Re: Lost Forever Games

On Sat, 21 Jun 2025 09:44:45 -0700, Dimensional Traveler
<dtravel@sonic.net> wrote:

On 6/21/2025 12:58 AM, JAB wrote:

On 19/06/2025 16:01, Spalls Hurgenson wrote:

On Thu, 19 Jun 2025 09:06:05 +0100, JAB <noway@nochance.com> wrote:

On 18/06/2025 16:51, Spalls Hurgenson wrote:

>

I wonder if there are any modern games still offering PBEM support.

>

The Field of Glory II games do have a PBEM option but it's more
integrated into the game and uses Slitherine's servers to exchange the
'e-mails' for each turn.

>
I don't know why, but that makes me weirdly happy that such an old
game-play model is still supported. I'm halfway tempted to install the
game just to try it out.
>

For old school features try Conflict of Heroes: Awakening the Bear. That
has the option of a dice cam. As its name suggests you get a dice cup,
position your camera over it and then roll the dice.
 
If you want the blend of modern and new then you can get physical dice
(with LED's of course) that know what number was rolled and then
transfer that to a VTT. They are stupidly expensive and there's been
concerns raised about how unbiased they are compared to a normal die.
 

Ask anyone who played tabletop games and they will tell you that all
dice are biased against the player(s).  ;)

Which is only fair, since the players are biased against the GM.


GM: <describes location with obvious continuation of adventure
     to the south>

     Players: Let's go the other way in the direction where
              nothing  has been prepared!!
     Players: Shall we split the party?
     Players: Let's kill the friendly NPCs!
     Players: I want to spend ten minutes investigating this
              perfectly ordinary rock for no apparent reason.

GM: <takes a match to prepared adventure and gets ready for
     'one of those days'>
;-)


(Although, seriously, players doing stuff like that --while obviously
frustrating-- is one of the things I love about tabletop gaming.
Anyway, most of the time my group 'played along' with the adventure
rather than try to hamstring me as DM. When they did go 'off the
rails', we still had fun. In fact, my major complaint wasn't that they
were abandoning the quest, but by going elsewhere they were going to
have a less quality experience because I hadn't put as much effort
into the unknown territory in which they were headed.

(Although I later learned from this, which is why I tended to
over-write all my planned adventures and even a simple 'dungeon crawl'
ended up being a 200 page essay. ;-P)

Going back a step, when we briefly tried playing by 'email' (as I
described in an earlier post in this thread), one of my concerns was
how to handle die rolls. I was worried the players would feel I was
fudging the rolls to favor 'my' preffered outcomes and was considering
all sorts of alternatives which would let them see the rolls were
properly randomized. But one player put a stop to all that by telling
me that they trusted me to be fair, which I thought quite endearing.
But why else play with somebody else if you don't have even that
modicum of trust? That's why the "die roll scanner" described above
strikes me as slightly offensive.

But I also realize that when it came to players, I was pretty lucky in
the group(s) I got. There are probably a lot of jerks out there but
for the most part, I avoided 'em.