Mr. Noddings acted as the moderator for each game and did all the dice rolling, only telling each player what effected him/her. A game may take eight months to complete because it may be a day or two between each plane being moved, but they were just one more way to enjoy this fine game without the pressure of having to be seated in front of your computer at a particular day and time. Also, a player could participate in a number of webgames at the same time, further enhancing the experience. Games sometimes had as many as ten participants on each side and were very fun to be a part of.

Why the history lesson, you ask? Well with VASSAL those old webgames don’t have to be a thing of the past any longer. In addition to being able to play VDP online against a group of people that are playing at the same time, VASSAL can also be used to play games via E-mail. Each player performs his move and announces his shot, then e-mails the newly modified game file to the group of players, and the next player in line does the same, and so on until the turn is complete. At the end of each turn a moderator does all the dice rolling and announces results to each player.

We’re still working out the details and what the best ways are to get the games moving along more efficiently, but in the near future we hope to have a large number of VDP E-Games going on at the same time. One way we hope to maintain the ability to play the game via e-mail is that the same person won’t need to moderate every game. Each player could easily be moderating a game while also playing in a half dozen others. In that way we all get to “share the load” so to speak in order that everyone can enjoy playing via e-mail.