PBEM?????

[Guest rick614]

I've been reading the posting here for about 5 nights and playing the demo for a couple of weeks. I pre-ordered CM 2 nights ago. I got into combat sims with Reforger 88 on my Apple IIe in 1985 but know absolutely nothing about on-line gaming. This is bugging the heck out of me so I have to ask.

What does PBEM stand for. Can anyone direct me to a site where I can learn something about on-line gaming

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rick614

[Guest John Maragoudakis]

Play by email.

[Hawk]

In the begining there was PBM ("play by mail" games). You paid, say $1 US (or whatever) pr turn, which you sent to the GM (game master) using standard mail. He or she then (after collecting the turns from all players) then implamented all the orders and sent a report back to the players. This could be strategy games, roleplaying, sports etc. etc.

After the internet made it possible to quickly send data to each other, it was only natural that the PBM community used it instead of ordinary mail. Still, PBeM games are turnbased games.

Online games are often used to describe games where the user playes a game in realtime with other human players on the internet. The most common are probably action games (like "Quake", "Half-Life", "Rainbow 6" etc), realtime strategy games ("Command and Conquer", "Total Annihilation" etc), flight sims and many other types.

To find out more, I suggest you perform a search on the web for PBeM games ("pbem" and/or "online game" should give you quite a number of hits ). You can also go to

http://www.cdmag.com/Home/content/online.html

and use that as a starting point on your road to pbem knowledge. There are probably loads of other sites as well (and someone here is bound to know a few).

Good luck!

Hawk

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Our's is not to reason "why", our's is but to do and die!