Remember When Multiplayer Gaming Needed Envelopes and Stamps?

The term multiplayer gaming likely brings to mind the image of hopping online or sitting down with friends. A third method--mail--is unlikely to come up. Once a sprawling industry, play-by-mail (PBM) games have been rendered an afterthought in gaming history by the internet. Chess and Go were played by mail for centuries, and in the 1960s devotees of Diplomacy, a lengthy multiplayer board game that requires a neutral moderator, began using mail. According to a 1985 Computer Gamer article, competition sometimes got so intense that players offered bribes and forged letters.