Great to hear from you, Sam! I decided to bring your comment over on the Play By Mail Facebook page into PBM Chaos, so that I could share it with more people. One of the greatest of all challenges facing PBM, I believe, is simply getting people to actually communicate their thoughts about PBM. So, it was really nice to encounter your multi-paragraph comment on the subject matter on your mind.
If I had to venture a guess as to why neither OSR (Old School Renaissance or Old School Revival) nor COVID brought about a sizable amount of growth in PBM is likely because an adequate foundation for PBM's growth still hasn't been laid. Given enough time (as in years or decades more, rather than mere weeks or months), PBM gaming might eventually be able to dig its way out of the hole that it has fallen in, all by itself.
Covid, interestingly enough, turned out to be far more than just a disease. Truly, it was as big of a clusterfuck as any that I have seen come into existence over the course of my entire lifetime. Society/societies seemed to all go crazy, and abandon wholesale any semblance of common sense. A societal and cultural black hole into which human beings dove head first, and normalcy got stood on its head. Insanity reigned! And anytime insanity takes hold on a mass scale, it's probably significantly harder to implement changes that might be beneficial to PBM gaming. After all, Covid skewered priorities on an absolutely massive scale.
Plus, too, what PBM company even tried to capitalize on it? Generally speaking, PBM gaming suffers from a severe case of lethargy. Even many who otherwise find PBM gaming very interesting, and who have a ton of positive memories about their days/weeks/months/years playing PBM games with energy and fervor, can't seem to be bothered, these days (and during the Covid blob) with doing much of anything of significance, PBM-related. If I'm wrong about this, hopefully a slew of others will take offense at what I have said, and write in and take me to task for it. I'd sure love to hear from them!
I'm far more familiar with En Garde! than I am with megagames. En Garde! games tend to be sizable exercises in creativity, and in case you hadn't noticed, the commercial PBM sector has, for the most part, long since lost its creative edge and its creative will.
Right about now, I can imagine that John Davis of Middle-earth Games might prefer that I mention Middle-earth Games' next project is going to be set in the East. And that strikes me as an interesting thing. But tell me this, Sam Flintlock, how many different new PBM games, whether fresh from scratch new PBM games or new modules or variants for existing PBM games, are in the works that you know about or have heard a rumor to that effect? Then, if you will, tell me what the projected time frames are for completion of each of those respective PBM projects?
To be certain, it isn't just the commercial PBM sector that warrants a trip to the PBM woodshed. The hobby sector of PBM gaming is just as bad, if not worse, than the commercial PBM sector. Can I have an amen, anybody?
For absolute certain, creativity in gaming is anything but dead. There is an ocean - perhaps even multiple oceans - of creativity across gaming as a whole. There's more games of all sorts than you could count, and new gaming materials are flooding the market on a biblical scale.
And then there's PBM.
PBM isn't dead, not by a long shot. Hell, even PBM gaming in paper format sent through the postal service continues to endure, though vastly scaled down from what it once was. Not only is a wholesale lack of creativity plaguing the PBM gaming scene, these days, innovation has become scarce to the point where I consider it to be an endangered species.
If a given segment of the overall gaming industry, in this game the PBM segment, abandons both creativity and innovation, those aren't insignificant things. To the contrary, they are vital, they are critical, they are imperative to the future of this segment of gaming. Without them, how is anyone or anything going to grow PBM gaming to any significant degree beyond where it finds itself, right here and right now?
Elsewhere in this issue, yourself and other PBM Chaos readers can learn a little bit about a new PBM game that is being programmed from scratch, and which has been being programmed for a year or so, already. This is exactly the kind of raw creativity and bold innovation that PBM gaming used to be awash in, and which is so extremely rare, today. Honestly, there's no real substitutes for them, that I know of.
Rather than bring new PBM games into existence, PBM companies seem content, for the most part, to either piddle around with tinkering at the edges of PBM games that are ancient, by now, or they simply aren't even bothering to do that. Hey, if it ain't broken, don't fix it, right?
Well, the overall size of the PBM player base is broken. It is from my vantage point, anyway. perhaps others out there have a much better view of things than I do. If so, I sure do hope that they write in, and share with one and all what they are seeing that I am missing or oblivious to.
