Since returning to the hobby in 2018, I’ve attended two funerals for play-by-mail games. The first funeral was for Fantasy Tribe by Jeff Perkins, in the summer of 2018. This was a difficult funeral to attend, as I traveled on a long flight to Australia, only to learn upon my arrival that the funeral was […]
This is the first in a series of posts to the Suspense & Decision blog where I present an overview of some of the amazing publications from PBM history, sent to me by Edmund Hack. For a summary of this collection, please read my prior blog post, “A Collection of PBM History“. One of the […]
Ok…this is not a particularly impressive photo by any standards. I know that. I was too excited and impatient to stage this in such a way that I would given accolades for my skills as a photographer. What you are looking at is the contents of two boxes I received from Edmund Hack today. The […]
The stark reality is that more of the PBM hobby is behind us than in front us. Most of the articles in Suspense & Decision relate to the few PBM topics that are relevant today. It only makes sense that someone covers the irrelevant…err…nostalgic aspects of the hobby, as well, right? One of the things […]
As of this writing, I am playing in a Galac-Tac PBM game using the name/email account of “Neil York”. In the recent past, I briefly played in Phoenix: Beyond the Stellar Empire as “Kevin Neal”. My real name is neither “Neil York” or “Kevin Neal”. If you have read this far, you are probably wondering, […]
PBM gaming continues to suffer from under-exposure. This is true both outside PBM circles, as well as within and across the current PBM player base. There are various causes for this, of course, and there is no magical cure all for what ails the play by mail gaming industry and hobby. On the media front, […]
Raven Zachary, the most important man in PBM as I have called him on occasion, was nice enough to tidy up the list of back issues of Suspense & Decision magazine that I created for this new blog site. As I prepare to head out and find some lunch, today, I pause long enough to […]
In The Research Column, Raven Zachary explores a new topic of research in the play-by-mail gaming hobby and shares his findings in each issue of Suspense & Decision magazine. Welcome to a new column I will be writing for Suspense & Decision magazine. If you haven’t figured this out by now from my prior articles, […]
Are you looking for a game to play? Check out the new Suspense & Decision Games Index. It’s an alphabetical index of all known turn-based, play-by-mail (PBM), and play-by-email (PBeM) games actively operated, compiled by me with help from PBM companies, gamemasters, and players around the world. All games included in the index have been […]
The month of March 2021 is still fresh, and the vast majority of this year is yet to come. I do know that it can be disheartening to see or to experience what seems to be little to no change on the play by mail gaming front, but like many things in life, a lot […]