pbemtools
This is the home page for pbemtools, a free software package by
Alan Schwartz designed to simplify the running of play-by-email
roleplaying games.
The current version of pbemtools is 1.1 (released September 1998).
Herein you may learn:
pbemtools is a package of scripts that I've found useful in running
play-by-email (pbem) role-playing games. It includes:
-
Custom turn generator (mailturn, fixturn, webturn, doturn):
From a single Turn source file that you write using very simple
tags, the turn generator creates a customized turn for each player,
that shows only what their character should see, hear, think, or
whatever. Supports character groups by name or by languages known to
the characters, so you can be sure that only the French-speaking
characters understand each other when speaking French.
-
Custom move generator (movefilter):
Players can send tagged moves to a 'moves' alias, and have them
distributed just like the Turns, customized for each character.
Simplifies handling whispers, languages, etc. Special marking
applied to OOC notes and "conditionals".
-
Move compiler (catmoves):
Simplifies turn-writing by putting together all of the moves sent
since the last turn into a single file, making attempts to properly
handle moves which quote other players' moves and respond to them.
-
Move archiver (movepipe):
Moves can be automatically archived in html under a web site directory
for access over the web.
-
Move reminder (moveremind):
Remind players who haven't sent a move for the the current Turn.
-
CGI Turn generator (spewturn.cgi):
A CGI script can generate customized Turns from different character
viewpoints for use on the web.
-
CGI story compiler (allturns.cgi):
A CGI script can concatenate all of your Turns into a single
long "story" suitable for printing.
-
CGI outline expander (expand.cgi):
A CGI script that provide the illusion of dynamically expanding
outlines on a web page, to aid organization of pages.
pbemtools is distributed under the
GNU public license.
You can therefore freely use it, modify it, or redistribute it, but
can't do anything to restrict anyone else from doing so.
Not much.
-
pbemtools is written in Perl and requires Perl version 5.003 or later.
-
catmoves, the move compilter, requires the graph-modules-1.001 perl
modules to be installed. They're no longer available from CPAN,
as new Graph modules have been set up that don't yet work with
catmoves. But you can get the old ones
here
Most of the scripts assume a Unixy environment, but should be
portable to Windows, for example, with only minor tweaking
(mostly around how to send email, I'd imagine).
You can download the file
right here.
It's a gzipp'd tarfile, so you'll want to unpack it with:
% gunzip pbemtools.tar.gz
% tar xf pbemtools.tar
Then "cd" into the pbemtools/ (or similar) diretory it creates and
read the file INSTALL for installation instructions.
I'm interested in feedback, including comments, suggestions
of features, bug reports, interesting new users, and words of praise.
Email me at alansz@pennmush.org
If you're running a PBEM using pbemtools, I'd appreciate it if you'd
let me know, so I can put a link to your game here.
- My defunct Riveworld
PBEM used an early prerelease version of many of the pbemtools.
- My defunct Mage PBEM uses a more recent
version of pbemtools.
A great place to start is Irony Games' PBEM
Site, which includes a couple of different lists of PBEM tools,
advice for starting (or joining) a PBEM, etc.