# Play-by-Mail Games - Genre: Tabletop genre - Date: 1963 postal Diplomacy; 1970 commercial PBM; peak 1980s; email from the 1990s - Canonical: https://www.lanternhall.org/atlas/play-by-mail/ > Strategy by envelope: write your orders on a turn sheet, mail them off, and wait two weeks for a computer printout to tell you whether your fleet survived and which of thirty strangers betrayed you. **Why it matters:** Play-by-mail games were the first persistent, many-player game worlds run by a machine, and their turn sheets, fees and letter-writing alliances anticipated the online worlds of BBS door games, MUDs and MMORPGs. ## Quick answers **What is Play-by-Mail Games?** Strategy by envelope: write your orders on a turn sheet, mail them off, and wait two weeks for a computer printout to tell you whether your fleet survived and which of thirty strangers betrayed you. **What are the hallmarks of Play-by-Mail Games?** Turns submitted by post, with results mailed back weeks later; A central moderator, human or computer, who resolves everyone's orders at once; Many players, often dozens, who may never meet; Secret orders and simultaneous resolution; Diplomacy and alliance-making carried on by letter; Fees per turn, and games that could last months or years. **When did Play-by-Mail Games emerge?** 1963 postal Diplomacy; 1970 commercial PBM; peak 1980s; email from the 1990s. ## What it is A play-by-mail (PBM) game is played through the post. Each player receives a turn report, decides on orders (move these armies, build that starship, send this letter to the Duke), writes them on a turn sheet, and mails it to a moderator. When every player's orders are in, the moderator resolves them simultaneously and mails back new reports. A single turn might take two or three weeks; a game might last years. The simplest PBM games are two players exchanging chess moves by letter, a practice centuries old. The genre that matters here is the **multiplayer moderated game**: dozens of strangers in one shared world, with a central game master (increasingly a computer) holding the true state of that world and revealing to each player only what their units can see. Some games were **closed-ended**, finishing when someone won; others were **open-ended**, running indefinitely as players came and went. ## Origins The hobby's traditional starting point is 1963, when John Boardman of New York began running games of Allan Calhamer's *Diplomacy* (first published 1959) by mail, recruiting players through his science fiction fanzine. Diplomacy was ideal for the post: it has no dice, its moves are written orders resolved simultaneously, and its heart is negotiation, which letters served perfectly. Fanzines devoted to postal Diplomacy multiplied through the 1960s. The commercial industry began in Arizona. In January 1970 Rick Loomis founded [Flying Buffalo](https://www.lanternhall.org/houses/flying-buffalo/) to run his multiplayer game *Nuclear Destruction*, and professional moderation followed in 1971. In 1972 Loomis bought a Raytheon 704 minicomputer, with 4,000 words of memory, a teletypewriter and a paper-tape reader, to process turns, making PBM one of the first places where ordinary people played games run by a computer. Flying Buffalo's *Starweb*, a 15-player game of exploring and conquering a galaxy, followed in the mid-1970s and became arguably the best-known PBM game in history, winning multiple Origins Awards. In 1975 Flying Buffalo also became the publisher of [Ken St. Andre](https://www.lanternhall.org/makers/ken-st-andre/)'s [Tunnels & Trolls](https://www.lanternhall.org/works/tunnels-and-trolls/), tying PBM to the young roleplaying hobby. ## Evolution Fantasy and roleplaying soon flooded the mails. Schubel & Son entered the field around 1976 with *Tribes of Crane*, and it and Starweb were the most popular PBM games of 1980. The 1980s were the golden age: hundreds of startup companies appeared, most running computer-moderated games; dedicated magazines appeared in 1983, including *Paper Mayhem* in the United States and *Flagship* in Britain; and Reality Simulations launched *Hyborian War* (1985), in which up to 36 players ruled the kingdoms of [Robert E. Howard](https://www.lanternhall.org/makers/robert-e-howard/)'s [Hyborian Age](https://www.lanternhall.org/works/conan-the-cimmerian/), a game still running decades later. Recognition followed: Starweb won the 1984 Charles S. Roberts Award for best play-by-mail game and later a string of Origins Awards, and Hyborian War took the Origins Award for best PBM game as late as 2008. Players