The Future of Hyborian War: Don’t Count RSI Out, Just Yet!
(2017)
Charles Mosteller

Hyborian War is a play by mail game of imperial conquest set in the Hyborian Age. If you’ve heard of the barbarian, Conan, before, then you’re already aware of the setting where this game plays out. It is a setting originally brought to life by the distinguished American author, Robert E. Howard, and Reality Simulations, Inc. – or RSI, as the company is more widely known by long time players of the game – is the PBM company that first brought this game to market over three decades ago. The year was 1984, if memory serves me correctly.

Thirty-three years is a long time, and for many players of the game, including die-hard veterans of the game, the game seems overdue for an update.

Ultimately, the decision to update the game in some way, shape, or form lies with Lee Kline (President of RSI) and the folks out in Tempe, Arizona, which is where RSI’s operations headquarters is located.

The list of proposed changes offered up by players to RSI down through the years would fill a voluminous tome, and there’s just too many of them to cover in the space of this article. Indeed, the purpose of this article is not to recount all of the various proposed changes, be they big or small. Rather, my aim in writing this article is to explain why I think that there is still a good possibility that RSI may one day finally take the game to what I feel should rightfully be regarded as the next stage in its legacy of development.

Most PBM companies gave up the ghost, long ago. Reality Simulations, however, has continued to hang in there, through both thick and thin, through good times for the PBM industry and bad. The Internet hasn’t killed off either RSI or Hyborian War. Both are still with the gaming world. Both are alive and active and still trucking.

Make no mistake – rumors of every size and shape and color have floated across the PBM realm for many years on end. Depending upon who you listen to in the circle of players of the game, Hyborian War has been either incrementally updated from time to time or its development is dead in the water.

Players have long cried out for changes that they would love to see implemented. They love the game, and many of them feel that any game begins to grow stale, after playing it a lot of times. They’re not asking for the moon, just what they genuinely feel to be changes that would be in the best interest of the game – changes that they feel would reinvigorate the game with renewed interest and a surge in interest by players, both old and new, alike.

RSI, on the other hand, has its own perspective on changes that get proposed. The staff at Reality Simulations has a great deal of first-hand experience gained over an extended period of time with the game. Hyborian War wasn’t programmed yesterday. It traces its origin back to a time before some of the game’s current players were even born.

To RSI, implementing changes to the game carries with it various risks. Surely, a game from a bygone era that continues to survive in the current day and age deserves a little credit. Surely, RSI must have done something right, to continue to retain a sizable body of players who have played the game stretching back across so many years.

If there are better games available for play on the market, today, then why hasn’t the game died, yet? The flip side of that coin is, if the game doesn’t need updating, then why has the overall player base declined so significantly since its heyday way back when?

Many issues in life which divide people, individuals from all walks of life who share a common interest, tend to be more complex than may at first appear to be the case, when people discuss those very same issues in casual conversation. To make changes to Hyborian War would require, at a bare minimum, an investment of time and energy and manpower. Could it be that making changes to the game is a feasible undertaking? Or could it be that there is more to such an undertaking than the players of Hyborian War fully appreciate?

To be fair, RSI runs other games – Duel2 and Forgotten Realms: War of the Avatars. The staff of Reality Simulations also operates a book store. Why should the making changes to Hyborian War rank as a higher priority than RSI focusing upon – and investing in – these other aspects of its overall operations?

As someone who never really seems to have sufficient time to enable me to publish Suspense & Decision with unerring regularity, I can certainly relate to – and sympathize with – the folks at RSI being stretched thin, when it comes to having large chunks of time available to focus on nothing but making changes to a game that is written in programming languages that are likely no longer in vogue, these days.

The truth be told, there are lots of things in all of our respective lives that just nibble and gobble away at our time. There’s never enough of it, and what there is of it is always in demand – by something or by someone for any of a host of different reasons.

Players may love the game, but they are also notorious for bitching and grumbling about the game, for moaning and groaning about this or that, for whining incessantly about how RSI should make changes to the game. But, being human beings, that’s not atypical and out of the ordinary. If players of the game didn’t care about the game, then they probably wouldn’t bother offering up what they feel to be good, solid suggestions for making the Hyborian War gaming experience even more exciting and addicting.

Hyborian War players hold no monopoly upon being human beings, though. All of the staff at Reality Simulations are also believed to fall into that category. They likely work as hard at their jobs as the players of Hyborian War work at theirs. The nature of jobs and work is that they just plain have a way of sapping your energy and consuming a seemingly disproportional amount of time out of one’s life. Who feels like digging into what likely seems like ancient code, and trying to get a dated beast of a program to do new bidding.

And if they mess it up, what then? That’s more time down the drain. And which players are going to make that time up for them? None, because they can’t.

On the outside looking in, it can seem like a stalemate, of sorts. Yet, the fact of the matter is that Lee at RSI has on multiple different occasions come across to me in our intermittent and occasional e-mail exchanges as being receptive to making changes to the game. Far from there being any conspiracy at RSI to never do anything else with Hyborian War, as far as that PBM game’s legacy of development is concerned, RSI has signaled at least a willingness to listen to what players of the game have had to say. And this willingness to listen actually stretches back a span of many years.

