Mercs: The Black Guard Company
The first Play by Email ("PBEM") campaign that I created and ran was "Mercs." In 1996 the tabletop game I had been running four the past three years in college was shifting from a primarily AD&D Forgotten Realms campaign to a White Wolf World of Darkness Storyteller campaign, and we also were meeting less often. Those truly epic tabletop AD&D campaigns had included James B ('Helix'), Brian H. ('Hathron'), Chad ('Antontio'), and Stephen ('Marik') amongst others who never joined the PBEM games. (The adventures of that party, the Oathbound, will be told elsewhere on this blog). The world wide web and email were just becoming common in the academic world and I had dipped my toe into play by email games as a player - unsuccessfully, I clashed right away with the DM. I realized from that, however, that PBEM could provide the sort of gaming experience I've always craved: a living, breathing, involved world that ...