The Basics Section

Back to the Emporium

• To get started in Play By Email gaming, you'll need the following items on your PC:

  1. Some form of email.  This is hard to avoid in this society, but some of you may be less wired than others.  Try Hotmail, Juno, Yahoo, etc.  We will refer to your email as "turn transport system" because we like to speak in high-falutin' terms for simple concepts.
  2. Alternatively, you may wish to use an ALTERNATIVE METHOD of turn transport.  Check out the Alternative Methods page.
  3. Some form of tracking game progress.  In my opinion, the many game utilities available today (Cyberboard, ADC, etc.) are the best visual method to graphically track counter movement.  However, in the final analysis, you don't even need these.  You could track a game on a spreadsheet, or even a text document.  You just need something that can be sent from one player to the next, that can show the change in game state to both players.
  4. Some form of executing the game mechanics.   Usually this is a dice roll.  Many utilties have die rollers included; there are also external web based services that will send you die rolls via email.  Here are two of them:

  The Irony Die Roll Server (site is loaded with RPG/World Creator/Name Generator/Mapper utilities)

  The Shadow Island Server (via email)

• Most of all, you need to own the paper version of the game.  None of this stuff will work unless you have a copy of the rulebook that you obtained legally!! Publishers get pretty riled, pretty quick, about what they can define as copyright infringement.  DON'T post rules on the web, unless you wrote them, or have the publisher/authors' explicit permission to do so.  I make a point NOT to include combat resolution charts or any game mechanics on my gamesets; thus you won't be able to play unless you have the original rulebook in some form.
• If you need help using a product, contact the programmer's website to see if he has any pages up devoted to newbies.  You may check here; I try to keep this site up to date for newcomers.  I've also written a HOW TO SETUP AND PLAY A CYBERBOARD PBeM GAME that some people find useful.
• If you are cruising for PBeM opponents, There are MANY places to go on the web (start with Web Grognards, searching on the game you'd like to play).  I've mentioned a few on the Player to Player page, and even started my own list.
• That's really all you need to get started.  Have fun!