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Galaxy #223

The ongoing Saga of Galaxy #223 in Galac-Tac

Turn #3: It's come, already, but not entirely gone

But what is there still left to be said about it?

Quite a lot, actually, but the players in Galaxy #223 either have no time (yep, same old story), or they lack the inclination or the motivation.

Once again, it's the Yonds of Droon to the rescue of PBM Chaos readers. Hip hip, hooray!

It's Wednesday, October 15th, 2025, as I type these words to you. Now, whether I finish writing this article, today, is anybody guess. It's all in how much that I feel like writing, today, or whether my words desert me.

I can worry about that hypothetical later. It won't stop me from getting started on this article. Already, today, I have written the editorial for this issue, as well as that Monster Island Monitor article that you may have already read in this issue, above, if you didn't scroll past it completely in your PBM-induced stupor.

The next turn, Turn #4, that's due in Galaxy #223 of Galac-Tac isn't due for 9 more days from now (on Friday, October 24th, 2025), and even then, it won't be processed until the following morning, on Saturday, October 25th, 2025.

Indicators are that Galaxy #223 has started off noticeably more violent than your typical, ordinary game of Galac-Tac. Ah, the luxury and the joy of having all of the time and turns in the world, until the shit hits the galactic fan!

I and my empire, the fabulous Yonds of Droon, are not here to present a snoozefest to the readers of PBM Chaos. The ordinary is, well, just so ordinary. War, baby, right out of the gate!

You know that I'm not gonna let the other players off that easy. This here, this Galaxy #223 game, is the real Galac-Tac deal. No pussyfooting around, you fools! In space, same as always, no one can hear you scream.

Already, though, there's probably players in Galaxy #223 who are pulling their hair out. Ajwan, don't be biting your nails. Djinny, don't go ripping your hair out by the roots. Hammer, don't let your early losses get to you. Richard, get the hell out of that pub and get your turn orders in on time. And Brendan - well, if you're name is Brendan and you're playing the empire that goes by the name of the Wyvern Supremacy, you had really better wake up.

I don't have any real desire (and certainly, not at this particular moment in time) to just utterly crush and conquer and subjugate and annihilate Brendan's Wyverns. If I did that, then it would bring an end to his misery. Nosiree, we can't have that, now can we?

In a PBM wargame, extenuating your enemies' misery is something that I highly recommend. Your fun-to-time-spent-playing ratio increases that way. And suffering the ignominy of me writing about your empire's defeat and you absconding, leaving your species in the lurch just when they need you the most, that would likely be a hard pill to swallow. Better to fight me to the bitter end, than you be force-fed a pill that bitter, over and over and over, again and again and again.

Of course, you could always learn to communicate. Good, solid dialogue is typically what real diplomats of real world nations strive for, in their respective bids to tamp down hostilities in pursuit of averting war.

Yours is an empire at war. Whether you wanted this war or not, it has descended upon you. Me? When I play PBM games, I don't want to be bored. Winning or losing can both be fun. Of the two, I'd be more inclined to say that losing actually tends to be more fun than winning, all things considered, but it's really in how the PBM player chooses to look at such things.

If you're losing, you get to rail like Khan Noonien Singh. Ah, losing when playing a PBM game is softer than Corinthian leather!



I encourage you try it, sometime.

Right now, right this very moment in time, I have already issued enough orders for Turn #4 to take up the space of 34 order lines out of the maximum of 50 that players of Galac-Tac have at their disposal.



Whenever (ahem. . .if ever) Richard Lockwood finally gets off his ass and comes blasting across the galaxy at all of the rest of us in Galaxy #223, I'm probably gonna start playing Richard Wagner's Ride of the Valkyries. Until such time (most likely sometime well after Hell freezes over), I'm just gonna bide my time tweaking the PBM noses of the rest of this PBM bunch growing wild on the side of the Galac-Tac space road like so many blackberries.



In my day, we had blackberries - but only if we picked them. It doesn't take very long to learn the difference between briars and blackberries. Learning to play Galac-Tac is a rather similar experience.



Trust me on that.



In Galac-Tac, just like in real life, you're empire is gonna pay hell, it's gonna pay the iron price, if it doesn't have "air superiority." Except they don't call it that in Galac-Tac. It's truly the same thing, though, your preferred nomenclature of choice aside.



Starships keep blowing up in Galaxy #223 for the very simple reason that players lack focus and ignore the obvious. I didn't build long range deep space interdictor vessels on Turn #1, just so that my fellow players could all get a good night's sleep. I wonder how many more starships have to get destroyed, and how many more crew members of those starships have to die, before all of the players in Galaxy #223 wake up and smell the rather obvious roses of the predicament that they chose to get themselves into.



If it wasn't me, it could just as easily have been some other Galac-Tac player that began blasting their ships all to hell and on their dime. This really isn't about me, at all. We've only went through three measly little turns in Galaxy #223 of Galac-Tac, thus far. And 2 out of 3 of those turns have seen a rather sizeable amount of interstellar violence play itself out.



Remember when I said the word "stupor?"



The solution to your empire's starships falling like flies is to quit putting them into situations where they become easy prey. How do you plan to grow your empire's economy, if your ships are dead? This isn't First Grade. This is the real deal. The Davin Doctrine, as I call it, won't save you, your species, or your empire in Galaxy #223. [NOTE: Ignore the download warning - it's just a PDF file, and you'll be just fine. I've downloaded it many different times.]



Ah, the Galac-Tac Quick Start Guide! It's not that the advice that Talisman Games' GM, Davin Church, wrote in that helpful little PBM document has no value. It can teach you quite a bit, in fact - some of the basic stuff about Galac-Tac, anyway.

But if your empire is one that suffers the dire fate of getting attacked early (or often), then you're gonna need to break out something a tad more relevant to the nightmare situation that you suddenly - and unexpectedly - find your empire plunged into.

Personally, when you play against me in a PBM wargame, I don't really care if win or lose, or if your empire tries or dies. None of that matters to me. Me? I just want to see you think.

By you thinking, and especially if you think long and hard, you will teach me more about the game than I already know, however much or however little that is in any given turn of any given game.

And I will begin to immediately apply in-game what you teach me by you making me think all the more.

My fellow Galac-Tac players in Galaxy #223 are perhaps (and I do stress perhaps) already beginning to undertake some on-the-fly contingency planning. Fortunately, I've already been thinking about their potential options for contingency planning every step of the way, every single turn.

In a nutshell, Galac-Tac is an economic K-car type of game with a military muscle car engine under its hood. It is a resources-dependent PBM game. After all, you have to have PI (a resource that represents in-game currency) to build new starships with. Thus, the military component is dependent upon the economic component.

