"Have you remote gamed?" Topic

Have you ever tried remote gaming? If so, how did you like it? If not, what questions do you have about remote gaming?

Yes, I took part in a WW1 Kriegspiel where I commanded a couple of divisions on the western front. Great fun. I am also involved in a ACW game run by The Mad Padre Petersen, also great fun.

I took part in a War of the Roses PBM campaign way back in the late 70s. Bunch of us who were at Uni together took part each of us ran noble family and we had varying objectives depending on who the family were. So for example I was the Talbot family – Earls of Shrewsbury. I wasn't close enough to the lines of succession to have a shot at the crown. My objective was to be raised to a hereditary Dukedom.

The game ran for several years through a newsletter we all took. The readers were ex-members of the Uni war-games society.

Depends on the game. I've found that the campaign games, where you submit a turn to an umpire and battle it out on the tabletop, tend to fizzle because getting the specific people together for a battle becomes more difficult, players tend to band together to beat up on a weaker player, and those that lose the first battle tend to tune out.

I solved this with a space empires-style PBeM where the players did not know where the other players were (this was an explore the wormholes type of mechanism, where you only knew what you could conquer, drone, or spy), were ALWAYS hostile to all other players (although they could agree not to go into a particular solar system), and could not trade/buy anything from any other player (assuming they eventually figured out who was who in the campaign).

Meanwhile, the umpire (that was me) performed all the battles and sent all the scouting/spying reports.

Some parts went well, but other parts did not -- the battles had a nice mechanism for targeting, but not battle deployments. It lasted four years and four months, with nice twice a month turns, and came to a nice completion after some vicious back-and-forth offensives and counterattacks.

I took part in a War of the Roses campaign based on Kingmaker hat was run PBeM. Twas pretty cool because it followed the game and there were lots of people, with the occasional battle on the tabletop -- but it was a consistent group, even if the GM had to prod a player or two from time to time.

Russ

Russ

We broadcast miniature games ALL the time. info at looking at imagineimage dot org

Chess
Legend of the Red Dragon
TradeWars

I took part in a War of the Roses campaign based on Kingmaker hat was run PBeM. Twas pretty cool because it followed the game and there were lots of people, with the occasional battle on the tabletop -- but it was a consistent group, even if the GM had to prod a player or two from time to time.

This is just what I'm looking for at the mo. I want to play Kingmaker by post/email. Both me and my buddy have a set so no problem. Unfortunatly he doesn't have Vassal or anything similar.
Really stupid question – how do you do the start up. Dealing, drawing cards, etc…
Does one draw the cards, then the other go through his deck and remove and reshuffle the cards before he draws? It's basic stuff like this i can't get my head around.
Tim

That is not a stupid question. I suggest you take turns with the cards one dealing one turn and another on the second deal. I would have one draw the cards and the other removing drawn cards from his deck as you described.

Sorry for delay in answering…Russ here at the OMM shoppe (playing Wizard Kings with the Feudals vs Huns)…

In our War of Roses game, we had a dedicated Umpire, so he did all the moves, card draws, etc. on his home board. No vassal or anything required…but…he was a dedicated umpire.

Russ at OMM

Been playing-in and running PBEM (mostly) WWII skirmish games for the past couple of years with a small group of like minded fellows. We've probably completed 50 games or more by now. We use a site I developed as a tool just for this type of gaming (www.chtechnical.com/skirmish).

I have uploaded many battle reports in the past couple of years on this site. In fact I just uploaded a Winter War Finland 1940 battle report today. That's when I discovered this board.

CH