Free game starting - Spoils of Empire - a computer-moderated strategic fantasy game From: ram@eskimo.com (Rick Morneau) Date: Sun, 17 Nov 2002 13:16:53 +0000 Newsgroups: rec.games.pbm From: "Rick Morneau" <ramnospamplease@eskimo.com> Subject: New free game starting - Spoils of Empire Organization: Workaphobes Anonymous Spoils of Empire (SOE) is a strategic fantasy wargame designed for play-by-email. It is open-ended and completely computer-moderated. It is somewhat similar to games like Atlantis and Olympia, but also differs in some very important ways: 1. The command language is a powerful subset of standard, grammatical English, and your orders will look like easy-to- understand, English sentences. People and items have names, not numbers, and you can even use pronouns. Here's an example: Teleport Joe Flint to Ocean City and have him buy 51 horses and recruit 50 soldiers, and then come to Stanley and join me. 2. SOE is asynchronous. Orders for your characters may be queued in advance as far into the future as you like, and you have complete control over the timing of their actions. You can even have your characters repeat complete sequences of orders: Have Trader Bill Caruso repeatedly go to Mount Loris and buy gems for 5 days and then go to Emporia Rex and sell them. 3. In SOE, you can even have "IF statements": Fly to Amberton, and if Louisiata has at least 1000 soldiers then take them from her and go to Paloma and cautiously attack Genghis Khan; otherwise recruit soldiers. There is no cost for playing Spoils of Empire. I am retired and this is one of my hobbies. If you think you might be interested in playing, please check out the Spoils of Empire web page at: http://www.eskimo.com/~ram/soe.html It contains all the information that you'll need to enter the game. The new game will start on Monday, November 25 at 12:00 UTC. I will be running three turns per week (Monday, Wednesday, and Friday). This game will be relatively short and will stop when certain victory conditions have been met. It's primarily intended as an introduction to the game for newcomers and a refresher for old timers. A second and longer game will start immediately after the first game finishes. Happy Gaming! Rick Morneau, Gamemaster and designer of Spoils of Empire Up