Or said another way, the warfare that we engage in is economic warfare with a huge side order of military forces just waiting and itching to be brought into play (potentially). But if you don't build those warships, whether to act as standalone entities or as parts of fleets, then you can't bring them into play. It's as simple as that.

And if you're late bringing them to bear, then that can often times be as good as you not having them, at all. Other empires in Galac-Tac that obtain early military superiority over your own empire can wreak havoc upon your empire's planning and outcomes. Once it happens, though, then you can quickly find yourself behind the proverbial 8-Ball. Ask yourself if that is the kind of a situation that you want to find yourself in?



If playing PBM wargames down through the years has taught me anything, it's that PBM players tend to be very predictable in their choices, their decisions, their tactics, and their strategies. And sure enough, Galac-Tac Galaxy #223 started off that exact way.

What was it that Player Ajwan was quoted as saying in her player blurb in Issue #49 of PBM Chaos? "It took ages for opponents to meet each other in game 130."

You heard her. You read what she said. It took ages in Game/Galaxy #130 for opponents to meet each other. Well, welcome to the reality of Galaxy #223, Ajwan! Each game of Galac-Tac is different. Two different games of Galac-Tac can be as different as night and day. An approach to strategy that works well for you in one game may not work well for you, at all, in another game. What's your plan if other empires in your game decide to put your empire to the test, both early and often?

When players in PBM wargames enter into agreements with one another, one byproduct and natural consequence of doing that, regardless of why you do it, is that such player-to-player agreements tend to hold the potential to alter the existing balance of power in such wargames. Such player-to-player agreements will often set off alarm bells in other players' heads.

You see, regardless of what any given player's motives are, player-to-player agreements have consequences. They may or may not have immediate effect, but rest assured, they will eventually manifest themselves by driving alternative sets of chances and possibilities, compared to what would otherwise be the case, were such player-to-player agreements never entered into to begin with. Consequently, I don't tend to just ignore them and hope for the best. You induce vulnerability to your own position in PBM games, by turning a blind eye to the obvious.

In Hyborian War, I've written about the concept of Mega-Alliances many times. Hyborian War players habitually cry foul and whine openly about what they lambast as "Mega-Alliances." More times than not, though, they tend to focus upon surface appearances, without ever really digging down into the meat of the underlying, core concept.

In PBM wargames, as the games progress, the balance of power that existed at game start begins to drift and slide and change in all kinds of different ways. The PBM game, Hyborian War, showcases this dynamic feature of the play by mail format as good as any other PBM game that I'm aware of. The fact that full games of Hyborian War start with 36 players (three dozen!) is a primary reason why.

Mega-Alliances are far and away more about concentrations of power than they are, or have ever been, about the number of kingdoms that become party to such alliances. In Galac-Tac, if your own empire's economy proves to be insufficient to the task at hand, then common sense dictates that a Galac-Tac player look for - and find - one or more ways to offset economic competition paradigms that become too far out of kilter.

If it's a matter of sheer necessity or outright survival, then you've gotta do what you've gotta do, the niceties be damned. If left unchecked for too long, economic disparities that exist between competing nations in PBM wargames will tend to swell and explode, eventually reaching the point where the ship of your possibilities tilts too much and begins to sink.

Fortunately, Galaxy #223 of Galac-Tac is still in a state of relative infancy, turn-number-wise. Only two empires have borne the brunt of the starship losses, to date. Affected players have so far been largely unwilling to avail themselves of the mechanism known as empire-to-empire communications, and so, their ship losses are steadily mounting.

If you were to simply count the PI losses that this ongoing starship destruction has entailed, then it's still a relatively small percentage of empires' overall PI obtained, possessed, and spent, thus far. If all empires in Galac-Tac start with 500 PI, and if each of our empires generate 100 PI each turn at the beginning of the game, then we're roughly talking about 700 PI or so of economic value per kingdom, minus however many PI that have already been lost to the destruction, thus far, by starships by hostile military forces.

All that you have to do is look at your starting shipyard options for building starships, or input destroyed starship rating codes into GTac's built-in Ship Designer tool, and it won't take long, at all, to figure out how much each empire in Galaxy #223 has lost, thus far, in the first three turns.

The three screenshots above show the following:
Turn #1 = 0 Combats
Turn #2 = 13 Combats
Turn #3 = 21 Combats



Not all of these 34 combats were my idea, and some were even entirely unexpected, but the bulk of them were my own doing. All players in games of Galac-Tac have their own personal and/or in-game reasons for all of the choices and decisions that they ultimately opt to go with, and I am no different from any other player of Galac-Tac, in that regard.



Whenever I receive turn results from a PBM wargame, I'm always less interested in what the actual numbers and text show than I am in how other players in the same game think.



If players Brendan and Djinny weren't prepared for the destruction of sizeable numbers of their respective empires' starships in the opening phase of the game, then why weren't they? As already demonstrated, that was clearly a possibility all along. 



In a nutshell, it's because they were focused upon other things as their actual priorities. Let's get off to a good start, and really lay the foundation for a sound and vibrant and growing economic base. Yeah, well, how's that working out for you, so far?  Aren't you gonna need freighters to transport/shuttle PV back to your homeworld, in order for your homeworld's production system to convert that raw PV into spendable PI?



At game start in Galac-Tac, we all start out as economic and military equals. There exists parity between all player-controlled empires. Choices and decisions of players, both good and bad, change that. It is your choices and your decisions that put into play a dynamic changing reality.



The Davin Doctrine states, "For the easiest start, just ignore all the rules for designing new ships and go with the ships you’ve been given."



And you can certainly do just, exactly that. Just go with the ships that you've been given at game start. And the Wyvern Supremacy has now lost what? 9 out of 10 of its starting small freighters, or the equivalent? Some were probably blown up before they could complete their attempts to colonize other star systems (that would have been on Turn #2), and then other star systems likely completed the colonization process, but the starships (freighters) that were undertaking to create colonies were then blown up while in orbit at their newly-created colonies (that would have been on Turn #3).



Just going with what you've been given is a good way to end up dead. You don't have to take my word for it, though, Just do the math and sift through the battles that have taken place, to date, over the span of the last two turns in Galaxy #223.



I'm not trying to win, nor am I trying to conquer you (well, not yet, anyway). Rather, I am trying to to do 2 things:

(1) To make you think.



. . .and. . .



(2) To teach you something that can benefit you whenever you play Galac-Tac, again, going forward.



Whether I play Hyborian War, Galac-Tac, or some other PBM game, I tend to not hold to established orthodoxy about how to play such PBM wargames. I strive to think outside the box, and to ponder the stars of many possibilities.