It isn’t my place to defend RSI, just as it isn’t my place to defend the players of Hyborian War. For my own part, I’m highly unlikely to win any popularity contest, anytime soon. Would I like to see RSI embrace some changes to Hyborian War? Oh, sure. Certainly, I would. However, I’m realistic enough to realize that no amount of attempts at pressuring RSI is ever likely to bear fruit, where changes to Hyborian War are concerned.

The simple truth is that there is a chance that RSI will never make any more changes to the game, and likewise, there is also a chance that RSI may yet implement some changes to the game. From my perspective, my gut instinct tells me that there are two basic paths toward change, where Hyborian War is concerned.

One is with players, and the other is with RSI.

On the player end of things, what I feel to be the most likely way to achieve the equivalent of change to the game of Hyborian War is through developing a new strain of organized games. Certainly, a rather compelling case can be made in RSI”s favor, as far as that play by mail company being willing to embrace and go with the flow of the organized game concept. Under the auspices of organized games, games of Hyborian War have started quicker than regular games that RSI runs. Over the years, there have been many different organized games of Hyborian War, and even many of RSI’s biggest and most vocal critics of RSI’s failure to continue developing the game with changes to keep it fresh and interesting over thirty years later have, themselves, become die-hard advocates of – and participants in – organized games of Hyborian War.

Over the years, many different people have organized groups of players to create organized games with different flavor and variety. Yet, are there limits to what can be achieved via this player-centric approach to growing the Hyborian War legacy? Certainly. No doubt about it. After all, when it comes to the potential for implementing changes to the game to maximize its freshness and its addicting qualities, RSI continues to hold all of the high cards.

The high cards, in this sense, are control over the game’s core, underlying programming, the game’s base data files, and the actual direct ability to add things to the game, such as additional troops or new characters, to name but a couple.

On RSI”s end, it basically has several choices, going forward. The past is behind us, both for RSI and for Hyborian War players, and none of us can change that. What we can all contribute to is a positive energy for positive change, going forward.

RSI’s options, as I see them, are:

(1) Continue the status quo, and make no changes to the game’s code, its base data files, its kingdom setup reports, or any aspects of its processing and operations. Rather than change, this would simply be a continuance of the long- standing status quo. Is a perpetuation of the current status quo likely to succeed at reinvigorating the game’s player base, though? It would seem questionable, at best, if the past record is reviewed, where this subject is concerned.

(2) RSI can make changes to the game’s core program. Is this feasible, though? I dare suggest that this approach would be the one most likely to cause headaches for both RSI and players, especially if RSI got something wrong with its revisions to the game’s underlying code, the core of the game’s existence. If this route were the most feasible route, the path most likely to succeed, then the question begs to be asked: Why hasn’t RSI already made major changes to the game in recent years? While back-ups to the game’s code can be made, one cannot back-up expenditures of time lost to programming errors run amok. The axiom of, if it’s not broke, then don’t fix it comes to mind.

(3) RSI can approach making changes to the game via an indirect method, one that doesn’t entail any actual changes to the game’s core code. It can do this by way of updating the portions of data contained in the game’s accompany base data files – files that the game’s core program draws from, as needed and called during the processing of turns.

(4) RSI has the ability, already, to do certain things that yield the equivalent of making changes to the game – again, without actually fiddling around with the programming of the game. Furthermore, RSI already possesses the ability to make “changes” of this nature as the game progresses. The real key to success with this and the previous outlined option lies with an approach that is disciplined and structured. As the old saying goes, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. In other words, why mess with the underlying code, when you can milk the cow of progress without mucking up code that you don’t want to touch in the first place?

I say all of this to get to a concept that I believe holds enormous potential for re-energizing the game and for reinvigorating the game’s player base. That concept is: Where there’s a will, there’s a way.

The desired objective, of course, is not to make life hell on the folks at Reality Simulations. Rather, the desired objective is to try and craft a way forward, a path that will make some rather significant progress for both players and RSI, alike, on a game that is a real gem in the crown jewels of play by mail gaming history.

If RSI does nothing, then common sense dictates that no progress will get made. Ever!

On the other hand, if the Hyborian War player base can see no other clear path forward out of the programming wilderness to which it finds itself in, unwilling to accept anything less than a full-scale revamp of the game’s underlying code, or major components, thereof, then common sense tells me that no real progress of note will ever get made that way, either. Period!

So, my own gaze has long since shifted to what I feel holds much solid potential to be a fertile common ground.

The fact of the matter is that, while everything that the player base wants, change-wise, cannot be achieved short of RSI making a litany of changes to the game’s underlying code, the reality is that an abundance of possibilities for real and meaningful change can be accomplished, and without RSI even having to touch the game’s core programming.

Absent anyone at RSI ever setting any kind of timeframe to start down the path of updating the game in any way, shape, or form, then both RSI and the Hyborian War player base will remain in the equivalent of a state of limbo.

One key point that I would like to stress and underscore is that all changes of this no-programming-changes-required approach do not have to be implemented all at once. What I propose is just exactly that – a starting point.

A starting point for change.

A real starting point for progress.

A real hope that a brighter, more
profitable future for all can be had.

Crom count the dead!