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Message: <blockquote data-quote="talien" data-source="post: 7702184" data-attributes="member: 3285">The history of tabletop role-playing games is often dominated by Dungeons & Dragons and companies who hold brand licenses.  But there is another company that created not one but three types of new games: Flying Buffalo. In this series we take a look at each of these innovations and how they influenced the game industry.  For Flying Buffalo, it all begins with play-by-mail.[ATTACH=full]113556[/ATTACH] [PRBREAK][/PRBREAK][h=3]The Origins of Play-by-Mail[/h]Playing games with another player at a distance have been in existence for as long as there was communication between two parties. Correspondence chess -- in which chess players send each others' moves on a board they replicate at each location -- has been around for centuries. Diplomacy was the only multiplayer play-by-mail game with a referee that was regularly moderated, but not as a business, since the 1960s.  But it wasn't until Flying Buffalo got started that play-by-mail games were moderated by computers, allowing considerably more complex games to be played out.Founder Rick Loomis was frustrated playing games like Diplomacy, particularly with how it related to "fog of war" -- keeping players in the dark about each others' locations.  So he mad up a new one:While serving in the Army, Loomis came up with his answer to the first problem by removing the requirement for a referee:The second and third issues were finally tackled by the advent of new technology: Computers.[h=3]The Computer Revolution[/h]With his new game in hand, Loomis mailed postcards to the play-by-mail ads in Avalon Hill's The General magazine.  He soon found that his Nuclear Destruction game had over 200 players in it.Back then, using a computer for play-by-mail was revolutionary, as described by Jon Peterson in <a href="http://amzn.to/2eGFb8K" target="_blank">Playing at the World</a>:Other companies soon <a href="http://www.agentsofgaming.com/pbm.htm" target="_blank">joined in the fun</a>:Loomis witnessed the rise of an entire industry.  Many of those companies failed; in his article, <a href="http://www.flyingbuffalo.com/download/fbq79.pdf" target="_blank">Loomis discusses the challenges of running a PBM company</a>:Loomis uses the slogan "We Created the Play By Mail Industry" because he stakes his claim on being the first person to run a play-by-mail server as a full-time job. Built on that success, Flying Buffalo was incorporated in 1972.[h=3]The Buffalo Takes Off[/h]Loomis considered incorporating the word "Simulations" into the title of his new company at first, as he described in <a href="http://www.flyingbuffalo.com/download/fbq79.pdf" target="_blank">Flying Buffalo Quarterly #79</a>:Computers continued to influence the development of play-by-mail games with the spread of new communication channels, <a href="http://playbymail.net/pbmwiki/index.php/Main_Page#PBM_Hivemind_-_Where_PBM_Players_Gather" target="_blank">particularly the Internet</a>:[h=3]The RPG Legacy of PBM[/h]Play-by-mail has several advantages unique to the form: it offers a ready supply of opponents, is easier to schedule due to the asynchronous nature of each turn, and can handle more players than a tabletop game over the span of several years. And yet, it's entirely possible to play a role-playing game in the PBM format, <a href="http://www.rollingthunder.com/WhatisPBM.htm" target="_blank">albeit at a much slower pace</a>.Flying Buffalo was keenly aware of the popularity of Dungeons & Dragons and its impact on play-by-mail.  The opportunities seemed endless and, for the right company, potentially lucrative.  It turns out that there was a demand for play-by-mail role-playing games, but not everyone was up to the challenge:.Play-by-mail <a href="http://playbymail.net/pbmwiki/index.php/Main_Page#PBM_Hivemind_-_Where_PBM_Players_Gather" target="_blank">continues on in a wide variety of formats</a>, with the "mail" replaced by web, email, or even browser-based social games that take place on Twitter:The role-playing game revolution was not lost on Loomis.  In the next installment we'll look at Flying Buffalo's tabletop RPG innovation...a D&D-inspired game titled Tunnels & Trolls.SaveSave</blockquote>

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