Pbem is fun but its fraught with problems, its slow and you're relying on people to post regularly and every so often you'll get some one, usually me, who has a free few minutes who pushes the storyline forward in major jumps and the rest of the crew are completely left in the lurch because they were in a meeting or unable to post. You also run into issues with cross posts moving the story thread backwards forwards and sideways at the same time.
About a decade ago I ran a pbIRC that forced us all to sit down at our computers for 3 hours on a sunday and it was brilliant like f2f gaming. It lasted about a year and a half and we had a ton of fun.
Derek Stanley
Sent from my iPhone...
On 2012-06-10, at 0:09, "krugerbf" <> wrote:
> > That's really cool. I have to admit, though, that I have no idea what a PBeM game would be like. Even though I develop online training and mobile apps for the Army, I am in fact probably a closet Luddite.
> >
> > How does PBeM work?
> >
> > By the way, I'm glad you mentioned "Firefly."
> >
> > You can't watch that show without thinking, "Joss Whedon has played Traveller," but I have never seen him admit that anywhere. Has he ever admitted it? Has anyone even asked him?
> >
> > ALSO, I can't watch the recent Battlestar Galactica reboot without thinking, "they've played TNE," especially the first episodes. It's eerie.
> > Has anyone seen them admit to that?
> >
> > Dave
> >
>
> PBeM is the closest to face to face I can get. All my local mates are interested in is the board game "Axis & Allies", which I also enjoy, and various computer games like "Settlers" and "Call of Duty", which I don't enjoy as I think the scope of play is too limited.
>
> PBeM mostly works like face to face games, except over a longer time frame. This does sometimes lead to issues of crossed timelines and confusion as to where different characters are in game terms. This is why I'm trying out RPOL for my TNE game, I can keep groups of players in different threads.
>
> Yes, I thought the same about "Firefly". I haven't yet played enough TNE or watched enough of the BG reboot to be able to compare.
>
> Brett.
>
>