If you don't think outside the box, then your kingdom or your empire may well not survive - or at a minimum, it may end up in much worse shape than ever had to be the case, had you simply gone with different choices and decisions.



Before this particular game of Galac-Tac is over and done with, I may end up getting my empire's ass kicked all over the galaxy. Well, that's exactly what I want. I want you to figure out how to kick my empire's ass, within the context of this particular PBM game called Galac-Tac.



Based upon long, first-hand experience playing Hyborian War and studying the game mechanics, thereof, I can readily apply much of what I learned in that PBM wargame to my game play in Galac-Tac.

When I played the Kingdom of Asgard in my very first game of Hyborian War, my very first enemy in that game, whether he realized it or not, taught me well about the Art and the Value of Suffering. To feel powerless is up to you, and you can choose to view a sense of powerlessness

as either a strength or a weakness. It's entirely up to you.

Any fool can play well, when their empire is winning and enjoying the strength and the luxuries that winning affords you.

But it is in the Realm of the Desperate that the human form truly rises to the occasion in the Art of Resourcefulness. When your very survival depends upon it, that tends to act as a very robust catalyst for your thinking skills.

War isn't simply a series of battles that take place along a linear line. Rather, war simultaneously happens in parallel along many different fronts. As an example to try and help illustrate the point in Galac-Tac, players compete and wage war, not just on an economic front, but on a military front, on a propaganda front, and upon the fronts of focus and distraction, to name but a few. And this without getting into the research front or the communications front.

Even the military front broken down will immediately yield both a tactical front and a strategic front, and even those are not always the same.

War can be, and typically is, an exercise in missed opportunities, lack of initiative, and poor judgment calls. Just because you might be playing a PBM game doesn't mean that war in game form isn't a hell all its own - one that you are tasked with navigating, successfully.

And as in all wars, war in Galac-Tac is also an exercise in logistics. Logistics provide your empire in Galac-Tac with both the means to engage the enemy, as well as the means to sustain conflict against the enemy. In Galac-Tac, you can't simply assume that you have forever and a day to build up a huge economy or very powerful fleets of extremely capable starships. When and where war finds you, the fight begins whether you're empire is ready for it or not. You fight with what you have, not with what you should have built, but didn't. Your enemy doesn't owe you the undeserved courtesy of waiting for you to embrace preparedness. Just because you need more time doesn't mean that time is on your side. Time is always of the essence. Every decision matters. Every moment is critical. Every turn relevant.



If in Galac-Tac, your empire has somehow managed to lose its economic and/or military parity with my empire by Turn #3, then that's quite a pickle of a predicament to find yourself in, I'd imagine. And if that has actually happened, as distinguished from merely an erroneous perception that it has happened, then what's your Plan B to dig yourself out of that hole that you've only recently dug yourself into? An enemy in Galac-Tac will exploit your weaknesses. A lack of preparedness is a weakness.

The stark and undeniable reality is that there are much better Galac-Tac players out there than me. If you end up with me as your enemy in Galac-Tac, then you should thank your lucky stars, indeed!



A word of advice to PBMers who play, or who think about playing, PBM wargames. The real war typically plays out in the Thoughtscape of the Human Mind before it ever plays out in your turn results. You have a mind - therefore, use it! It is, after all, where your memories, your capacity for reasoning, and the headwaters of your resourcefulness all co-exist.



Galac-Tac is just a game, but it is a PBM game that can tax your capacity to outthink the other player.

Player Blurb - Ajwan

Log 3500-04

I started this blurb in the same way I had started the previous ones, using the voice of the Emperor of Saydonia. But to keep doing that means I would have to work extra hard at creating a story and a plot, and that's exhausting. I was even thinking of using the speech patterns of a

certain famous narcissistic politician. It would have been a very interesting experiment. I'd be using "Big" and "Beautiful" a lot. I would have had to take credit for everything good and lay all the mistakes at the feet of my minions. Again, exhausting. So, enough with that, and let's get to the game.

Having sealed a deal with the Kroji, I have been plotting future routes and potential targets. I thought I had 9 colonies, but this turn, I discovered I only had 8. What happened to the 9th one, I wondered. Ah, there it is: a missing freighter. All right, who did that?! You think I'd let you keep that, this close to my HW? You're nuts! It's too early in the game for that kind of gamble for you, so you had better pack up and leave before my swarm of drones burst out of warp space. At this

point, ships are very expensive and losing one would cost you a lot. Leave! Now!

My expansion to the west led to a little mishap with a Misraw scout. Yeah, it's space dust now. But, luckily we made a deal, and that front will be quiet for a few turns. 

This map seems smaller and smaller every time I look at it. It will force us all to make some really tough decisions sooner than my other game, where it took a long time to meet another Empire. 

I must say, GAssistant is becoming a great tool to keep track of things, and give a new perspective on game play. For instance, in Game 130, I open several maps all at once. When I look at the shuttles map only, I get tunnel vision. The same with the scouts map. But when I open the two, side by side, and a third of the zones, I see the big picture and can strategize. Davin told us about the players who have two screens and stretch the assistant to accommodate more windows. Wow! I love that. He even taught us how to save the windows we prefer in an arrangement that automatically opens up when the game starts. 

Anyway, the number crunching begins. Figuring out each colony's PV and building the correct freighter, not only for the existing colonies but the ones I had charted and will soon be colonizing. Being a packed game, predicting needs before they arise is a useful skill. Not to say I can predict battles and conflicts, but there are certain consistent things that you must prepare for, and shuttles are just simple equations. Have one collecting PVs from the colony, while the other one is already unloading the previous load into your HW/PC, ad nauseum. 

One myth/misconception has been cleared for me by now. In Game 130, I actually thought not all systems can be colonized. Maybe the rulebook wasn't clear enough, but it is still there, once you know what it means. This misconception slowed me down in that game, and gave a huge advantage to my nemesis. Playing catch-up is an awful strategy. Not here, though. 

I intend to win this game.

Player Blurb - Brendan

Player Blurb - Djinny

Well, things are definitely "heating up" in Galaxy #223. I've got about 22 orders in, all the "easy stuff" that's a simple response to an uncomplicated situation. Hopefully, I'll find the time and

energy to thoroughly think through all the optional actions that remain, and perhaps I'll come out a bit better in the next turn. Speaking of "the next," which will be Turn #4, the original game defined "Turn 1" as the report in response to your 1st set of orders. Therefore, the very first report may be considered "Turn #0", if you have enough math background to understand

"zero-based numbering!" Another perspective is that the report dated 3500-01 is the information on which you base your 1st orders. So, I submit my first orders, get back Turn #1 report. Put in 2nd orders, get back Turn #2 report. The "galactic date" in the upper right of the Turn #3 results report is "3500-04", which means "the 4th fortnight of year 3500", since calendars typically don't start with "Day 0". There are 16 fortnights in a "year", so when we get to 3500-16, you'll see the next turn "dated" 3501-01. This is just to give us something like the "Stardate" on Star Trek, and once we have a few turns behind us, it's just "decoration," anyway.

