Dungeon FAQ

What is Dungeon?

A "Play by Mail Game" for the modern era!

What is a Play by Mail Game anyway?

Back in the 1970's - 1990's a largely unseen but still quite numerous group of people played games through the post, known as "Play by Mail Games". These ranged from simple postal chess games right up to much more advanced strategy war games. Genres included fantasy, sci-fi, historic, war games and much more.

Individual players from anywhere in the country/world could play a game with many other players from anywhere else in the country/world without even owning a computer. The games would be run by a Games/Dungeon Master in a central location, with or without a computer.

See Play by Mail Games on Wikipedia

OK, so how did they work?

At the start of each game (game world), each player in that game would be sent their starting position - all the information that the game designers deemed that that player should know and "see" about the game (world). E.g. maps, details about population centres, castles, armies, heroes, known spells etc.

Playing the game would then consist of a process of "turns". Every week/2/3 weeks, each player would fill in a "turnsheet" with instructions on what they wanted their nation/armies/heroes to do then post it to the Games/Dungeon Master at the head office.

Next, either the Games/Dungeon Master would decide the results of the instructions or he/she would feed the instructions of all of the players into a computer program which would then "process" the turn, first calculating the results of each of the players interactions with each other and the game world - e.g. which armies were victorious in combat etc., then generating and printing out a "result sheet" for each player.

Finally, these would be posted back to each player, who could then study them, in order to plan their next moves! And so the process would repeat...

Sounds a bit dull and boring - What on Earth did people enjoy about Play by Mail Games?

Even at the time, people could play advanced computer games which may have seemed much more exciting and faster paced! So why Play by Mail Games?

Part of the thrill came from playing with people from all over the world, making friends (pen-pals), but most importantly playing thinking games - strategy games, war games and more. Also, many provide the aspect of communication with other players or team members about plans for their next moves to strike against the common enemy. Play by Mail games are just different! - some people want to play action games, others find longer-term thinking games more fulfilling! - each to their own I say!

This may explain why actually some people still play Play by (E)Mail games today, even though we had MUD games (Multi User Dungeon) in the 1980's and 1990's, then MMORPG games now, both of which may seem superior - offering multi player games but with the apparent bonus of action, together with advanced graphics and sound.

So what exactly will Dungeon be?