Where do you hail from?

[ixnay]

How did you come across mention of Empyrean Challenge???

Also, if you’re up for a competitive one on one, we could take Davin’s Galactac out for a spin and stream updates to this forum...

[Davin]

Also, if you’re up for a competitive one on one, we could take Davin’s Galactac out for a spin and stream updates to this forum...

Sure - you can play with only two players, but that will leave lots of territory open and it will be some time before you bump into each other. OTOH, that gives you both time to learn all the ins and outs of economic expansion without having to worry about military matters for a while.

Or, you may like to recruit a couple of other players that are having fun in currently-running games and see if they want to play an "open" game with you at the same time.

[ixnay]

I’m up for that! My goal - do an open game with cheesy-humorous role play banter on this forum, like we once did with Far Horizons (which ranks among my favorite PBM game experiences.)

[Davin]

Sounds great to me!

If you'd like to set one up, use the web site to ask for a game with plenty of players so that anyone can sign up that wants to play. I can cause it to start whenever we think that everyone's joined that wants to. (And of course, I'm still providing a couple of years of free play time for those that don't have it, simply for the asking.)

You'll want to choose how often the turns run, probably once a week or once every other week. Since it would be an open and frivolous game, missing a weekly turn occasionally isn't going to be too annoying. (You could even play faster, but not everybody has enough free time to spend on a fast game.)

[wraith]

How did you come across mention of Empyrean Challenge???

Serendipity? A couple months back I was reading the Heart of Oak rulebook (Fantasy Games Unlimited) when I saw that Hyborian(?) War was a featured article on the Wikipedia. That piqued my interest about PBM. Not very much later I saw the EC rulebook for sale on a gamesite. I thought "why not?" The design of the game appealed to me right off. I saw PlayByMail on Facebook (their ability to connect the dots is spooky sometimes) and here I am.

[wraith]

Also, if you’re up for a competitive one on one, we could take Davin’s Galactac out for a spin and stream updates to this forum...

I was looking at that last night. The player's aid seemed to be a Windows executable; I'm mostly a Mac guy. I didn't dive too deeply into it after that. Is each turn something one could take care of in a single afternoon?

[Davin]

I was looking at that last night. The player's aid seemed to be a Windows executable; I'm mostly a Mac guy. I didn't dive too deeply into it after that. Is each turn something one could take care of in a single afternoon?

The GTac Assistant is for Windows, but it runs fine on Crossover for the Mac, if you have that. But the GTac Assistant is not necessary for play - it can all be done on the screen or with paper and pencil. The GTac Assistant just makes it more fun and graphical.

Turns can take anywhere from a half-hour to numerous hours spread out over several days, depending on how deep and detailed you wish to get. Usually an afternoon is enough to play quite reasonably.

[ixnay]

I myself shy away from local client installations. You can submit all orders through the web site. Also, the site provides “suggested orders” for the first few turns - this demos the order framework and ramps you up quick. I haven’t run a big position yet, but I imagine 2 possibilities when running a big position:
- use sentries, patrols, supply runs, etc to lighten the load
- gorge upon the minutiae

[wraith]

Turns can take anywhere from a half-hour to numerous hours spread out over several days, depending on how deep and detailed you wish to get. Usually an afternoon is enough to play quite reasonably.

Cool. I just created an account over at talisman-games.com. Y'all even had `ronin` available!

[Davin]

Commands such as SHUTTLE are provided and necessary to keep your economics and other boring stuff running in the background so you can concentrate on the fun stuff and conquer the galaxy more enjoyably.

FYI - The GTac Assistant comes as an installer for convenience, but it really is no more than copying files to a directory. If your complaints simply have to do with what the installer is doing to your system, I'd be happy to help you with a zero-interference setup.