I was involved in a LOT of action in Turn #3. Six cease fires, 4 combats resulting in at least one ship left to tell the tale (via combat reports), and 6 more locations where my vessels were poofed and I have no in-game documentation of who or what hit them. This is certainly disheartening, and unexpected, but such are the trials of a war game. You never know what the strength and intentions of a foe will be until you meet them. I built a few armed ships with a longer range, to "ride shotgun" with my charting vessels, but I didn't intend for them to be "warships." It is apt that Charles mocks them as "mall cops." That's exactly what they were intended to be. But, sadly, I

built them with a gentler, less threatening world in mind. A "mall cop" used to only have to deal with a couple of soccer moms fighting over the last Cabbage Patch doll in the toy store, or some guy who had one too many margaritas in the taco restaurant trying to swim in the decorative fountain. In today's RL mall, Security has to be ready for some rabid and remorseless maniac with an AK47 mowing down innocent shoppers - and that's what I failed to prepare for. As Davin has said, I'm not very ire-ful, and perhaps a bit Pollyanna-ish in my expectation that everyone will explore, expand, exploit, and THEN exterminate. I went the same distance in multiple directions, and went as far as my ships could travel, and encountered others doing the same. Nobody owns ANYTHING (territory-wise) until they have completed a colony there, and in the first few turns, all stars are up for grabs. I chose to avoid wasting time and PI bumping heads with my neighbor Saydonia, so we drew an equitable line approximately centered between our home worlds (at least in ONE direction). That does NOT mean anything else - no plans to unite in conquest or ally in defense of our shared area of space. She's on her own, if someone else comes knocking, but I won't be the one trying to fight her for those specific stars that lay on her side of the line. And, as stated before, announcing our agreement publicly was ONLY as an educational example for the Open Information game. So, it certainly was not intended to provoke or influence the reactions of other empires. I was trying to be open and informative and helpful as a more experienced player, and that backfired. Any future negotiations with any other empires will remain private.

Although my design of the cheap and rather wimpy "mall cops" was intentional, I definitely have been known to make other clerical or judgmental errors and mistakes. With the help of the error checker, most clerical errors can be avoided, but it doesn't do anything for your planning indiscretions. Using "suggested orders" past the first turn or two is not really helpful, as they are merely examples of LEGAL moves that might or might not be the best course of action. They are

there to show you proper formatting, and pre-load ship numbers and destinations and such for those who need that guidance (or are just lazy and don't find any joy in planning your own course). I think it's a great feature for beginners to see what they might do, but once you start

encountering others, all bets are off. It's up to you to decide what you need/want to do next. The "robots" in the solo game are very narrow-minded, very defensive, and more interested in building territory and locking it down with stations, etc.

We do seem to be "crowded together," but everyone is AT LEAST 29 stars away from the next home world over. That said, nobody is really "far away," as we can get to the center of each empire in just a few hops (depending on the range of each ship design, of course). None of the combats I was involved in were close to anyone's home world. Like real empires throughout history, "Anything I can reach is mine", including other continents and the moon itself. Ceasefires

represent NON-HOSTILE encounters, where two (or more) empires bump into each other with non-combat orders in place. When someone decides to use Attack, Secure, Defend, etc., then it becomes a hostile situation. Merely not withdrawing after a ceasefire is not necessarily an "act of

war." At worst, it's a "denial of service," since they can't chart or colonize either, until one of you leaves. We all start with a level playing field, by design. In the manual, it says "The masters provided sufficient technology to the various races...," but at the point our game begins, we've learned the secret of star drive design, so the Masters took off and left us to ourselves to work it out. That's why we ALL have the same "boring ships"... that's all the Masters left us with, in their galaxy-wide smoothly running system. Now, it's up to our own individual technical expertise, economic efficiency, and military strategy to build on the very basic set we have as examples. There's plenty of randomness in the galaxy, so that we don't have exactly the same starting position, but from the first turn, your choices and luck make your empire unique.

A couple of technical notes: As long as you have at least ONE star drive on a damaged ship, you can make it home to a PC for repair (however long it takes). If a ship survives at all, it will be left with at least one inertia engine. However, you can also TOW a ship home - look up that

command in the manual, if you're interested. Regarding an interrupted colonization: If a combat interrupts a Colonize in progress, with PI partially down, it may be completely aborted. If your cargo ship and PI survives the combat (and no enemy ship is left in your system) then your

colonizer will continue what it was doing. If you took damage and don't have enough PI left to finish the 10 PI required, then it stops, and the PI that was already down is considered lost in the destruction.

Djinni

Player Blurb - Hammer

I was out of town for a couple of days, and did not take my laptop with me; therefore, I did not access the GTac App and only had my Game Phone with me to check on the Misraw Reports.



Earlier today (Saturday, October 18, 2025), while I was at the laundromat washing and drying our bedding, I again consulted my Game Phone for my Misraw Reports and wrote down 27 possible orders.



Not sure how many more orders that I will be able to include before our Friday, October 24, 2025 deadline, but I am realizing that I just do not have the PI to build any type of War Ships to continue the Misraw War against the Kroji Konfederacy.



Truth of the matter is that Misraw barely has enough PI to build what is really necessary for any significant economic expansion!



Therefore, I must take a closer look later this week, and decide how best to proceed with this war against the Kroji Konfederacy!



Hammer, Minister of War

Player Blurb - Richard

No player blurb received from Richard for Castle Anthrax for this issue.

Player Blurb - GrimFinger

It is Sunday at 7:21AM, as I begin to write this player blurb for Galac-Tac game Galaxy #223. As of this moment in time, only two of my fellow players in this game have sent in player blurbs of their own, already, for inclusion into this issue of PBM Chaos. So, let's take a brief glance at what both Player Ajwan and Player Hammer had to say for this issue.

Confidence begins to take root in Ajwan, whereas Hammer's dawning realization that his empire's current economic situation greatly impacts his ability to build starships fit for waging a proper war against those dastardly Kroji enemies of his sows seeds of doubt in his mind. Given a choice, which would you prefer to have, if you were at war? Confidence or doubt?



