If the U.S. Post Office has an ally, it’s Duel2 and play-by-mail games

In these fast-moving times where nothing takes a break, there is one form of slow-motion entertainment that has endured: play-by-mail games. The genre refers to mail without an “e” before it, with a notable game being Duel2, a gladiatorial simulator-RPG whose aging demographic makes it more like an AARPG. Given what is currently happening with the U.S. Postal Service, Duel2 is in for some challenges, but before we go any further, we need to go back. And I mean way back to when I was in eighth grade.

The place was Tucson, Arizona, the year was 1984, and I spent my time dabbling between being a runner, a breaker, a head-banger, and a dungeon master. It was then that my friend Jeff, an avid collector of Conan the Barbarian comics, delivered some exciting news. His cousin in Tempe, Arizona, ran a company called Reality Simulations, which had just launched a play-by-mail gladiator combat game called Duelmasters. Since the general public didn’t use the internet back then, the idea of using the mail for a game was more ground-breaking than off-putting.