PBEM v94 n05 (29Aug94)

======================================================================
So you want to run your own PBM game...                   Greg Lindahl
======================================================================

Most people who play play-by-mail games have probably considered
running their own game at one point or another. Old-timers in the
snail-mail industry are famous for the fact that all of us are
actually working on games and have plans for commercial success
someday. I call my game GLUG, which stands for ``Greg Lindahl's
Ultimate Game.'' I don't expect to actually finish it anytime soon,
but there's always hope that it will see the light of day this
century. At least I'm not working on a novel or play.

In the free PBEM industry, though, we actually have a lot more
opportunity to run our own games. First off, many of us can actually
run such a game without spending any money, because we're lucky enough
to have a free net connection, paid for by work or tuition, or we have
a fixed-price net connection already installed to feed our
net.addiction. Second, there are existing, tested games which we can
use.

What kind of skills and qualities does it take to make a good
gamemaster? On the technical side, you will have to know how to
program. Even if you pick up source code for an existing game, game
programs always have bugs, and the GM ends up fixing them.

Next, you will need a sufficient amount of wizardry to run the game in
whatever fashion you decide. The largest free games on the Internet
have automated email servers. There are no existing idiot-proof
servers that you can use, and modifying an existing one or writing a
new one requires a fair amount of knowledge of and experience with
mail protocols and the like. Alternately, a GM might decide to not use
an automated email server at all. In that case, a GM might acknowledge
all the turns by hand, saving them from their mail program into files.
The second method is more time-consuming, but is much better for a GM
who either doesn't know or has no desire to know about the inner
(gory) details of email.

Once the technical details are overcome, a few more traditional skills
and qualities rear their heads. Volunteering to GM a game can be a
long-term commitment, depending on whether the game is closed-ended or
open-ended, and can require a considerable amount of tact and social
skill. A GM must be fair, which also means that GM should not play in
their own game. You might find this to be an obvious rule, but some
GMs still break this elementary rule, including a few commercial GMs.
A good GM must make few careless errors, because fixing errors is
difficult, and must be able to placate an angry player without giving
away unfair rewards.

Now that you've gotten a few of the technical and game-masterly
details out of the way, what game should you run? Some prospective
game masters have their own ideas for great systems. Many of these
turn out to be failures, for one reason or another. I have
participated in several play-tests for systems where the design itself
turned out to be bad, or boring, or both. I have participated in other
playtests of systems which were very interesting, but the GM became
bogged down in the process of moderating the game, and quit. No matter
what, designing and writing a game will take you far longer than you
imagine.

If you're more interested in moderation than designing and writing,
you have many choices for existing games. Unfortunately, you will
still have to have some knowledge of programming, since none of these
programs are finished, bug-free products. Among the choices you can
find on the PBM List are Atlantis, Celestial Conquest, Galaxy
(available in a normal and a ``blind'' variant), and Judgment Day.
Three of these games were written by Russell Wallace, who has shown
himself to be a good game designer over the years. As far as I know,
very few Celestial Empire or Judgment Day games are currently running.
Both of these games would be suitable for processing by ``hand,''
instead of by email server. Several people are already moderating
Galaxy games, mostly by hand, but there is a large, unmet demand for
Galaxy games.

Before you rush out to start writing or moderating some games, I would
suggest looking closely at past issues of this fanzine, and at a
couple of the more successful, large Internet games such as Diplomacy
and Galaxy. Forewarned is forearmed.