From: utzoo!decvax!harpo!esquire!cmcl2!tihor Newsgroups: net.games.frp Title: Re: On line FRPG's - (nf) Article-I.D.: cmcl2.6983 Posted: Fri Jul 9 00:10:25 1982 Received: Fri Jul 9 04:12:54 1982 #R:pur-phy:-38100:cmcl2:5300001:000:1192 cmcl2!tihor Jul 8 11:41:00 1982 I agree that this is an interesting idea and might be willing to run such an event since my net address SHOULD be stable for some time to come. However I do not expect much of an improvement in responce time over the PBMs; consider the experiences of the Diplomacy by UUCPnet game. Deadlines are only slightly shorter than the tradition play by mail to allow messages to pass from one end of the net to the other. Unfortunately USENET is unlike ARPAnet in that messages will tend to take more than a few minutes to get delivered. This still doesn't mean that it can't be done, but the idea of say fighting a melee in detail over the net is absurd unless the situation was intended as a purely tactical chanlenge. As with most of the qulaity PBMs we will have to fight out melees via General Orders and tactical instructions. Also the broadcast nature of the net means that it will be dificult if not impossible to take advantage of the separation of players to convey different information to them based on their different situations for aded realism. One can not have both separation of perceptions and general readership, although a few bits could be conveyed by separate letter.