Designing a better PBEM

Dwarf with Axe · 2002-06-07T21:44:14

Not many people play Play By Email games anymore. It seems as though this age of high-tech computer graphics has smacked the gaming world in the face. I''ve been wanting to write a PBEM for a long time now, ever since I started to play diplomacy, risk, and HOMM3online. The games were fun, and highly addictive (to me). Now, what did they have? Player interraction. You could contact anyone you wish. if you wanted to call the President of Germany and propose an alliance, you could. If you wanted to move troops to the border of Siberia and propose that they surrender or join your military, you could. If you wanted to go to defcon 2 and start the nuclear launch sequence and scare the small Russian army in Bolivia that you mean business, you can. I always loved the negotiational part of PBEM''s. It has a lot to do with real role play. Because if you think about it, assuming a role like a leader of the military forces of a country sort of gives you a feeling of dominance (something we all strive for, no?) What the games don''t give you is graphics. I don''t need them, personally, because usually the leaders of the forces aren''t on the front line anyway. Anyway, I was thinking of a world-domination type of game, through the use of diplomacy and military strategy you would control the most resources to construct an army, whether military or diplomatic, and take over the world. Now I''m having trouble with what sort of things the players would be allowed to have. Should it be small like Risk? Where you simply construct armies and go attack? Or should it be more like real life, where you can train tank platoons, jets, bombs, missiles, subs, aircraft carriers, etc... Anyway, just your two cents would be nice. Thanks. ~Dwarf

Game Design and Theory Game Design

Started by Dwarf with Axe June 05, 2002 10:48 PM

9 comments, last by Dwarf with Axe 21 years, 10 months ago

draqza

122

June 07, 2002 09:42 PM

...And there was also a game called Stars!, a galactic conquest game where everyone played out their turn and then emailed the turn file to a central server, it calculated them all out and then sent the start-of-next-turn file out to all of the players. Such a fun game...

(Edit: This was brought on by the comment in bishop's thread that players needed something graphical--that thread looks interesting, I'm getting ready to go through it.)

[edited by - draqza on June 7, 2002 10:44:14 PM]

WNDCLASSEX Reality;......Reality.lpfnWndProc=ComputerGames;......RegisterClassEx(&Reality);Unable to register Reality...what's wrong?---------Dan Uptonhttp://0to1.org http://www20.brinkster.com/draqza

Designing a better PBEM

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Designing a better PBEM

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