Hi. UPDATE. INCLUDED HERE ARE SEVERAL FILES. REAL TURNS X2, RULES ETC
I spent 3 years developing this pbm, testing underway. That means it's free for some time to come.
It's a great little game, large map, seriously so. City States, factions, warfare. Begins by having up to 3 tribes. They are asymmetric and some are "special", but otherwise you play polar, temperate, arid or sea tribes, each with martial, mercantile or nomadic tribes, 12 types in all.
You're given a budget for your tribe, to arm and armour as you see fit...so horse archers, heavy warcat lancers, have aerial cavalry, differing mounts, allied nonhuman sub tribe, all sorts!
Once youve played a bit you can take on political positions, involving Household Guards, levies, garrisons and standing armies.
There's a lot of space to make things as you wish.

Your basic spreadsheet allows to you test base actions and decide what to do with help. Base actions

Training. Crafters, foragers, warriors (standard, veteran and elites, often split by you into named unis in certain categories, so all elites in one aerial units, or some aerial some mounted on snow leopards), Herders and nonhumans...Ferakine cat folk for temperate tribes, for instance.

Slaughter. Killing herds for resources.

Trade. Trading items with settlements and tribes

Crafting. Making military or economic goods, or special projects through special actions

SPECIAL ACTIONS 

These are where you can attempt anything you can think of. Think rpg/war stuff/society building.

I don't know if this explains enough, but please think about it! Worth a go during testing, as it's free.

Ok what building types are you going to have within cities? The standard building types are from past game versions were:

- Engineering Offices
- Armories
- Cultural Buildings
- Hospitals
- Guild Halls
- Annexes

I think there should be other added buildings as well too. I understand there are Factional Offices and Temples, but I am thinking other Independent Building types could also be added.

Ok here are the (3) main types of Siege weapons for the game.

Light Siege Weapons: Ballista (made in Armories and increased by Boda Factional office)
Medium Siege Weapons: Catapult (made in the Armories and increase by the Boda Factional office)
Heavy Siege Weapons: Trebuchet (not produced on the normal city markets, need to be constructed on site of the siege site)

We also have Siege Towers , and Cover Battering Rams are also considered to be Heavy Siege Weapon types as well too, and they too must be built on site of the siege. Now I know from previous versions of the game if you had the Siege - SGE and Siege Weapons - SGW skills of a certain level (5) you had the knowledge to build these Heavy Siege Weapon types. (SGE-5, SGW-5). This is another reason why the Skill System was of use within the game, not many clans had these skills so they couldn't effectively build these weapons and use them effectively.

I'm expecting tasks (in general) to be fully automated with an assortment of available actions to offer and accept, complete and cancel, negotiate and change, and restrict and target pretty much anything you want done.  For instance, construction tasks and sub-tasks are all handled through this mechanism as well.  Or perhaps you might want some goods delivered at a particular place and time for which you will pay a specified amount.  And if you're got role-playing sorts of things to deal with there are places to fill in arbitrary descriptions where the involved parties must agree on acceptance of completion.

For instance, you can offer a task that must be completed by a specific date and the other clan might request a change in that date before (or even after) accepting it.  Or you can say that the task is only to be offered to your own factional membership, except for Jim who didn't do a good job for you before.

There are lots of options available for fun play.

I know that the old players spent a lot of their time buying, selling, and exchanging certain kinds of game information outside the game system, particularly things like maps and CVRs.  These processes have been formalized and integrated into the game.  For instance, player Joe may offer a task for someone to pick up a CVR from the city New York (done automatically through actions), and Bob accepts that task (again with a standard action), stops in New York and picks up a CVR.  That CVR is now available as an independent report on Bob's web page.  However, this also completes the task he accepted and the game system automatically notes that completion, marks the task as completed, pays off the task as agreed, and SHARES that CVR with Joe.  Now both Joe and Bob can see that CVR on-line any time they want, and no GM interaction was needed nor did the players have to do any extra work.  Then Joe decides to sell his copy of the CVR to Sam, so a transaction is arranged for a stated price, and once accepted, Sam will also be able to access his copy of that same CVR.

Doesn't that sound helpful and flexible?  Of course, the CVR is static (it doesn't change over time), just like a paper report, and if you want it to be updated then you'll have to ask for a new one.

Davin,

Can you post a set of rules that might be used so we all have a starting point in what you will be working from. This way we can all help to comment on different elements of the rules. I understand you are going to rewrite the rules but if we can see what the base is that your building from, then it would easier to comment.

Davin,

You stated that you intend to use a "Island" of the Midgard continent. Can we have the map(s) of that island so we can plan(plot) for our future Game Bata Test?

Just the maps would be a nice beginning so we could see what the maps are like that you plan on using and maybe begin talking on details?

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Single player strategic turn-based RPG/CRPG, with a strong "gamebook" feel.

