Archive-name: games/play-by-mail
Last-modified: 2006/04/13
Play by Mail Games Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

Play by Mail Games Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

Welcome to rec.games.pbm! This is a newsgroup for discussing play by
mail games, both ordinary mail and electronic mail, and both wargames
and non-wargames.

There is a PBM WWW homepage at: http://www.pbm.com/~lindahl/pbm.html

1) What is Play By Mail?
2) What games get talked about here?
3) What other games are there?
4) Are there any mailing lists for PBM games?
5) I read German or Russian or Italian. Do I win a prize?
6) Is commercial advertising allowed here?

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1) What is play by mail?

Play by Mail Games Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
Errata
Last-modified: 2006-07-19

7) How can I generate trustable dice rolls?
9) What are some free, advertising-free web sites for finding and
announcing PBEM games?

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7) How can I generate trustable dice rolls?

Many boardgames and other self-moderated PBEM games need lots of dice
rolled. One good way to do this is to use an email server: you tell it
the address of your opponent, and it rolls dice and sends a mail
message to both of you. This way, both sides can trust the answer.

One such email server is at pbm.com:

dice@pbm.com

Send mail with "help" in the body of the message, and it will send
instructions.

Another source for trustable die rolls is RPG Library's "Secure Dice":

http://www.rpglibrary.org/software/securedice/