PbEM? PBM? Sim? PBP? WTF do you call an online text-based-RPG?
Creating and running an online text-based role-playing-game isn’t really that hard. But what I do find very hard is explaining the concept to other people!
It doesn’t help when there are about a hundred names, all meaning the same thing. I’m just not sure what best to describe to call the game that I play, let alone even start to describe how to play.
So lets go over the possible names:
PbEM (Play by E-Mail)
This is the name I use the most. It’s probably also the least descriptive, because the game I run isn’t even played by e-mail, it’s on a Yahoo group. PbEM refers to a continual story where all members cc each other in each email, so that nobody misses a post.
PBM (Play by Mail)
A more broader term which actually pre-dates the internet. This refers to a game that could be played via good old fashioned snail mail. A big example of this game would be chess, where you make a move and then send a letter to your friend via a letter. It’s slow, but novel, and I can’t imagine anyone doing it apart from my Grandad. The term could also apply to internet games too. There’s a wikipedia article on this here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Play-by-mail_game
PBP (Play by Post)
According to Wikipedia’s article (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Play-by-Internet) this is very very similar to an online text-based role-playing game. It is “a niche area of the online roleplaying community which caters to both gamers and creative writers.” They’re most likely written in third person format, and the writer often represents a character. This is a broad term that seems to imply that the members are creating collaborative fiction, rather than a game with points or score. The term also doesn’t specify how the game is played, and can mean it is played via email, forum, blog or wiki.
Online Text-Based Role-Playing-Game
This term has a lot more emphasis on the “game” aspect of role playing, and actually a bit more of the “role playing”. It includes TELNET, IRC and MUDS which are all ways of role-playing in “real-time” as part of a chat window, whereas all the above examples refer to writing a post like a short story. There’s a wikipedia article about it here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Online_text-based_role-playing_game
Play-by-Web
I think this refers to browser-based games like flash games, and database-driven management games. I don’t really know though, because it’s such a vague name!
SIM – An online text-based role-playing-game which is a “simulation” of life. I have often seen this proceeded by “PbEM” to specify that the PbEM game exists in a parallel universe of some kind.
Play-by-wiki
A game played by using wiki software instead of a forum.
All these terms seem to be as specific or as broad as they need to be. I’ve seen games call themselves one thing, when they’re clearly another. I’m hoping though that specifying clearly what sort of game you have will helps when you get new people to your game wanting to join up, and managing their expectations so that they easily can tell from a short description what sort of game you’re running.
If you can think of more (and can describe them, please add them to the comments!)
