robertp@fear.UUCP (Robert Plamondon) (06/13/85)
I've been playing in a pbm games system for a year now and am very happy
with it. It's called LORDS OF THE EARTH, and is run by Wanderer Games (Tom
Harlan, Jr. and his band of loonies).
The game starts at 1000 AD, with each turn representing five years (in real
time, the turns are processed every two weeks). Players start with a
country and some resources, and build from there. Each game has between
thirty and forty players.
The rules are very detailed, and allow you to do all sorts of things that I
haven't seen in other pbm's. Most players concentrate on shuffling cavalry
armies around, but there are countries that do well with sea power,
espionage, fortifications, or elaborate lies told to the other players.
Results are in the form of a results sheet for your country every turn (sent
to you alone), and a newsletter that discloses "common knowledge"
information about what happened to all the countries in that turn.
Empires become unstable if they get too big, and there's always a chance of
"dynastic failure," which can cause your empire to partially collapse. This
keeps the early winners from dominating the game forever. There ARE things
you can do to soften the blows of fate, though.
Lords of the Earth costs $2.00/turn, plus some amount of money (I think $4)
for the rules and maps (there are about 12 pages of maps, and 20 pages of
rules).
Lords #1 is the "prestige" campaign, and also the most active one. It's
progressed to 1370AD or so. There are five Lords campaigns at the moment.
People who would like to run a Lords campaign can talk to Tom Harlan about
it. He only runs Lords #1 and Lords #3.
Tom hopes to have facilities to accept orders and post results by modem
soon, by direct hookup, MCI Mail, and maybe usenet news+mail *IF* someone
can give him a local (Tucson area) account.
The Address:
Thomas Harlan, Jr.
Wanderer Games
2862 N. Indian Ruins Drive
Tucson, AZ 85715
Phone: (602) 885-4194
Tell them Robert Plamondon sent you. He'll want to know who to blame.
--
-- Robert Plamondon
"Chivalry ain't dead, but it's limping pretty bad."
{ucbvax!dual!turtlevax,ihnp4!resonex}!weitek!robertp