Rising Empires

This entry is part of the PBM List.

Costs: Free
Frequency: 1 Turn/5 Days (varies)
Email: patrick.doyle14@yahoo.com.au
URL: http://w11.zetaboards.com/Rising_Empires/index/ [ dead link ]
Type: medieval nation building
Last-Update: 2013Apr16
Keywords: free, open-ended, www, human, fantasy, wargame, rpg

Description

"Rising Empires is a game of politics, strategy and intrigue. As far as the features of the game go, RE is a mixture between a board game, a real-time strategy game, a war game and a nation simulation. RE also boasts some mild roleplaying elements, as it is a game where the game world is forged by the players and the people they lead.

The purpose of the game, if it had to be summarised, would be for each player to 'thrive'. In RE, players are the heads of noble Houses in a medieval, fantasy world. It is up to you, with or without the advice of your Officers, to expand your House and be as efficient and effective a leader as you possibly can to the people who follow you. At the beginning of the game, you find yourself in control of a small army and a single, young city. Later in the game, though, you may very well be at the head of a global empire. It all depends on you, your opponents (or allies), and luck.

At the start of the game, once you are satisfied that RE is something you'd like to commit to and you have read through the rules, you need to create your House. Once you have read the rules and mechanics of the game, most of the fields on the Application should make sense to you.

The purpose of the Application Form is to define the House you are going to be playing, much like you would define an individual character in a game or book or movie. Your House has its own culture, goals, views on diplomacy and trade and war, and all of these things should be portrayed in the actions you take as a Leader during the game. The information you put down in your Application will be recorded as 'fact' for your House and you will need to stick to these values throughout the game, lest you suffer the consequences. For example, a House who is strictly against war would quickly lose their supporters if their Leader was constantly attacking other Houses for no good reason. Your House is a living character in the world, and should be played as such.

During the game, the actions you take as Leader of your House are limited by a few game rules, but mostly only by your imagination. Given the setting (low-fantasy medieval), the kinds of things one would do as Leader of a noble House are near unlimited: manage your economy, keep your people happy, manage your natural resources, manage and command your armies, trade with other Houses, forge alliances, start wars, explore the unknown world, hold tournaments, hold festivals or great parties/feasts for your neighbours, etc. The list goes on. If it is something that could realistically have happened given the era and context of the game, it's up to you to propose it and the Gamemaster to figure out how to make it happen.

The game has no ultimate goal - the idea is the live, survive and prosper for as long as you can as Leader of your House. A game ends when one of the Houses reaches a predefined number of Victory Points, or the game reaches the end of a pre-determined number of Turns.

The main mechanic of the game occurs in Turns, where the actions (or Orders) of each House are compiled and executed simultaneously by the Gamemaster. A turn, while a little more complex than this, is essentially a back and forth exchange between each player and the Gamemaster of information about their House and what it is doing in the current Turn. For more information on Turns, continue reading through the Rulebook articles."

Rulebook: http://w11.zetaboards.com/Rising_Empires/forum/4034576/

      


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Greg Lindahl