The Unseen Servant forums

More antique play-by-mail-post games...

From Zenopus Archives

My kids love the maze one.
Thanks for posting these!!
--Ron--

These are great posts! The play by mail was the precursor to play by post!
My game shop in the early 80 was called 'The Military Shop' and was about two miles away. I'd ride my bike there with a few bucks in my pocket and buy modules. I'd sit and read the back, describing the adventure, taking what seemed like hours to decide on the best one for me and my friends. I was almost always the DM.

Yeah, I didn't need to do by-post back then but I was curious. Not curious enough though to pay per-move money. The scale of those campaigns seem bigger than today's PbPs, a function of a company vs. an individual running it I suppose.

Play-by-post (mail) games of yore...

From 40 Years of Gen Con

That's a pretty heavy hitting group in that photo!

From an old Dragon back when play-by-mail was big.

This is some amazing stuff! That group picture a few posts back really made my day--a heavy-hitting group indeed

There is a fascinating auction going on at eBay with rare TSR history...

http://www.ebay.com/sch/the_collectors_ ... g=&_sop=10



This Special Christmas Auction combines items from the collections of artists and game designers Jim and Laura Roslof, Dave Arneson, Ernie Gygax, Dave Sutherland, Darlene, Steve Marsh, Zeb Cook, Kevin Hendryx, Mike Mornard, and Dennis Sustare! Also include will be some fantastic rares from my own collection!

The auction will include over 300 lots having some of the rarest and most sought after RPG and wargaming rules, books, accessories, and newsletters. Included will be numerous products by the various companies these designers and artists worked with and designed for such as: TSR, Judges Guild, Adventure Games, Chaosium, Gorgonstar, Metagaming, FASA, FGU, GDW, Steve Jackson Games, and many others. Highlights of the auction will include manuscripts, inscribed and autographed copies, editorial and review copies, author's and comp copies, and personal play and reading copies!

From a Margaret Weis Facebook post

$20 to start and $4/turn? I know what I'm going to do if I ever get around to running a game here!

Wish I was good enough a game master to charge them prices! LOL

My secret dream is to grow my game to the point where I can start charging monthly subscription prices--turn it into a sort of analog World of Warcraft and quit my day job

(just kidding, players, just kidding)

Was anyone here playing when D&D kids practiced Witch craft and demon worship in the sewers? Ah, the good old days...

My high school actually had a large series of meetings hosted by the county sheriff for community members to learn about "identifying suicide risks in teens", where the prime three factors were "interest in the occult, listening to heavy metal music, and playing D&D".

It's funny, because all the folks I used to listen to heavy metal music and play D&D with are all engineers, academics and teachers (and all still alive), while most of the actual student deaths we had were athletes and preppy kids drinking and driving.

My mother came to the first meeting with me and when the sheriff started talking about the pernicious influence of D&D, she stood up and declaimed loudly that the most powerful class in D&D is the Paladin, who serves holy and noble causes. Of course, she was a super munchkin and she knew that RP baloney was just a speed bump to REAL ABSOLUTE POWER, but it was a funny sight.

Living in NY it wasn't a big deal for me. "D&D is bad mojo" really wasn't a thing there. The only one of our friends who was a little weirded out by it, had known since Middle School that he was going to be a Franciscan Monk, the Catholic Church hadn't really said yay or nay on D&D, but he still played. Of course we also introduced him to beer... he lasted a little while in the Philippines at the monastery but got in trouble for giving his food away to the poor. So he changed his plans to become a parish priest; still good I thought - dude will help me get into Heaven still! His parents looked at me funny after that, as I was the face of our small group of friends to them, they were very religious - two of my buddy's sisters had become nuns, one of them cloistered. Then after a couple of our annual "fishing" trips to Montauk (the seven of us have been going since 1988 - never fished - smoked a lot of cigars and drank a lot of beer and Irish whisky, but no fishing) we found out he had had a girlfriend for 6 months and they kept their relationship secret from everyone!

Anyway, last time I was back on Long Island, I DMed "The Illhedrin Book" for he and his wife (his first and only girlfriend), and their four sons!

Dang... I'm going to hell.

Anyway, later when I found out about all this hoopla and the Chick Tracts, it just made me sad honestly.

People in pain don't need extra pushing away. Blaming the heavy metal, drugs or D&D for someone hurting themselves is ignoring the inner turmoil of the person in pain, in need. I guess at least parents thought they were helping by trying to keep D&D from harming their kids... but they weren't getting to the route of the problem. Ah well... [/soapbox]

My three oldest girls have all started playing around 7yo (maybe the 13yo and 10yo a little earlier, but the 7yo just started playing) and the 4yo already loves rolling the dice and has talked about wanting to play. It's been a joy to share this with them; they started playing because it's something their daddy loves to do, but they enjoy it on their own now as well. It's only brought good to my household. [/ferrealzendofsoapbox]