Ajwan has more experience playing Galac-Tac than Hammer. Experience in wargames tend to grow a player's confidence, because with experience tends to also come the accumulation of knowledge and the acquisition of understanding. Hammer is behind Ajwan on the the curve of experience playing Galac-Tac, and that tends to make a PBM player more hesitant in their decision-making processes. It's good to be prudent and calculating in one's decision-making, but in Galac-Tac, hesitation can - and will - get you and your empire snuffed out!



Hammer, however, previously embraced war with the Krojis. Fireworks was the word that the Kroji player, Djinny, initially used, right out of the starting game of this game. Fireworks equals conflict, and conflict equals war. The math on it really wasn't difficult for Hammer to do.



In her player blurb above, Player Ajwan clearly states, "Having sealed a deal with the Kroji." If any doubt at all remained, on the part of all players in this game, regarding Player Djinny's prior remarks about her Kroji Konfederation having reached a border agreement with Player Ajwan's Saydonia, then Ajwan's confirmation of this deal with the Kroji devils should fully remove every last vestige of doubt that such a deal ever existed, at all.



And after starships from Player Ajwan's Saydonia and Player Hammer's Misraw encountered one another and conflict erupted, last turn, Saydonia then goes on to openly and publicly announce, "But, luckily we made a deal and that front will be quiet for a few turns."

Ah, another agreement!

It's always nice for other players to snitch about the wheeling and dealing that they do - and with who!

So, while the Krojis of the Kroji Konfederation and the Scroids of Misraw go about their little war with one another, the savvy Saydonians have utilized verbal agreements, agreements comprised of words, to strengthen their own hand. And in the same player blurb, Player Ajwan plainly reveals, "I intend to win this game."

And how will she win this game? Only one of two ways - by conquering all other players' homeworlds, or by the unilateral decision of the Masters, when and if they return. Ajwan can't even seem to keep track of how many colonies that she has (Is it 8 or is it 9? Hmmm...), so it's probably a bit early, just yet, for her to figure out how - exactly and specifically - she can win the game via the Masters route. And that only leaves conquest of 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 other players' homeworlds - which means war, war, and more war!

And she intends to fund that war by pursuing economic expansion and growth of her empire's PI
coffers in the early and mid-stages of the game. "Let those fools fight one another," she no doubt thinks silently to herself. "Let them weaken one another and themselves, and then Saydonia will swoop in and conquer the both of them!"

Six players in this game of Galac-Tac, and Saydonia already has agreements with two of them by Turn #3. Not bad, Ajwan. Not bad, at all. But it's not like no one is paying attention to it all, now is it?

In order to pull it off, though, Ajwan's starting approach requires a sufficient amount of time, and the continued acquiescence of the other two players whom she has secured player-to-player agreements with. 3 out of 6 players in this game already wheeling and dealing with one another, reaching those one-on-one agreements to try and bend the current reality in-game more to their personal liking.

Tsk, tsk, tsk. . .

3 out of 6 players is half the players in this game. 3 out of 6 equals 50% of the players. And where does that leave the Wyvern Supremacy, Castle Anthrax, and the Yonds of Droon?

Players of PBM wargames possess a natural tendency to seek advantage. Player-to-player deals are but one of many ways to acquire and/or accumulate advantage in PBM wargames. Hammer, as one who has substantially less experience playing (and understanding) Galac-Tac, compared to both Player Djinny and Player Ajwan, runs the risk of becoming a pawn in the other two's grand schemes.

Player Ajwan is smart, in that she's quite willing to let the Scroids and the Krojis bleed one another. But in PBM wargames, something can be both really smart and really stupid, simultaneously. Whether the Krojis and the Scroids are onto Ajwan's little game or not, or whether either or both of them care or not, that still leaves as much as 50% of the players (and by extension, their empires) not mesmerized nor tempted by Saydonia's benevolence and willingness to accede to agreements of the nature already now become widely known.

Such agreements, more times than not, come at a price. You either pay them (Ajwan) now, or you pay them later. If Player Djinny can't win this game, then that Galactic Granny would no doubt much prefer that the other Galactic Granny (Ajwan) win this game of Galac-Tac.

Tsk. . .tsk. . .tsk. . .



Ajwan said the following in her player blurb for this issue, "I thought I had 9 colonies, but this turn I discovered I only had 8. What happened to the 9th one, I wondered. Ah, there it is: a
missing freighter. All right, who did that?!" Yet, in both GTac (The player assistant program for Galac-Tac) and on the Talisman Games website after you log into your empire's current turn, a player's turn results make very clear exactly how many colonies that they currently control on any given turn.



On the website, if you click on the View Reports button, your empire's current assets are fully revealed. For actual fully constructed colonies that your empire currently controls, this report will say Colony System in green lettering for each and every last one of the colonies that belong to your empire. Did Player Ajwan perhaps only glance quickly at her turn results for Turn #3, and not study her turn results in detail? I find that very difficult to believe. Could it be that she's using her player blurbs to engage in a little friendly misinformation campaign against we, her fellow players and opponents in Galaxy #223?



If in Galac-Tac, you are only halfway through the two-turn process of colonizing a star system, then the website's report that contains your empire's turn results will say Colonizing, instead, and in blue lettering. The visual difference between Colony System in green and Colonizing in blue is quite stark and easily discernible.



Here, let's just include a cropped screenshot that shows you exactly what the difference looks like on your turn results report.

You tell me, does it look confusing or unclear to you?

Plus, the report will automatically group all of your Colony Systems together, and below that, it will then list all of your systems that are Colonizing, together. This approach makes it quick and easy to keep track of your star systems that are still colonizing or that have already finished the complete colonization process - which, again, is a two-turn process.

And in GTac, a player can look at their Empire Status Report to see exactly how many colonies that their empire currently controls. Here's a cropped screenshot that shows that to you.

Maybe, instead, it just boils down to Ajwan expecting to have 9 colonies controlled by her empire that is Saydonia, when her Turn #3 results were processed and became available to her, but that warship that I sent to one of the star systems right next to her homeworld star system destroyed not just her freighter that was already in the process of colonizing that particular star system that I targeted for a friendly little warning visit, but the construction underway of that colony, also.



If that's the case, then the Wyvern Supremacy is in really big trouble, after a number of their freighters that were likely already in the process of colonizing star systems got obliterated by my empire's warships on Turn #3 - the first turn in the game that a completed colony can come online.



In that PDF document that he wrote titled Galac-Tac: Turn Processing Sequence, Talisman Games GM Davin Church said:

The Combat Phase

If ALL ships (even if they have weapons) are on peaceful missions (e.g. Chart or Colonize), then a “cease fire” will occur instead. A cease fire will cause most ships’ orders (with a few exceptions) to be cancelled and those ships will not perform their orders this turn.



