A little levity: "computerized FRPG"

[Zane H. Healy]

At 4:21 PM -0600 7/4/07, woodelf wrote:
>Chris M wrote:
>>--- Cameron Kaiser <spectre at floodgap.com> wrote:
>>
>>>And not only that, it is most definitely on topic.
>>
>>  well my reply is probably OT. Was curious what's the
>>status (many/any active) of play-by-mail (e-mail)
>>rpg's. My interest is in the sci-fi type domain.
>>Anyone remember Space Opera, Aftermath,...

Both still have a small following.  My current favorite is "Call of 
Cthulhu", I've been GMing a game now for about four years.  More 
importantly BRP, the underlying rule set, is something that people 
with jobs, that rarely play, can remember. :^)

>Don't ask me... All I have heard about was the ones where you send in your
>PUNCHED CARD. I don't think they are around any more.

These sound more like the old PBM strategy games rather than a RPG. 
I think you'd send in your move for the turn, as would everyone else, 
and then you'd get the results back.  Something along the lines of 
"Master of Orion".  The person I knew that was playing in one didn't 
have to fill out punch cards, but did have to fill out a form.  I've 
no idea the state of such games, I suspect they're all dead.  How 
many people are going to spend a few dollars per turn, with what was 
probably a couple week, at least, turn around.  This would actually 
be an interesting area of study from both the gaming standpoint, and 
the classic computer standpoint.  I'd love to see some of the 
software that was used to control these games, however, I'd guess 
that most were written by the person running the game, and most of 
the software has been lost.

I do know that many gamers play online, either via email, or other solutions.

As a Game Master, I prefer to have my group gathered around the 
table, I view the social aspects of gaming (getting together with 
friends and having fun) to be as important as the game. 
Unfortunately we're all old enough, and have enough responsibilities 
that we rarely are able to get together.  I know a lot of GM's use 
computers now during their gaming session, and I've even seen a 
projector used, but I like to keep things as low tech as possible 
when gaming.  The extent of computer usage in my campaign is that I 
use Adobe InDesign, Photoshop, and ClarisDraw for doing up stuff.

			Zane


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| Zane H. Healy                    | UNIX Systems Administrator |
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