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.