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Veil of Entropy: Norfolk Warriors Kickstarter

Free Beta available at the Microsoft Store
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Norfolk Warriors
A turn-based RPG strategy game with a strong ‘gamebook’ feel, where you develop your team of characters in a quest to achieve personal and factional goals.
When brute strength isn’t enough, soften your opponents with powerful curses, dastardly thieves and deadly assassins. 
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Orth is in crisis.  The original gods Pele and Medeina are nowhere to be found.
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Paul Mouchet is a life-long gamer, starting with Pong and a love of Play-By-Mail titles in the 80’s.
Several years ago, after more than three decades building computer systems for clients, he decided to break from consulting and follow his heart.  Paul started to build a system inspired by the deep, rich and diverse worlds found in the golden era and his favourite PBM genre.
Amazingly detailed and wonderfully complicated enjoyment that can ignite the imagination for days on end.

Quote:"The strength of a game is not how you play, not how long you play, but rather how often you think of the game when you are not playing."
Jim Landes

Hello, everyone!  I've been asked to introduce myself here.

My name is Davin Church and I'm the primary owner of Talisman Games.  The company actually began in 1982 and has changed names several times over the years.  It was started back then by Jon Capps, who ran the games, and I helped him program the original game, Galac-Tac, which is still running!  Jon and I are both approaching retirement age now and Jon gave up hoping to revive Talisman Games (since the PBM industry had dwindled so much), so he gave me the company and games in order to spend his time on other endeavors.  I brought up Galac-Tac on the web (while keeping the original PBM look and feel) and I'm continuing to run new games as interest permits.  My partners and I are working on reprogramming Midgard for the web to bring it back to life, but it's been an exceptionally slow process because we're also trying to make a living elsewhere at the same time.

I'm a programmer, by trade, since the days of mainframe computers in the 1970s.  My favorite language has been and still is a little-known one called APL, and that's what Galac-Tac is written in (with most of the original code still unchanged from 1982) and what Midgard is being rewritten into.  I have only limited experience playing PBMs, having spent most of my playtime on Galac-Tac.  But I've played many other kinds of games over the years, on and off computers, especially the older ones such a Dungeons and Dragons (which I started playing in the mid-70s when it was brand new).

Lets talk about the Skill system:

Now much of my knowledge of the skill system comes from in-depth talks and work with Zan the former owner of Midgard USA. We would have many in depth conversations about the various skills and there use within the game. We also talked about how the skills might be able to actually be integrated into the code of the Midgard game. It should be pointed out that the Skills do not really do anything with the game code, but instead provide the GM a point of reference for possible uses , experience and possible bonuses to different in game actions. Thus each character (Ldr, F1,F2,F3) had a data row that allowed a player the to have up to (5) Skills. Thus each skill name was reduced to a (3) letter code and then a point value that could range from 00.01 to 10.00. In practice for each point a player had that would be multiplied by 5%, thus a 3.0 skill level equals a 15%. Most people didn't realize that the skill system was set up with a starting base of 30% then add n the skill level point percent then the GM would determine the level of difficulty (Basic +20%, Standard 0%, Difficult -20%). Lets look at a example: Ldr: MED-5  ( 30% + (Lvl-5 +25%) + (Standard 0%) = 30+25+0=55%) So vs a D100% the character would have a 55% chance in success of doing what ever the character was attempting via a Special Action. So mostly the skills were used by the GMs to aid them in resolving a Special action, to determine a bonus for combat.

Combat example usage:

LDR: CMD-5.0, STR-3.0, SGE-3.0
  F1: CMD-3.0, TAC-3.0
  F2: CMD-3.0, CTA-3.0
  F3: CMD-3.0, TAC-2.0, SGW-2.0

UNIT: 1 1500 HI - FMB/WG  with F1 in command
UNIT: 2 500 MM COV/1  with F3 in command
UNIT: 3 500 MI  mounted EXP with F2 in Command

In the above example the clan Leader - Ldr would have over all clan bonuses in a engagement, and each of the Followers - F1, F2,F3's would give each of their Units that they command bonuses in the effectiveness of combat against the opponent in that engagement. Now the skills did aid in combat resolution and sadly the combats in the game were mostly done by hand and not fully in code. Now in Midgard USA version of the game, Zan had bought a new game Combat Engine that did allow him to enter bonuses that did help to resolve of combats.

This is the basics of the skills systems, here are some of the skills:

CMD - Command
STR - Strategy (Clan level)
CST - Calvary Strategy (Clan level)
NST - Naval Strategy (Clan level)
SGE - Siege warfare (Clan level)
TAC - Tactics (Unit level)
CTA - Calvary Tactics (Unit level)
NTA - Naval Tactics (Unit level)
SGW - Siege Weapons Tactics (Unit level)
PCB - Personal Combat (Character skill)
ORA - Oratory (Character skill)
PRE - Preach (Character skill)
REC - Recruitment (Character skill)
SCT - Scouting (Character/Unit skill)
ENG - Engineering (Character/Unit skill)
MED - Medical (Character/Unit skill)
ENT - Entertainment (Character/Unit skill)


These are most of Skills but there are quite a few other.

Note I understand the GM is not trying to flush this system out now, but we can talk about the system and their usage in the game. Davin would like to really  intergrade them more into the code. Also just to note that Zan had wanted expand the skill list to 10 skills per character. I should also note that Zan had worked out how to allow for more Followers than just (3). Actually he was in the process to allow up to 9 Followers and I had actually 5 in my Senior #1 clan.  There are many possibilities and that leads to more roleplaying options.

Lets talk about what everyone might think.