This week I’ve got posts on something I don’t really know a ton about, but I have always been incredibly curious about: play-by-mail games.

I’ve never played. They strike me an improbable relic of a bygone age — I can’t imagine ever having the patience to wait for turns delivered by a mailman. And yet, it seems so cool. PBM predates RPGs, of course — chess and go and Diplomacy and many strategy games were PBM. Flying Buffalo, which would later publish the Tunnels & Trolls RPG, basically created the pro PBM industry when Rick Loomis published Nuclear Destruction in 1970. As it happens, Heroic Fantasy here (1982 originally, this edition 1990, Chris Carlson on the cover with an excellent painting that reminds me of Down in the Dungeon) and most of my other PBMs were published by Loomis.

As I understand it, a game like this would typically have four phases. You get the results of the previous turn. Then you consult with other players you are in contact with, a kind of diplomacy session. Then you fill out a turn sheet with your orders and send it in to the company, along with the turn processing fee. Finally, the company reconciles all the actions and the cycle repeats.

Processing was, originally, done by people. By 1990, Heroic Fantasy here was being processed by computer — the orders resemble commands for Zork or similar text adventures — in two week increments. I honestly can’t help parsing this experience as a kind of analog multi-user dungeon (MUD) of the sort that would soon emerge on message boards of the fledgling internet.

So, tell me, did you PBM? I want to hear some crazy ass stories, folks!