Back when I was young, there were a lot of textile mills here in the Upstate of South Carolina. These days, many of those old, closed down textile mills have been converted into all kinds of other uses. PBM gaming, in a way, reminds me of that old, no-longer-used textile mill real estate. PBM needs redeveloped.
Not into something else, but into a new version of itself. I don't really have any interest in trying to take us all back into time, back to where PBM used to be. Rather, what I envision is a new PBM era. Not a pure-postal PBM era, but a diverse PBM era which includes new PBM games of the postal variety. The absolute vast majority of the old PBM games are likely long lost by now, and it's exceedingly doubtful that anyone knows where most of them are, anymore. So, to a large degree, there's no going back to that era, no matter how much any of us, nor all of us, might prefer to do so.
Here we are, having transitioned from the golden heyday of PBM gaming, from the height of postal gaming, to the Information Age - but we can't do what was already possible decades ago? I don't buy it. I think that our individual and collective capabilities, these days, vastly exceed what was possible twenty, thirty, forty, and fifty years ago. How many people have desktop computers now, compared to back then? How many homes have printers in them, now, compared to back then?
Paper Mayhem died, but nobody could simply launch a new PBM magazine? Why not? Flagship magazine eventually faded from the PBM scene, but there wasn't anyone in all of PBM who could come up with something in PBM magazine form? Hogwash!
Suspense & Decision magazine, PBM Unearthed, and now PBM Chaos. All three of them turned out to be very imperfect forms of PBM media. A magazine. A newsletter. A mailing. I created them because I could. I created them as demonstrations of what's possible. But there are, minimum, hundreds of other people who are involved with PBM gaming, today, that could come up with something just as good, and probably a whole heck of a lot better. There are dozens (plural) of names that come to mind, whom I think could give PBM gaming a very noticeable boost, if only they would enter the fray to advance the cause of play by mail gaming.
But you can't just think about it, you've got to do it. You've got to actually do it. The golden era of PBM gaming that existed previously was built by individuals who were action-oriented. They designed and created PBM games by the hundreds. They erected new PBM companies, and populated the PBM landscape with them. Many endured for years and years. Some have even endured to this very day. And they did all of this in what was, then, a very competitive PBM market. It's not as though human beings have less ingenuity, these days, than they had back then. What's lacking, primarily, are the will and the resolve - and there are no substitutes for those things.
Some PBM gamers, these days, have thousands - thousands - of Facebook friends. Currently, I've got nine. Just nine, two of which are dead. Yet, even a social media hermit such as myself can create different forms of digital media, of a sort. Others an easily do newsletters, or simple mailings. They don't have to be big, thick, lengthy things. None of them have to be perfect, nor works of art.
There's as much talent in and around PBM gaming, today, as there's ever been. That's a fact, an absolute fact! But where's the drive? Where's the initiative? Where's the derring-do?
In the old days, PBM gaming was like a gold rush of gaming. New people poured into it, because there was something to pour into it to see and to experience and to interact with. Now, most PBM games and PBM companies and PBM GMs have shut down and closed up shop. PBM of today doesn't have to be a veritable ghost town. How is it that PBM companies that used to know how to innovate no longer seem to know how to do so?
For those for whom PBM gaming was little more than a passing opportunity to make a fast buck, at least those I can grasp why they're no longer involved. And for those who've grown older, and who now have grand kids to play with and to spend time with, I get it. I understand that, and I appreciate that, and I respect that.
And for those who are simply tired, these days, and can't seem to find the energy to do a lot of things, much less get more involved with PBM gaming, I grasp that, also. But just as PBM gaming used to not exist, but then came into existence, and then eventually exploded and experienced massive growth, there's nothing in the Laws of Gaming Physics nor in the Cosmos of Endless Possibilities that precludes a new golden era in PBM gaming from happening.
What PBM gaming needs to do is to get back to the basics. Creativity. Innovation. Energy. Enthusiasm. Boldness. Foresight. Derring-do. And if you ain't got those, then it's no surprise why PBM finds itself where it currently is.
Those things, you see, are like magnets - and they have natural ways of attracting other people to them.
Thank you for commenting, Sam Flintlock! I hope that you'll stay with us for the long haul.
Charles Mosteller