that by telling
me that they trusted me to be fair, which I thought quite endearing.
But why else play with somebody else if you don't have even that
modicum of trust? That's why the "die roll scanner" described above
strikes me as slightly offensive.
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