I am seeing a message that there are 6 potential new members waiting for account validation, but my account does not have access to review them and welcome the non-spam accounts in.

Does anyone else have admin access?

Any room for a lost sheep to rejoin the flock (again)?

The Road of Kings website, or ROK as it is most affectionately known to its regular group of forum users, went down yesterday. The site administrator, Lloyd Barron aka Crom, is aware of the issue. In a response to an e-mail about the issue, Crom stated, "My apparently grossly incompetent host had a major failure, and I am picking up the pieces."

Crom cares not for their excuses, it seems. Hopefully, the ROK will be back up and running again real soon!

The Road of Kings is the largest Hyborian War player forum in existence.

Atlantis: New Origins
http://atlantis-pbem.com

A free, fantasy-based 4x game

This is not going to be a full-length game review, but I wanted to post this as I just stopped playing this game today. My first position in this game was eliminated by a player in the early game, and I came back with another position, which was mostly eliminated today. I will not be starting a third position.

Now, before you give up on this game before even giving it a fair shot, know that my reason is likely not going to be your reason: I stopped playing this game because, well, I am playing in more than a dozen positions across six different game systems. I just don't have time for it anymore. It didn't survive, the way that DungeonWorld didn't survive for me. I gave it a go, but other games are more rewarding to me personally and I only have so much time to devote to gaming. For some people, Atlantis: New Origins (or DungeonWorld, for that matter), will be an ideal turn-based game.

If you are looking for a game that is...

* Free
* Flexible enough to allow you to focus on character development, civilization building, or military expansion - whatever you like most
* Constantly being updated by the GM, who himself is a software developer
* Has an active online community that is easy to get help from on Discord (online chat system)
* One that allows you to progressively learn the rules as your position grows and expands
* Almost more like learning a incredibly-simplified computer programming language or foreign language for orders syntax
* Run multiple times per week (initially turns on M/W/F, then moving to T/F as the game progresses and takes more time to prepare orders)
* Reset every 80-120 turns when a player or group of players achieves victory

...then Atlantis: New Origins may be for you. It was for me, for five months, but I'm done with it now, because I just can't make room for it in my life. It needs a time investment, and that time investment is not all up-front like it is with some games. This game has a small upfront learning curve, and then a continuous learning curve as your position expands and you need to learn more rules as you grow. You can't join it casually and play it casually. Think of this game like learning a new skill.

Free is also a big motivator for a lot of people. This may explain why there is such a large international player base for this game. At one point in the game, there was over 100 active players. As we approach the end of this game before it resets and a new one begins, there are just over 60 players in the game. You can be eliminated, but if you are, you can jump right back in and start a new position in the same world. You may be too far behind at that point to win the game solo, but that won't stop you perhaps joining a winning coalition or making a mark in the world.

Think of Atlantis: New Origins not as a player, but as a student. If that's your appetite, then it will reward you in the end.

I've been playing this a week, and my experiences couldn't be more different than Grimfinger's.

The advice I'd read suggested that the game offers much more fun at the faction / affiliation level, above and beyond just being a solo player. Thus joining an affiliation early is the recommended route. They can a) mentor you in the game b) provide you with resources and objectives in the game that would otherwise take a long time to acquire personally c) provide you with a roleplay platform which would largely be otherwise reduced.

I posted on the forum advertising that I wanted to join an affiliation that offered roleplay, long term planning and lots of communication. The welcome was friendly and the consensus was that the Dewiek Elder Nation (think bipedal science-hungry viking wolf-analogues) would be a good fit. These guys were roleplaying all over the forum and had a significant list of successful projects under their belt in recent history. I was sold.

Joining them gave me access to lots of support to understand the game's basic mechanics. The missions Grimfinger found so unenjoyable are indeed rather stilted affairs, but they do introduce players to the gameplay. Each week you get 300 Time Unit movement points. These actually accrue at the rate of 60 per day, and turns are processed every weekday, if you have remaining TUs. This is very refreshing, coming from a pure PB(e)M perspective. Moving through the missions with your starship introduces you to moving between star systems, moving between planets, landing on them and trading/interacting with the NPC locals. When you wish, you can also create a Political position in the game. This position, like your starter starship, can perform activities during turns, but needs to be on a ship to move around the galaxy. Gaining a Political position grants you additional ships, each of which are independent positions that you control via turns. Significantly, the Political position allows you to properly participate in the affiliation's politics and ultimate manage a star system, when you and the affiliation are ready. If the affiliation has conquest or war plans with other affiliations, you can participate and help direct the action, whether that's a key solo mission or part of a multi-million troop combat operation.

In addition to the automated mechanics of the game, the GMs offer Special Actions, which allow the player (at £2 cost) to perform whatever actions (within the game's laws of physics) the player sees fit, from assassination plans against other positions, to researching items for exploitation and sale, to interacting with the GM-managed storylines and characters placed in front of players to see if they'll bite. A mixture of special actions and game mechanics have lead the players of the game to produce a fascinating and never-ending history of the galaxy as seen through the trials and tribulations of competing and warring affiliations.

There are LOTS of details in the game to learn. It has been running as postal PBM in the 90s before being web-ified, but the game has been played essentially continuously for 30 years, and has continually evolved to offer more and more richness to the players. This means there is a large learning curve for players, but those who get a sense of what they can get out of the game will work through that with their affiliation mentors to a point where the fun really starts.

Howdy, I'm Troy, I am the host of Tea, Tea, RPG! a podcast focused on indie and small press tabletop roleplaying games. I'm really interested in PBM as a format for playing my traditional rpgs. Any tips?

Does anyone remember the PBM game from IBM?

IBM , you say?

Well, IBM had a marketplace, back in the floppy disk days, for developers to sell software via IBM. You got a floppy disk in paper holder, and all documentation was on the disk. One of the offerings was a PBM game. I had a copy of the game, and if I still do, it's in storage. It was a space game, along the lines of Starweb. I ran a game of it for a while, and Nicky Palmer was one of the players.

I was wondering if anyone else remembers it and what the name was. My GoogleFu has not helped me find it.

I've just been thinking. It looks a bit like the old classic areas have died/diminished somewhat,  so I'm posting to ask quite what WOULD interest or excite people into playing games.

1. First thought tribal game along the old style of Tribes of Crane, where it concentrates along growing tribes, giving a society, forming military training styles and later becoming involved is settlement play

2. Similar to Delenda est,  so, politics, families, religion, playing multiple characters, interacting societies, mass warfare, very much a creation in the medieval world.  Loads of player to player interaction,  role playing.

OR

3. A mix of the two.. go your own way...cities, factions, tribal development, alliances and you get the choice of doing a much more fashioned style, as you see fit.

Any answers? Could be interesting!

For those of you using GTac, I'd like to recommend that you use the Check For Errors choice on the Actions menu before submitting each turn. This will alert you to many common problems, such as running out of PI, before you lose an action during actual processing.

In my solo game, I am about to start turning a few of my biggest PV colonies into production centers.  I remember seeing somewhere that you cannot pick up PV while colonizing a system.  Is it the same with developing?

Thanks for the help!