Old Play by mail (email) games…



Ok – not work related, but… I was remembering with one of my brother’s a computer game we played maybe 10 years ago that was a strategy game and had a neat play by email feature. The game was turn based, we’d make a move and it had a handy link to email the game info to each other and I think we went back and forth with it for several weeks. It was really quite an entertaining way to deal with the game. Now, today, with realtime strategy games, online multiplayer communities, etc. play by email seems a bit dated, but for many turn based games this would be one feature I’d LOVE to see more of.


One of past-times as I was growing up was playing strategy games and other board games. My brothers were a good deal older than me, so most of the time I was playing against myself which can be challanging, tedious, and nothing like playing against another person. The few times we got to play against each other were very entertaining. Different strategies, etc… Now, today there is pretty much no opportunity for us to get together to do that, I doubt we could co-ordinate any time to have an online simultaneous game, but play by mail would have lot’s of possibilites.

Anyway, as I was remembering, I tracked down the game (Medieval War) – medwar.zip or medwar16.zip as it was called, is still available for download out there. (From what I’ve tested it runs under WINE on linux.) I found it on a list of “favorite smallware” which referenced that and a variation on it called “Declaration of War”.

I also ran across the PBM archive (Play by mail) which gave an access problem, and the Play by email games homepage. It’s a while since I’ve noticed a play-by-mail feature in a game, but it would be a welcome addition to the featureset of ANY turn based game strategy or otherwise…

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