10 Play by mail games

A play-by-mail game is a game played through postal mail, email or other digital media. Correspondence chess and Go were among the first PBM games. Diplomacy has been played by mail since 1963, introducing a multi-player aspect to PBM games. Flying Buffalo Inc. pioneered the first commercially available PBM game in 1970. A small number of PBM companies followed in the 1970s, with an explosion of hundreds of startup PBM companies in the 1980s at the peak of PBM gaming popularity, many of them small hobby companies—more than 90 percent of which eventually folded. A number of independent PBM magazines also started in the 1980s, including Flagship magazine, Gaming Universal, and Paper Mayhem. These magazines eventually went out of print, replaced in the 21st century by the online PBM journal Suspense and Decision.

This is a list of play-by-mail (PBM) games. It includes games played only by postal mail, those played by mail with a play-by-email (PBEM) option, and games played in a turn-based format only by email or other digital format.

The Ashes of Empire is a turn-based strategy game, which appeared in several adaptions as a play-by-mail game or online game.

Correspondence chess is chess or variant chess played by various forms of long-distance correspondence, often through a correspondence chess server, a public internet chess forum, email, or the postal system. Less common methods that have been employed include fax, homing pigeon and phone. It is in contrast to over-the-board (OTB) chess, where the players sit at a chessboard at the same time, or play at the same time remotely.

Crasimoff's World is a play-by-mail (PBM) game that was published by KJC Games. It is regarded as the first fantasy role-playing PBM game.

Heroic Fantasy is a dungeon crawl play-by-mail game published by Flying Buffalo. It has been active since 1982. The initial edition involved nine dungeon levels. Flying Buffalo published subsequent editions due to challenging gameplay initially, eventually limiting the game to four dungeon levels with a fifth "outside" level where players can assemble an army and capture one or more castles. The game is open-ended; gameplay continues until players decide to stop.

Hyborian War is a play-by-mail game published by Reality Simulations, Inc. It takes place during the Hyborian Age in the world of Conan the Barbarian created by Robert E. Howard. The game has been continuously available for worldwide play since its inception in 1985 and has changed little in its overall format. It uses a computer program to adjudicate player orders. Although it relies on postal mail or email and has turnaround times which are relatively long for the digital age of video games, Hyborian War has remained active into the 21st century.

Nuclear War is a collectible common-deck card game designed by Douglas Malewicki, and originally published in 1965. It is currently published by Flying Buffalo, and has inspired several expansions. It is a satirical simulation of an end-of-the-world scenario fought mostly with nuclear weapons.

Saturnalia is a play by mail (PBM) game with a fantasy setting that was first played by students at the University of Southampton before becoming a commercial enterprise in the United Kingdom.

Warboid World is a play-by-mail game originally published and moderated by Adventures by Mail in 1983 in which players build up armies of robots and send them to destroy other players' robot factories.