PBEM v92 n01 (15Jul92)

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The Search For The Holy Grail                             Greg Lindahl
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For many players, the Holy Grail of PBM gaming is the open-ended game.
While designing a good closed-ended game seems to be about as
difficult as producing a good traditional boardgame (i.e. hard, but
possible), players seem to want things out of open-ended games that
make them virtually impossible to design. I'd like a game that I can
play the same instance of forever, that is always interesting, that
admits new players constantly who might, through luck and skill, climb
to be rich and powerful, that makes it easy for me to move my units in
concert with 100 other players when attacking and defending, and while
it's at it, that orders a free pizza to be delivered when I get my
results, which must be comprehensive and yet concise.

Of course, you probably can't have all of the above, but some games do
have some really neat features. One game that I've been thinking a
fair bit about recently is Olympia, which is a free fantasy PBEM (for
more details about Olympia, look in the game descriptions section at
the end of this fanzine.)

Olympia features simultaneous movement -- all players submit their
turns by the same date, and then each day's orders for each player are
processed in lockstep. If I am chasing another player, for example,
and he leaves for the next province 2 days before I do and we move at
the same speed, he will arrive 2 days before I do and has 2 days to
make preparations before I show up to attack him. In contrast, many
older games have processed entire turns when they arrive in the mail.
So, if I am chasing another player, either my turn is run first and I
catch him, or my turn runs second and he ends up very far away.

Another Olympia feature is stacking. When you stack your units under
the units of another player, the stack leader's attack and movement
orders will affect the entire stack. This allows coordinated effort by
many players, although a certain amount of trust is required.

These two features, while not unique to Olympia, certainly make it
much more playable than the first few commercial games in this genre,
of which I played Universe II and Beyond the Stellar Empire. Maybe
someday I'll even find the Holy Grail.