A cease fire isn't the same thing as combat, though. So, let's keep looking.





The After Movement Phase
After movement and combat have taken place, ships will then perform any orders they have been given. Chart orders will chart a system, Colonize orders will begin colonization, Refit orders will update the ship to the latest tech level, etc.

Uh oh!



But beginning colonization isn't the same thing as finishing colonization. The colonization process had already started the previous turn, on Turn #2, and then my warship, piloted by Galar, showed up the next turn, Turn #3, the turn that Ajwan's colony construction in star system 55-40 should have completed.



Electronic searches of the Galac-Tac rulebook did not speak conclusively to this particular situation. As such, I decided to send an e-mail to player Ajwan, in a bid to clear up this particular point of confusion/lack of certainty. If she responds back in time, I will include whatever she tells me in this issue. If she responds after this issue publishes, then I will include what enlightenment that she can shed on this particular situation in PBM Chaos Issue #51.



While awaiting a reply from Player Ajwan, I returned, yet again, to the document called Galac-Tac: Turn Processing Sequence. My follow-up e-mail to her says:

My guess, Ajwan, is that the following portions of the Galac-Tac: Turn Processing Sequence document hold the answer:

After any combat is resolved, if a single empire claims total victory (no ships remain of any other empire), then the remaining ships may continue to perform any orders they have. Combats have a time limit in any given turn, so it is possible for well-matched combats to end with ships still alive from more than one empire. In that case, non-combat orders from all ships are cancelled and will not be performed this turn.

This would indicate that the colonization process would continue/complete, after the combat, if your freighter had survived, but since it didn't, it still doesn't answer the question of whether the colonization process, itself, is ended, if the colonizing empire losses the battle. Does it abort completely, and a player has to start from scratch on another two-turn colonization process, or is the colonization process just awaiting another ship to pick up where the initial colonization process left off?

I don't have first-hand experience with this particular situation, so I don't know what the answer is. This is a good example of how players encounter confusion, instead of clarity.



Charles

I received Player Ajwan's follow-up emails (there were two of them) to my inquiry to her.

In fact, I was almost finished replying to her when our power went out. It ended up being off for several hours. No idea why. Here are her replies merged into one.

An intriguing question.

Here is the report from 3500-03: System at 55-40 is Colonizing.

And in 3500-04: Ship #1003 at 55-40 has failed to report in!



This is the first time to happen to me: an interrupted colonization. So not sure how that would have appeared also in other cases. It's interesting how this would be included in a rulebook. To tell you the truth, reading rulesbooks is always a difficult process. You are reading about something you don't know yet, things that are currently incomprehensible to you because you have yet to experience them. Only after you have played a few times, will the rulebook begin to make sense - assuming you went back and read the whole thing.



Rulebooks are a great start and therefore they should be written clearly for first time readers. I have worked in several places and always "instructions" are written from the point of view of someone who knows the topic 100%. And have no idea that a person who knows 0% must be
spoken to differently from those who know a lot about the topic. Even official letters can be confusing to the receiver. This is why contracts and legal documents begin by defining certain words and terminology. Like Manager: head of xx section, etc.. It leaves no room for personal
interpretation and sets the rules for reading the document and understanding it.



Writing instructions is a very very special skill and must be left to people who know how to put themselves in the shoes of the receiver and not the sender.

My best guess is that star system 55-40 is halfway through the colonization process, and will remain that way, until you finish it (by sending another starship, probably with the second half of the PI cost), or until some other player goes to the trouble of destroying the colony, even in its unfinished form. Starships, alone, likely can't destroy it, because it requires PI from another player to be used to destroy the colony (or what you have constructed, thus far, of that colony attempt). Again, that's a guess on my part.



Of course, if you send another freighter to finish the colonization, it could risk being destroyed (and any PI that it carries), if one or more of my warships (or anyone else's warships) are there when it arrives, assuming that some kind of combat type order is issued to them.



I didn't really expect to destroy the colony, nor to interrupt the colonization process. My aim was actually to just send my warship there (there's just one of my warships there, currently), and maybe destroy a freighter, if it had just built a colony there, before it had a chance to load some PV and transport it back to your homeworld for conversion into PI.



What I take away from the experience, along with the additional information that you provided to me, is that I can now definitely interfere with the construction of the colony, which for some purposes is as good as destroying it, since it delays the targeted empire from gaining triple the amount of PV from star systems interrupted this way. Now, you and I both have gleaned more insight into some valuable targeting information going forward, whether in this game of Galac-Tac or others.

And by pure chance, Player Djinny (or is it Djinni?) then weighs in on this very issue, and here's what she said at the end of her player blurb in this issue:

Regarding an interrupted colonization: If a combat interrupts a Colonize in progress, with PI partially down, it may be completely aborted. If your cargo ship and PI survives the combat (and no enemy ship is left in your system) then your colonizer will continue what it was doing. If you took damage and don't have enough PI left to finish the 10 PI required, then it stops, and the PI that was already down is considered lost in the destruction.

Djinni has a lot of experience with the Galac-Tac system, so she probably speaks authoritatively and conclusively on this particular issue - which would then mean that Ajwan's colonization attempt at star system #55-40 turned out to be a total failure, and she will now need to start completely from scratch, rather than just pick up at the half-way point. That's good news for me, and bad news for Ajwan. Too bad, Ajwan! Glad to see this Saydonian colonization attempt go belly up. My warship was sent there to deliver a warning, and ended up hitting a little jackpot, instead. How sweet it is!



And in turn, Turn #3 probably proved to be a very demoralizing turn for Brendan of the Wyvern Supremacy, in light of how many of his freighters that my empire destroyed on Turn #3, and perhaps all of them were in the second half of their attempts to colonize numerous different star systems. So, if I destroyed both the Wyvern freighters and Wyvern colonies that were just finishing up the construction of new Wyvern colonies, then Turn #3 would have turned out to be a real double whammy for Player Brendan.



Where my fellow players in Galaxy #223 are concerned, I think that their player blurbs are starting to feature a little more meat on the bones. Understanding Galac-Tac players' thoughts and perspectives on the same incidents is an angle that things like game rulebooks don't tend to show and provide insight into. Readers benefit from a broader showcasing of player perspectives, as do each of the players, I think (assuming that all players are actually reading what gets published in issues of PBM Chaos).



I never got around over this weekend just past to finishing up my empire's turn orders for Turn #4. As of right now (9:41PM on Sunday night - October 19th, 2025), I've used up 34 out of a maximum possible 50 order lines. Oops! Make that 33 lines, since I just now shifted a Secure order to another line that had only one such order type on it (you can put two different Secure orders for two different starships on the same order line).



