Many still do.
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Dead tree paper mail??
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I believe so. I must admit I haven’t in many, many years.
Yup. Brief Google shows this one is still going:
http://reality.com/hwprul1.htm
There are apparently at least a few more:
http://playbymail.net/pbmwiki/index.php/Main_Page
But yes, I think most are by email now which I can’t help but think is a bit of a shame.
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I am reminded of a play-by-email En Garde game that many of my friends and I were engaged in. The triggering event for a huge battle between factions was the sabotage of my character’s (Jacques Hughes) impending marriage and his death in the resulting duel to the death. Good times. Years later I was talking to somebody in an unrelated context and mentioned this and she said “YOU were Jacques Hughes?”
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I’m having a hard time visualizing how a play by mail game functions. I’m sure i could look it up but its friday and i’m feeling particularly lazy.
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You know those old movies where they want to show that the clever guy is clever by showing him looking at a letter while standing in front of a chess board?
That’s play by mail.
You write down your move and mail it to the other player. He makes his move and mails it to you.
You can do it with board-games, war games, role playing, pretty much anything. Tennis might be a bit difficult.
It can then be made much more complicated by having multiple players and a games master who is the only person who knows what everyone is up to.
Sounds complicated, think i’m good with playing D&D online. I’d like to eventually be able to play in person with a group of people, i’m new to the whole thing and i’ve been playing on Roll20 with some gaming friends 
it’s been interesting
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And kids today complain about laggy games!
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Yeah, I’m not sure how well that sort of role-playing would work.
It’s great for things that move in (longer) turns anyway and for things like war-games.
Think more domain-level play rather than hacking up a few goblins.
Something like this for example:
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In this case each turn represented one month. The orders that you gave were a combination of specific, rule based actions that you were performing each week (to include pre-plotting the moves in any possible duel) and a narrative description of them. Eg. in the rules “hold a party” was an action, and in one instance, I described my “party” as a jeau-de-peaume* tournament. The referee would send out both tabular results of each characters social standing, current rank and regiment etc… and a narrative account of what happened that month.
*“court tennis” as seen in the movie 'The four musketeers"
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in the early 80s, an AI was banned from
a battle fleet war game tournament.
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Diplomacy already incorporates the “write down your move” mechanism.
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I understood the bit about Traveller. The rest: whoosh…
I did gather that he’s spent years feeding data into computers in the hope of getting them to think like people and that the article mentions that other people who have also spent years feeding different data into machines in the hope that it’ll make them think like people believe that his idea that feeding lots of data into machines will get them to think like people is wrong.
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Yes, that’s why I mentioned it.
Maybe it wasn’t the best article. I recall at the time it was an attempt to use evolutionary problem soving. Where the battle fleets that won a game were fed back as data to generate a next generation.
I played Eve for about a year, first solo for a few months and then joined a corporation. Takes almost that long to grasp enough of the game. It does have something for almost everyone (e.g. both PvE and PvP). I love the Machiavellian shenanigans that seem to spawn with regularity and the complex in-game economy. I did not have the time to invest properly so I gave it up.
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No, no the article is fine!
I just don’t have the knowledge or vocabulary to understand even half of it
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A correction: while eve has a way to buy in-game assets with real money, there is no way to get money back out of the game again that complies with the EULA.
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They do mention that in the article. It does take a while for them to stop gushing about “OMG the $$$” before they do though
Diplomacy is the worst. The Worst!
I mean, it’s brilliantly conceived and a fantastic strategy game, but if you haven’t played it… imagine losing a game of monopoly. Okay, ready for the second turn? You now lost a second whole game of monopoly. How you feeling? Ready for the next 20 rounds?
By the end of it, one of your friends will look like Martin Schkrelli.
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