
Japanese Play-by-Postcard RPGs: Net Games (2017) - polm23
https://www.dampfkraft.com/games/japanese-postcard-net-games.html
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Wurdan
Progressing the state of the game once per month sounds like more than most
D&D groups are capable of doing...

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Xelbair
Truth..

We managed to play once.. this year.

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bluntfang
Wolf in White Van [0] is a book written by John Darnielle (The Mountain
Goats). It's very dark and is centered around the main character's management
of a play-by-mail RPG.

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolf_in_White_Van](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolf_in_White_Van)

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JulianMorrison
This seems to be a niche that nothing else fills right now. It's much larger
scale than tabletop D&D. Much more freeform and literary than MMOs that do
have a large scale. And asynchronous except for the monthly deadline.

Unfortunately it also feels like, to do it right would require it to charge
significant fees. There would be a lot of effort required reading, collating,
adjudicating and responding to each and every player even if groups doing
roughly the same thing got shared replies. Probably more than an individual
game-runner with a hobby could do.

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pavel_lishin
I wonder if Patreon could be the scaffold upon which this could be built. The
basic tier includes receiving the monthly play-by-play, but the highest tier
is for the Player Characters, limited to N players.

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JulianMorrison
Or "at monthly income level $$$, we can support up to N players. Higher tiers
get first dibs but then it's first come first served. If our income goes up to
$$$$, we will be able to expand our operation and support up to M players."

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b_tterc_p
I used to run games like this on forums. Groups of about 30 players doing
actions over email 1-3 times a week, mostly in split up subgroups with forum
wide responses that explained the complete state of the game whenever they
found a means of communicating for a while.

It wasn’t as difficult to manage as I think many assumed, although mandating
that the game must go on even if people missed something was tough sometimes.

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thesuperbigfrog
My friends and I used to play VGA Planets
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VGA_Planets](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VGA_Planets))
by handing in floppy disks to the kid with the server program at school.

Each school day we would bring the disk with our turn and hand it in to him
and he would hand back our disk from the previous turn. It was a blast and
great fun given the limitations of tech at the time.

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LoSboccacc
stars! (old 4x ) had native play by email, it was a blast in the nineties, it
wasn't easy to play with actual strangers back then and to have internet
friends was something weirdos did here in Italy. cables were unheard of so
modem sessions had to be short not to interfere with calls. pbm games where
perfect for us who lived in this side of the "digital divide"

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audiometry
I wonder if this could be restarted (alas in English...). Any English-speakers
who have experienced the mechanics of these kind of games? It's been so long
that I received a 'postcard' that the idea almost is thrilling.

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DanBC
There used to be discussion forums by post too.

Pages 70 & 71 of "Signal: communication tools for the information age" (A
Whole Earth Catalog) have details.

I'll take a photo and put it up on Imgur, because the official site is broken.

Here's a link, sorry for the poor photography:
[https://imgur.com/a/4miM4vP](https://imgur.com/a/4miM4vP)

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heyitsallegible
Hey it's all legible. Thanks.

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jamesjyu
Role Playing Gateway [1] may be the closest thing you'll find online. It has
shared universes and players creating their own characters and writing short
stories about their journeys and taking actions. It’s not quite an MMO since
it’s not real-time and much of the interactions aren’t mediated by programs
enforcing rules.

This and the OP's example might actually be closer to a form of literature,
but one that is semi-interactive and non-linear. I've been keeping a list of
digital examples of this [2] but perhaps I should start an offline list, too!

They claim to have been running for 20 years.

[1] [https://www.roleplaygateway.com/](https://www.roleplaygateway.com/)

[2]
[https://www.jamesyu.org/hyperliterature/](https://www.jamesyu.org/hyperliterature/)

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hombre_fatal
Just google "roleplaying forum". There are more popular ones as well.

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prepend
I remember the back ad for Savage Sword of Conan in the 80s and even 90s was a
play by mail RPG called “Hyperborian Wars” or something. I never joined
because it was super expensive at about $8/month for monthly mailings with
adventures.

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arayh
Is this "Hyborian War"?
[http://www.reality.com/hwprul1.htm](http://www.reality.com/hwprul1.htm)

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prepend
Yes, that’s it. It was actually and ancient program and I remember finally
playing a mud version once I got to college.

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wingerlang
I wonder if there’s some opportunity in building a (paid) interactive story or
game.

Maybe not exactly for yourself, but maybe doing it for your kids and involving
them could be something.

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morelikeborelax
The app stores are littered with these, so yes.

"Celebrities" have backed them, they come in life, fantasy, sci-fi, business,
crime, sports and every other genre you can imagine.

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wingerlang
Oh, any examples? Not even sure what to search for.

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EFFALO
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Play-by-
mail_game](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Play-by-mail_game)

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BryantD
The roots of this are probably in Western PBM gaming back in the 1980s. Flying
Buffalo ran several popular computer-moderated wargames in this format, but
companies like Schubel & Son ran human moderated games such as Tribes of
Crane.

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baud147258
Funny, I was just reading that yesterday.