Turn #3 was an easier turn to fill out turn orders for, compared to filling out turn orders for Turn #4. My primary objective for Turn #3 was to try and hunt down - and destroy - Wyvern starting freighters, while simultaneously allocating a few other warships to try and keep other empires (the Krojis in particular) from being nosy and from intruding into what I see as Droon space. I enjoyed numerous successes with this secondary targeting scheme, as well, which was gratifying. I knew in my gut that the Wyverns were going to absorb substantial damage, due to the way and to the degree in which I figured out the most likely star systems where early Wyvern colonization attempts would be made. Turn #3 held a greater sense of clarity of purpose than I enjoy heading into the issuing of orders for Turn #4.



Turns #2 and #3 were the low-hanging fruit, the easy pickings, so to speak. Now, I have to climb higher in the limbs of possibilities, to end up with Turn #4 results as good as my Turn #3 results turned out to be. And that is a lot harder than it might sound.



For Turn #4, I must now think things through, anew. Where to go? What to do? Who and what to pursue? What should my actual priorities be for Turn #4? This is no 5-minute process, I assure you. After all, some of the other empires in the game will likely now be out for blood - Droon blood! My blood!



I wonder if I could bribe these blood-thirsty enemies of mine with a few chocolate chip cookies?



Well, if it's blood that they're after, then I'm more than willing to donate their species' blood to the cause. To stem their losses, or to at least try to, other empires will now begin to build more warships (and likely better warships, to boot), which means that this is no time for me to begin slacking off on the construction of Droon warships. If my empire now possesses a military advantage, however slight, then I should probably now seek to expand upon that advantage, if I can.



But that sneaky Ajwan and her empire called Saydonia, they now have almost twice as many fully constructed colonies as I do - and that translates into a likely economic advantage, depending upon what the base PV numbers are for the particular star systems that the Saydonians colonized on Turn #3. I have no reason to believe that Player Ajwan doesn't already have freighters assigned to begin transporting PV (raw materials) back to her homeworld for conversion into PI (cash). The last thing that I need, right now, is for Ajwan's empire to become flush with lots of cash. My relatively small number of starships simply cannot be everywhere, simultaneously, though. Damn her luck!



The bald reality is that my empire is already in armed conflict to a sizeable degree with two different empires. Trying to now add a third empire to the first two would definitely result in me overextending myself. Yet, if I do nothing, then Ajwan's empire will swiftly begin to arm itself in earnest, as her empire's economic base solidifies and continues to grow. You hear her. She intends to win this game!



Decisions, decisions, decisions. . .



If I don't get more colonies online soon, and if I also don't begin successfully harvesting PV from other star systems (colonies will allow me to harvest three times as many resources as star systems with no colony of mine on them), then my early military efforts right out of the gate may soon prove to be for naught.



Spreading my efforts and my starships too far and too wide may leave them more vulnerable and less efficient. Concentrating my empire's assets in terms of star vessels too narrowly will definitely leave certain things undone, and other empires could quickly begin to step in and displace my empire. What a hell of a quandary to find one's self in!



But every player in Galac-Tac will face a host of decisions over the course of the game as it proceeds. Playing against actual players presents a far greater challenge than just playing in a solo game by yourself against computer-controlled opponents. It's also considerably more fun than playing against the modest computer opponents that the game provides.



As Galaxy #223 barrels towards Turn #4 this upcoming Saturday, unknowns populate my thoughtscape like stars in the sky. I don't know who is gonna do what, but I imagine that retaliation will be forthcoming from one or more empires. But how have they spent their starting PI, and how much of it do each of these other empires out there have left of it in order to rapidly grow their respective war machines?



Will the Yonds of Droon maintain their valuation standing of being in the 100th Percentile, where Empire Valuation is concerned? I'm gonna take a stab at it and guess that the answer is yes, for Turn #4. The horizon of predictability vanishes for me after the first few turns of the game. Now, a lot more unknowns are in play for me (and likely for every other player in this game, as well).



Battles will become much less predictable very soon, as players begin shifting their priorities around. Freighters will soon become better protected and less like big, fat sitting ducks. Otherwise, empires' economies will bleed to death. It won't be pretty, when players have to get by and make do with less economic muscle than they prefer to have. The amount it will cost in terms of PI spent to grow and expand our military presence will tax our ability to continue our economic expansions at an accelerated rate. We will all gradually begin to feel more and more bogged down and restricted, and the price of making the wrong decision or bad decisions will compel us all to put more and more thought into our turn orders for each new turn.



If we fail to do so, it will show in the end results of each new turn that gets processed in Galaxy #223 of Galac-Tac.

The artistic inspiration of Basil Wolverton.

* All Galac-Tac content and images copyright © Talisman Games.

PBM QUOTE

"Enough of the pleasantries and onto the fast and changing world of PBM. It seems that the past few months have been very busy in the PBM industry, Every so often we have a large shakeup in the industry and it has been happening recently."



- Paper Mayhem Editor David C. Webber

Paper Mayhem - Issue #49

July/August 1991 issue

We have reached the plateau of fifty issues. 50. The big Five-Zero!

I'm starting early on this closing article for this issue. At the time that I write this, this issue still has a ways to go, before it is fully ready to publish. Last issue started off pretty smooth, and ended up in the hell in a handbasket situation that it devolved into, due to real world and real life considerations. Hopefully, that won't be the way that this issue of PBM Chaos turns out. But when chaos is in our name, well, what should we really expect, eh?

Fifty scattered issues of PBM Chaos, but fifty, nonetheless. It wasn't a flawless, seamless situation getting here, but we somehow made it. Any of you out there reading this have any idea how many words, total, these fifty issues were comprised of?

Me, either.

Will there be fifty more? Man, what a big, Big, BIG question that one is! It would be nice, if I had the answer to it, too.

Fifty more issues of PBM Chaos at the current rate of publication would be almost another year's worth. What in the hell would I end up writing about? What would I say? And how much of it would just be a rehash of stuff that I have already said?



By my count and by adding together all of the issues of the original Suspense & Decision magazine, PBM Unearthed, PBM Chaos, and PBM Zombies, then when Issue #2 of PBM Zombies publishes on November 1st, 2025 (sorry, Joe, but Issue #2 won't publish on Halloween - then again, it's not as if your many Monster Island monsters have seen fit to send me anything to include in Issue #2), that will bring my grand total to 100 issues of something PBM-related.



This 50th issue of PBM Chaos is a milestone, in its own right, and to reach double that, an even 100, even if I have to combine various different PBM publications that I have published, is also a milestone of sorts, from my perspective. For certain, I have had a lot of help along the way. Many contributions, and every last one of them are greatly appreciated by myself.



