Online RolePlaying Game

[Fitz]

I thought I'd drop buy and let people know about a cool online roleplaying game I found last year, and have been playing very heavily since. It's called Shadowmere, and the url is www.shadowmere.com

It's text based, turn based (1 turn every 1/2 hour, 200 max) and lets you run your own kingdom. Kingdom interaction includes trading & warfare, and it includes providsions for alliance. You have 6 different kinds of troops and some 10-15 building types. The game will be reset on April 30th, so now is the time to go check it out and see if you want to jump in when everyone is on a clean slate.

I run an alliance, Suicidal Leaders, and would be happy to accept anyone who is interested in playing into the alliance and teach you some of the aspects of the game.

This game is a lot of fun if you are interested in strategy games. I like it so much I haven't been to 'poly in about four months. I'll be around more after the reset, since I'm only going to run one kingdom instead of four. Keep your eyes open for Fitz of Burrow, and I hope ya'll will come try it out.

Especially you, MarkG.

------------------
Fitz. (n.) Old English
1. Child born out of wedlock.
2. Bastard.

[Urban Ranger]

It's it MUD-like, requiring a telnet client, or is it web-based?

[Fitz]

It's web based. Access it through your hadny dandy browser. The graphics are fairly basic, since it is technically a text game, but it's not a pain to use like the old MUD games were.

[Urban Ranger]

Okay, count me in your alliance.

I like to be one of the builders, like dwarves, minotaurs, or wood elves. Any suggestions?

[Richard Bruns]

This looks interesting. I'd like to play Minotaurs and stay peaceful if possible, at least while I learn the game. I read the help file and the compendium linked on your page. Any other tips?

Should I sign up now, or wait a few days?

[Fitz]

Wait until Thursday, unless you want to practice a little bit. With the current rules, it's very hard to remain peaceful, but that should change when they reset.

[Fitz]

UI, woodies aren't really builders. They have fantastic rangers, so they are great at all the explore functions. Dwarves in this reset were hard to play, since weapons & armor were weakened, but they should be strenthened somewhat in the next reset.

Generally, wood elves are the easiest to play the first time around, followed maybe by gnomes. however, once you start getting into the higher scores, they become somewhat harder, since neither has great defense (gnomes have good defenders, but poor overall combat skills bring that down).

Personally, I've played Gnomes (my main kingdom), Leprechauns (insanely good attackers, horrible defenders if located), Werewolves (good attack/defense, regenerate troops, poor infrastructure), and Wood Elves.

[Urban Ranger]

I meant peacefully building a country instead of going on to attacking.

What about minotaurs are they any good?
[This message has been edited by Urban Ranger (edited May 01, 2001).]

[Fitz]

Not very familiar with them. The only other race I'm really familiar with is Halflings, and I'm not up on particular tactics for them.

[Urban Ranger]

Shall we join now? Has the reset been accomplished?

[Fitz]

They are working on it as I type. So you know, in DAN, I will have two kingdoms. If you find Burrow or SLOASeeker, Private Message me.
[This message has been edited by Fitz (edited May 03, 2001).]

[Urban Ranger]

How does an alliance work?

[Fitz]

First of all, that link isn't working while they're resetting the server.

Alliance come in several different kinds, but they all have some things in common:

You join an alliance by recieving an invite from another kingdom. This shows up on your status screen. They can only invite you if you are already not in an alliance.
Once you get an invite, you go to the alliance screen, and then you can accept the invitation.
You cannot attack other alliance members.
You can post (and read) a special kind of mail that can only be read by other alliance members.

The types of alliances:
Communications. Nothing special, they just allow you to use alliance mail and not attack each other by mistake.
Offensive. Allows you to take on turn to send a kingdoms map to all other alliance members. Normally, to send a map to others you have to spend one turn per person you send it to, but can send up to five at once.
Defensive (defunct). They disabled this, but may re-include it at some point, so I included it. They way it used to work was that if you were attacked, some percentage of every other alliance members troops would immediately be transferred to you. This meant that if you were weak and attacked once, you got a bunch of troops in case they tried to attack you again.

Suicidal Leaders was involved in two alliance wars last reset, so we coordinated attacks, and used mail to request trades for help. I was sending, on a regular basis, scrolls with a magic barrier to all allies at their request, and we were generally helping each other out.

I hope to get a regular trading thing organized, but don't have the time to do it myself. So far no one has stepped foward to organize it, cause it would be a little complicated.

[Richard Bruns]

By "regular trading thing", do you mean the "trade" thing that takes a turn, or an alliance trade tagging system on the Open Market?

[Fitz]

I was actually referring to the trade that takes a turn, but the OM trades with tags is a good idea too. We've never done it, which points out exactly how important it is for the alliance to have a person in charge of trading.