What are PBMs you ask? Well I have mentioned them before; they are ‘play by mail’ games. All but dead now, they were much bigger in the 1980s and frequently advertised in Dragon. Today’s post showcases a few of these ads.
Here is a standard ad, chosen because the game was ran from an office (home?) in Cohoes, NY (which is where we used to live):
Expensive isn’t it? $15 to startup. They don’t even mention the cost per turn in that ad, which would be $3, or $6 monthly. Crasimoff’s World ended up having a longer life than most PBMs. In fact it is still played today!
This next advert is for a computer moderated game with excessive (in my opinion) costs for what was probably a very dry and basic game. Note that the better you play, the more you pay!
As with all things in this genre, licensed PBMs seemed to be quite popular as well. I have no idea how successful they were, but I would have to imagine very if they hoped to turn a profit. By far the most advertised was this one:
I can’t even imagine the job of moderating what a game in which the players just submit fanfiction as their turn!
Here is another licensed game, no doubt born from the popularity of the films that came out in that era:
Free setup and rules? Turn costs must have been excessive.
The last advert for today is truly mind boggling. Think of one of the most unlikely licensed properties for a PBM, and then tell me if this is even lower down your list:
The mind boggles doesn’t it?