And every last issue has contained typos and other errors and mistakes within their pages. Issues of PBM Chaos aren't measured in pages. They just tend to be one long scroll session after another. No pages, maybe, but still lots of words, and still lots of navel-gazing, as that one Phoenix: Beyond the Stellar Empire player characterized it a really long time ago.

I don't think that it was intended as a compliment, but I wear it as a badge of honor, nonetheless, and I just love the sound of it. If I didn't navel-gaze when writing about PBM gaming, then none of these many issues would likely ever have seen the light of day.



Am I supposed to write about PBM games that I don't play? And if so, what would I say about them, even if I did? If those PBMers who play those PBM games that I don't play don't care enough about them to write about them, then we can just chalk that up to fate.



When this issue publishes, which is a mere four days away from right now, that will bring my PBM publications tally to 98. And in those 98 issues, how many articles did you write? What did you contribute? What did you bring to the table?



I don't ask these questions to make you feel bad, or to cause you any regrets. Rather, I ask them to make you pause and to think. If you want fifty more issues, or a hundred additional issues, then are you prepared to step up and participate by way of contributing?



For most of you, the answer is no. That's not out of the ordinary. To the contrary, in fact, that is the natural order of things in the PBM realm. Perhaps it's sad, but in many ways, it's wholly and utterly irrelevant.



The failure is mine, much more than it is yours.



After all, it falls to me to get your attention in the first place, and to make a persuasive case to you that it is worth your time and your effort and your energy to contribute articles or whatever, no matter what particular PBM publication I am publishing.



Perhaps along the way of this by-now lengthy journey, you've occasionally encountered something or other that you've liked and enjoyed or found interesting to read. If not, then my apologies.



Some of you out there reading this right now are relative newcomers, whereas others of you reading this have been with us every step of the way, or nearly so. And, too, there are those of you who joined us on this PBM journey somewhere in the middle.



Not everyone who subscribed reads what I publish, these days, and likewise, not everyone who reads what I publish these days have bothered to subscribe.



As much as anything, PBM Chaos is about providing a PBM presence for a PBM publication as it has ever been about publishing PBM articles. Tangible, recent evidence of life in PBM gaming, if you will. But kind of like a lighthouse, you only see it and become aware of it, if you somehow manage to find yourself within eyesight of the PBM light that emanates from it.



In spite of rumors about PBM being dead or dying, the actual reality is that parts of it are graveyard dead, while other parts of it aren't even in the remotest danger of dying anytime soon, if ever.



Several PBM companies, in fact, still hold some form of face-to-face type of gatherings with their PBM players. Reality Simulations, Inc., Game Systems International, and KJC Games spring immediately to mind. It's Duel2 players, Middle-earth PBM players, and Phoenix: Beyond the Stellar Empire players that primarily benefit from these occasional live PBM get-togethers.



If you are aware of other PBM get-togethers that I have inadvertently left out, be sure to write in and let me know who I missed. Do the DungeonWorld players attend any kind of Madhouse UK get-togethers, by chance?



Somewhere along the way over the last several years and decades, PBM companies pretty much weaned themselves off of PBM magazines. Of course, even when they still utilized PBM magazines, it's hard not to question whether or to what degree that PBM magazines benefited PBM companies, by serving as portals for new players to find them and become paying customers of entertainment in PBM form.



Two things in particular come to mind. One, none of us have any time. Two, time is money. Commercial PBM companies exist as for-profit entities. Thus, is it worth their time to bother with PBM magazines, at all, anymore? If not, then why would they or should they?



If PBM magazines ceased to be a good return on their investment at some point in the past, and if paid PBM advertising ceased to provide a good return on investment, also, then is it any wonder why PBM companies transitioned away from both of those things? What once was, may simply no longer be.



For all of my own PBM efforts, both past and present, maybe I have simply failed to provide an adequate replacement for the PBM magazines of old, and/or perhaps my chosen approaches have failed to resonate with PBM companies. In this day and age, have PBM publications simply been rendered obsolete? Regardless of why and the particulars, are PBM publications obsolete, and should they be relegated to the dustbin of history?



I'm not looking for sympathy. I'm looking for answers.



Because I have no time for such activities, I immediately relate to PBM companies and PBM GMs that have no time. Generally speaking, general appeals for PBM submissions tend to fail. Their failure rate is vastly greater than their success rate. Yet, even still, there are times when a general appeals for PBM submissions succeeds. Go figure!



The success rate of one-on-one direct appeals to PBM personalities greatly exceeds that of general appeals calling for submissions, by one and all. Yet, that one-on-one inquiry and direct appeal for something PBM-related to be submitted for inclusion into issues of whatever PBM publication is in question is far more of a time investment. It requires the expenditure of time on my part to contact PBM GMs or PBM Companies, and it requires the expenditure of time on their part to respond. And not all inquiries sent to PBM companies and PBM GMs ever get responded to. Maybe some of them sent out are never even received, and in those cases, it's as if those one-on-one direct appeals for submissions never really existed to begin with, on a practical level.



I don't have a desire to waste their time, and I don't want to waste my time. I'd have a hard time believing that they don't feel similarly.



And so, we have one of quite a few PBM conundrums that exist as part of the overall PBM reality. Whether we like it or not matters substantially less than whether we are prepared to do something of consequence about it.



How many PBM companies routinely send me lists of which of their PBM games are taking player sign-ups for new games? None. Absolutely zero.



Some of them, I have a way to obtain that kind of information for. Others, I don't.



For PBM games that are of the never-ending variety, there really are no sign-up lists, per se. But for closed-ended PBM games, those that will eventually end at some point, which is the majority of commercial PBM games still running, today, there has to be a way for players to sign-up.



And so it goes. . .on and on and on.



PBM publications are starved or hungry for content (always!), and PBM companies and PBM GMs attend to such matters in their own respective ways. So, if you ever wonder which PBM games you should sign up for, PBM publications are not your best source for that critical piece of PBM information. The harsh reality is that some commercial PBM games, these days, hardly ever even receive player sign-ups, anymore.



Welcome to PBM gaming in the 21st Century!



I am firmly of the belief, today, that the vast majority of what ails the commercial PBM industry is of the self-inflicted variety. But for some commercial PBM companies, they're still doing OK (or even better than OK), so all things considered, it still works for them.

And how do you argue with that?

Even if there are better ways to do some things in PBM, that doesn't automatically mean that people are inclined to change their habits and their ways. Like it or lump it, that's just the hard reality of PBM gaming, today.

I hope that you enjoyed Issue #50 of PBM Chaos, even though this issue isn't finished, yet, as I write this.

Charles Mosteller
Editor of PBM Chaos

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