A freebie from Mister Nizz

One of the greatest old pen and pencil games I can think of is Richard Bartle's WAVING HANDS (1977) a game originally setup to play as a wizardly dueling game. Players BUILD spells with various hand gestures such as SNAP, WAVE, POINT, CLAP,etc. The combinations (both hands handled separately unless they are CLAPping) create spells. In the graphic to the left the BLUE wizard has just succesfully completed casting FEAR with one hand and is almost done with PARALYSIS with his other hand (check the combinations in the rules!).

The hard part is guessing what your opponent is going to do and making the correct accomodations on your end. For instance, if you see a FIREBALL combination building up it might be time to cast a PROTECTION FROM FIRE. I have played it many times-- the game itself (rules, etc.) is found HERE in its original text.

You can play the game semi-interactively with several other people as WARLOCKS on Ravenblack.net, or via email on the FIRETOP MOUNTAIN server. Both are a hoot.

I'm trying something different, by tinkering a little. I used Cyberboard to create a PBeM "gamebox" for Waving Hands that has a crucial difference from the original. The original Waving Hands takes place in "no space".. or a logcial construct where there is no distance between magic users and no relation to a physical plane of existance. That's certainly a workable, fun and interesting game. Just for grins, I added graphical representations to demonstrate the wizards and their summoned creatures fighting on a physical place (a dungeon, in this instance). This adds an element of MOVEMENT to the game that wasn't there before.

This gamebox provides all you'll need to play WAVING HANDS/WARLOCK/SPELLBINDER via cyberboard. A Gamebox, Scenario and "WizardlyDuel" starter Game File are included. There are also amended rules for Play By Email and movement (my changes are in blue) stored in an HTM file. THe original is also provided as a word document. I've played around with it and it's a hoot.

So here's the Gamebox File, enjoy yourselves.