Play by Mail, and programs in magazines

[Murph]

I came across some old advertisements for Play by Mail computer games (ny my copies of the Journal) from an outfit called Central Texas Computing, Inc in Austin, Texas! The game was called Universe III. Also I found a magazine article (Challenge #25) with a BASIC program for generating Traveller sector maps. Traveller was an old school role-playing game. The program was written in Applesoft BASIC. I remember those PBM games, you sent in your turn, and paid your fee (typically $2-5 per turn) with turn results back in a week or so for you to make your next moves. Anyone remember these things? Back in the day $2-$5 was a LOT of money for weekly turns, especially if you were a broke college student. But they ran these things on mainframe computers.

Also anyone remember the ever excellent BYTE magazine? I had dozens, possibly over 100 issues of this thing at the house at one point. I loved Computing at Chaos Manor by Jerry Pournelle. Geez, I am old!

 

[kilemall]

I think Dunnigan still runs the Hundred Years War one.

 

[agorski]

I've still got 4 issues of Byte from 1977.

There were tons of those Play-By-Mail games and they were all hideously expensive and usually not very good experiences.

 

[aramis]

I've still got 4 issues of Byte from 1977.

There were tons of those Play-By-Mail games and they were all hideously expensive and usually not very good experiences.

Flying Buffalo was still running PBMs until Rick's death, and a few months beyond. I don't know if Webbed Sphere (their new owner) is still doing them. Some were being done by email since the late 90's.

 

[Straybow]

All my mags went the way of the recycling center long ago. It was hard to pry my packrat hands open when I dumped them in...

Yep, I remember Computing at the Chaos Manor. Pournelle is sorely missed. But I am not old [bangs cane on floor], dangnabbit!