Quote from: RPGPundit;1121749Maybe. It never worked for me.

That is totally understandable too.

But there was, and still is a huge variety of PBMs and PBx-s out there. Still several commercial ones. Pre-internet and up to around 2000 PBMs were predominantly wargames and hex-crawlers. There were a few pseudo-RPGs but the were mostly still exploration with a little interaction if you bumped into another PC or NPC. But it can be glacially slow which has ever been the barrier for some and the boon for others. Even PBMs with turn-arounds of a week can seem really slow. But you have to allow for possibly international players and having to collelct, collate and then compose turns for those.

BGG hosts PBPs for board games and RPGs. Never participated in one so will leave that to others to comment on. At a guess they probably have the same sort of turnaround as the old YahooGroups PBEm sessions.

RPoL.net has a huge number of games hosted and great functionality to support them.  
I have run several in the past and one currently. The only weakness I have found is mapping.
While you can upload images, they are not editable by the players.

The posting rate varies by player but a couple times a week per player sometimes happens.

I wonder if anyone still literally does it by mail?

Quote from: RPGPundit;1122052I wonder if anyone still literally does it by mail?

I know there are games where the play is through the characters writing letters to each other but haven't seen any games lately that are by actual mail.
That's if you don't include the pay versions that still exist which seem to be more "war game" than RPG.

Quote from: RPGPundit;1121749Maybe. It never worked for me.

It's definitely, actually, a completely different game, in a sense. It's the same way playing D&D online. It invokes a whole different kind of experience, especially if you don't do voice chat but do text chat. Play by post is a longer form slower than that, and it offers its own experience. There's players in all three mediums that prefer one over the others, and then there's people who enjoy them all.

In my experience, strengths and weaknesses of the three:

Offline D&D:
* fast moving
* you can talk over each other and still understand what's happening, so it's easier to communicate
* more jokey, laughs and banter happen
* you can catch up about real life

Online text chat D&D:
* often more tactical, you can place all sorts of graphics and tokens and maps with a grid, and move it and keep track of it easily compared to IRL, you don't need to buy 80000 tokens or spend money on them
* you can have music which makes it way more immersive
* the game in general is more immersive because you can use your character avatars, so it's not RPG Pundit talking but his character
* with a serious group of players, its better for immersive RP

Online play by post:
* the slowest, but it gives you a chance to think in depth about how your character would respond -- so you can flesh out the character more here
* unlike the former two, it only requires a little time each day instead of a solid 5 hour block, but as a tradeoff it never ends so it's a steady commitment
* the most writer friendly, and least tactical based, as it emphasizes writing novel excerpts, basically
* often go the longest, and can make a very satisfying feeling when it finally ends

Quote from: RPGPundit;1122052I wonder if anyone still literally does it by mail?

Yes. Why? I am not sure. When I ran my little company I had the option for email or snail mail. More than half opted for snail mail. But at a guess. Because they like the physical aspect. Or lack a printer. (I currently lack a printer - which is no end of frustration.)
PBeM has pretty much supplanted PBM at this point.

Quote from: Greentongue;1122066I know there are games where the play is through the characters writing letters to each other but haven't seen any games lately that are by actual mail.
That's if you don't include the pay versions that still exist which seem to be more "war game" than RPG.

99% are wargames or explorers, or empire builders. Etc. Even most of the dungeoncrawlers and hexcrawlers have no real role playing.

I should know. I pioneered the first true PBM RPG. Before that the closest was probably Atlantrix which sadly seems to have shut down many a year ago and I have not heard from the owner in quite a while now. We used to correspond and compare notes. We were players in eachothers games too.

After mine came out there was a surge in tries at a simmilar approach but most found out its an extremely taxing job unlike normal PBMs. You cant automate it.