I've not been overwhelmed by post, but my own game Libertador is going on quite well, and it's proving a few interesting points. The first point is that rule books should be carefully proof read, checked and then reread, because what they say is almost always not what is meant. The second point is that even when the rule book does say what is meant, the players won't read it - they will skim over it and do what seems to them to be sensible. The third point is that wargamers are not always very interested in fighting each other, when the crunch comes. It's something that Mike Buttle remarked on long ago, in a letter to me, and he is quite right. I think it's something about the uncertainty and the risk. In the game itself, nothing very much is happening as yet.
I've been occupying myself with designing another game, based on the war in the 1860s of Paraguay vs. the Triple Alliance of Argentina, Brazil, and Uruguay. The Triple Alliance won, of course, but it took six years and when you look more closely at the situation, there was no "of course" about it. For a start off, Argentina and Brazil had been fighting for forty years over Uruguay, and it took a good deal of tactlessness to get them all on the same side. Brazil and Argentina were large countries, but they both had severe political problems and concentrating on the war was a royal road to political disaster, whereas Paraguay was firmly united under a dictator with considerable military skill. The game is map-based, with QBASIC logistics and loyalty programs, and SSI's Age of Rifles (as recently recommended in Lone Warrior) to work out the battles. Anyone interested?
Why play a game by mail? Surely, it's a lot of work to no good end? Actually, there is quite a lot of sense behind those questions. Most miniature games and board games (other than the most simple in structure, if not necessarily depth) involve a great deal of information. On the tabletop, this information is quickly and easily assimilated at a glance, but copying it all down and sending it through the post for someone else to transfer onto the table again? Anyone who has had to transport a big board game from one place to another will have an idea of the sheer work involved - and no inclination to do it for pleasure. Computerised games do sometimes have the facility to export data to other machines, allowing play by mail or modem - so long as you wish to play that game and your opponent also possesses it.
On the other hand, what real-life commander ever had access to all that vast array of information, anyway? The exact map co-ordinates of each unit, together with its morale, munitions and deployment status? Half of the battles ever fought would have turned out very differently if the commanders had known that, with the result that the games based on the battles have to be engineered ("fudged" if you like) to ensure that they work out like something approximating to the real thing. And the other major problem that real-life commanders have had to face is a set of subordinates who do that which seems right in their own eyes. That doesn't work out too well in tabletop games because at close quarters, it's very difficult to stop the CinC from pressuring his colleagues to do what he sees as essential. In the real world, colleagues can contrive to be elsewhere and to avoid the pressure.
Play by mail (PBM) gives an opportunity to address some of these issues that cannot be handled satisfactorily on the tabletop. To start off, one needs an umpire or game master who does not play directly, but has a number of compensating entertainment's. The umpire holds centrally all the information on the game, and doles it out to players when and if circumstances permit. It is possible to have secrets from both sides in a PBM game, so that if they don't bother to investigate, both Alexander Nevsky and the Teutonic Knights end up discovering the hard way that the ice on Lake Peipus is not yet thick enough to carry men. It can be taken for granted that players will want as much information as they can get, but a GM soon evolves ways to ration the demands - one way is to ask for a justification for how the player would know. Another way is to allocate a certain (unrevealed) time to handling queries from each player and to stop answering when time is up. A few detailed answers or a wider range of vague answers is all that the player is entitled to, and if he (or possibly she) complains, the simple answer is that the game is run to scale in time, space and information.
This is probably one area where the umpire has to take a firm line, because those of their players who are control freaks will want to know everything and that is a) unrealistic b) exhausting for the umpire. In fact, ignorance can probably be extended to the rules as well. The GM may need to know the full details of how to adjudicate the results of the charge of the Light Brigade, but Generals Raglan, Lucan, and Cardigan just need to know that riding headlong at guns is not usually considered a good idea (in real life, ironically enough, they did know that much).
There are some purely practical benefits to PBM as well. Anyone who has played a tabletop game will know the feeling as midnight (real time) approaches and the fighting for the Meuse bridges teeters on a knife edge and the Panzer commander goes over his calculations AGAIN! In PBM, it doesn't matter. The umpire has set a deadline, and the players can calculate as much as they like so long as they don't miss that deadline, without the pressure of "I have to get up tomorrow morning" and "Why is everyone else glaring at me?"
The organisational problems of finding a mutually convenient time to meet, noticeable enough with two busy people and growing exponentially when there are more than two, can be forgotten. Anyone, anywhere in the world, who is reached by the postal service (or e-mail) within the turnaround time can join in, so there is not the usual problem of finding players within convenient travelling distance of the venue.