built their own culture of letters, newsletters and alliances, and some games kept the same rivals corresponding for years. For many, the long wait between turns was part of the pleasure: two weeks to plot, negotiate and dread the printout. The economics were unforgiving: players paid per turn (typically $3–5 in 1986), and more than 90 percent of PBM companies eventually folded. In the early 1990s email began to replace the envelope, giving rise to play-by-email (PBEM) games; *Diplomacy* had been played by email since *The Armchair Diplomat* appeared on CompuServe in 1983. At the same time, dial-up [BBS Door Games](https://www.lanternhall.org/culture/bbs-door-games/) such as [Legend of the Red Dragon](https://www.lanternhall.org/works/legend-of-the-red-dragon/) carried the PBM model of limited daily turns in a persistent shared world onto home modems. Real-time multiplayer worlds, first the [MUDs (Multi-User Dungeons)](https://www.lanternhall.org/atlas/mud/) and then the [MMORPGs](https://www.lanternhall.org/atlas/mmorpg/), eventually drew away much of the audience, though a small community endures: a 2021 index still listed 72 active PBM, PBEM and turn-based games, and Starweb was still being offered by post and email that year. ## How to tell it apart **Versus play-by-post roleplaying.** Play-by-post games, run on forums or email lists, are asynchronous [Tabletop Roleplaying Games](https://www.lanternhall.org/atlas/tabletop-rpg/) sessions: players write their characters' actions in prose and a human game master narrates in reply. PBM games are strategic simulations resolved by rules, and usually by software, with players issuing orders rather than narration. **Versus the wargame.** Many PBM games are [wargames](https://www.lanternhall.org/atlas/wargame/) in content, but the postal form changed their character: fog of war is total, turns are simultaneous, and diplomacy by letter matters as much as tactics. **Versus the MUD and MMORPG.** Both host persistent many-player worlds, but a [MUDs (Multi-User Dungeons)](https://www.lanternhall.org/atlas/mud/) or [MMORPGs](https://www.lanternhall.org/atlas/mmorpg/) runs in real time with players present together; a PBM world advances in discrete turns, weeks apart. PBM invented the shared world; online games made it live. ## Where to start - *Diplomacy* by email or web: the living descendant of the 1963 postal hobby. - *Starweb* — offered by Rick Loomis PBM Games, by post or email, as of 2021. - *Hyborian War* — for a taste of Howard's Conan world as grand strategy. - For the online inheritance, visit [BBS Door Games](https://www.lanternhall.org/culture/bbs-door-games/), [Legend of the Red Dragon](https://www.lanternhall.org/works/legend-of-the-red-dragon/) and [MUD1](https://www.lanternhall.org/works/mud1/), then the chapter [Online Worlds: From MUD1 to World of Warcraft](https://www.lanternhall.org/chronicle/online-worlds/). ## Hallmarks - Turns submitted by post, with results mailed back weeks later - A central moderator, human or computer, who resolves everyone's orders at once - Many players, often dozens, who may never meet - Secret orders and simultaneous resolution - Diplomacy and alliance-making carried on by letter - Fees per turn, and games that could last months or years ## Facts - The play-by-mail hobby is traced to 1963, when John Boardman began running postal Diplomacy, recruiting through his science fiction fanzine Knowable; his game flyers became the zine Graustark. - Rick Loomis founded [Flying Buffalo](https://www.lanternhall.org/houses/flying-buffalo/) in January 1970 to moderate his multiplayer PBM game Nuclear Destruction. - In 1972 Loomis bought a Raytheon 704 minicomputer with 4,000 words of memory to process turns. - Starweb, Flying Buffalo's 15-player game of galactic conquest, was still offered by post and email in 2021, more than 45 years after its launch. - In 1986 the most common price was US$3–5 per turn; in 1990 the average turnaround was two to three weeks. - Hyborian War (1985) let up to 36 players rule the kingdoms of Robert E. Howard's Conan setting. - Hundreds of PBM companies started in the 1980s; more than 90 percent eventually folded. ## Sources and further reading - [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Play-by-mail_game) - [Wikipedia: Starweb](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starweb) - [Wikipedia: Hyborian War](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyborian_War) --- From The Lantern Hall (https://www.lanternhall.org/), a museum of fantasy literature and roleplaying games.