How to Run
This is all very well, but how do you set about running a PBM campaign? Well, the first thing is to pick a topic that interests you, some issue that you would like to see explored - how the West was won, why Romanus Diogenes fought at Manzikert, whether a May start to Barbarossa would have meant a German victory in Russia. It doesn't matter, so long as other people will play. Then identify key factors that have in your view have to be built into the system, and a few other "chrome" items for fun (like hearings of the Committee of Public Safety in a game on the French Revolutionary Wars - odds are that they'll never matter, but you might be surprised).
The next thing is to decide how you will adjudicate on the impact of the key factors and of the decisions of the players - commercial rules may well be the means of saving a lot of time if they can be dovetailed into your game. If nothing else, you can send to the rules any players who want to go into details which are not entirely irrelevant and would certainly be known, but are too much of a workload for you. Even if commercial rules are not used in their entirety, they may suggest useful mechanisms for other rules.
At the same time, you have to be assembling the facts that will set the scene, because there is no point in devising rules to handle a level of factual detail that you do not actually possess e.g. horses fed on grain can do more work than horses fed on grass, but if you don't know and can't guess how much more work, there is no point in keeping tabs on the proportion of grain in the diet of the cavalry horses - it will make no difference to the campaign.
It is quite a task to assemble the data. Either you glean it from history books, none of which ever give all the information that you want, in the form you want (and what's more, they may not agree with each other) or you make it up. If the game is set in an imaginary world, the data has to be invented, but even in the real world it may be necessary to use your skill and judgement to fill in the gaps. Either way, the invention has to be plausible - no-one will believe in a General von Manstein commanding hobbit levies or Byzantine cataphracts, or in muskets firing 30 rounds per minute. Inherent military probability is fair enough, so long as it is probable. So know your subject.
Next thing is to produce an edited version of the facts for the consumption of the players. They certainly don't have full or even accurate information on the enemy, and the same is true to a large extent of their own side. It is fair enough to feed them false assessments of the capabilities of their troops and generals, but if historically there was evidence to the contrary, it is also fair to hint at the opposite e.g. "The cavalry are the elite of the army. Only a few fanatical archers think otherwise." And a double bluff is always possible. At this time, you need to be deciding whether players have to communicate through you (which means work, but allows editing, censorship and all the hazards of real life communication) or whether you will supply names and addresses to permit direct communication. All the briefings then have to be drawn together, along with a scenario description, or flier, before you head out in search of players.
Magazines like Lone Warrior and Flagship (which deals with commercial PBM games) will provide a place to advertise, or you may know of a wargames club. Players will come in eventually. A warning. Do not be tempted to cut corners by asking the players to design parts of the game (most likely their own area) for you. There are two reasons for this. Firstly, if they understand this area better than you do (whether they have conveyed this understanding to you or not) they are going to be aggrieved if your adjudication doesn't match their opinion. Secondly, if you haven't the time to design it, you haven't the time to run it.
Game Starts
Then the game starts. Each of the players sends in orders for a period of game time on or before the deadline that you have set (and it may be reasonable to give a game bonus for those who send in orders early, by allowing them to gain the initiative. Not only does it simulate the trade-off of speed of response against completeness of information in real life, it saves you from a vast surge of orders at the last moment). The umpire evaluates the effect of the orders and sends back a situation report for each player - possibly with a campaign newsletter with public news and player propaganda. Another warning. You will find that some of your players do not contribute to the game when it starts - they don't like it or they can't master it or they are too busy or they are too disorganised/idle. The courteous ones will write and resign, which is fair enough. The others will waste the time and money of yourself and the other players. Keep to the game deadlines rather than waiting for them, and after due warning, drop them ruthlessly.
Players are imaginative people. Sometimes they imagine that they have detected an error or inconsistency in the facts or the adjudication's presented. Sometimes they are quite right, in which case it is sensible to acknowledge the fact and to adjust matters for the future. For game purposes, clearly there has been an error by some subordinate who may resign in contrition, or retire to a darkened room with bottle of whisky and revolver in hand, depending on the seriousness of the lapse. On the other hand, you may have to be firm and hold your position - if you consider that you are right, you are the umpire and your interpretation stands. This may involve tact and diplomacy, if you have to keep something secret from the player concerned.
Players are imaginative people. Sometimes they think of a course of action that is perfectly justifiable, but isn't covered by the rules. The easiest way out is to say, "That isn't possible in this campaign", and the next easiest way is to come up with a rationalisation of why it won't work. The most satisfactory way is to extend the rules so that it is possible to do it.
The campaign rolls on until it reaches a natural conclusion - the war ends, the players all drop out, the umpire gets tired of the effort. At this point comes the last task - the valedictory, where the umpire sums up the campaign, revealing the truth as he knows it. If there are lessons to be learned, now is the time to learn them, or to argue about them.
Very few people who play out a game through PBM come out thinking that the concept is a bad one - they may damn the game and/or the umpire, but they see the potential of the approach. If you want a feel for the real problems of command, try Play By Mail.
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