Master of Magic forum game

Games
1

With all the excitement around some upcoming fantasy turn-based strategy games, I had the little idea that there might be some interest in a MOM forum game.

Note that that’s not a multiplayer game, a feature which Master of Magic, unfortunately, never had, but rather a round-robin game run by one leader at a time, starting with me, in which others play advisory and leadership roles.

My basic idea is that the current leader would be commander-in-chief, and control the units and armies (which will keep turns moving), while others could be ministers of specific roles, as well as general advisers. The leader would play for twenty-five turns at a time, then submit a status update to the forum at which point we can discuss our civilization’s priorities, goals, and what future courses of action to take.

I don’t intend it to be an overly serious affair. Basically it’s meant to be a fun, vaguely participatory way to share one of the greats of strategy gaming.

The manual is here.
And the spellbook is here.
We are using this patch.

This is the latest turn save, for anyone interested. Overwrites slot 8, and uses the patch above.

WIZARD:
Qtartuthre

Spell Books:
Life - 2
Chaos - 2
Sorcery - 1
Nature - 1

Special Abilities:
Myrran
Places a wizard on Myrror at the beginning of the game (otherwise, all wizards start on Arcanus). Myrran wizards may choose to begin the game with one of the special races (beastmen, dark elves, draconians, dwarves or trolls) that are otherwise not available to starting wizards. Because Myrror is a world richer in magic than Arcanus, the Myrran wizard’s enchanted fortress generates double the magic power of an equivalent fortress on Arcanus.
Alchemy
Allows a wizard to directly interconvert gold and magic power. The conversion process normally results in a loss of 50% of the starting material (you convert 100 gold into 50 mana). With Alchemy, you can convert on a straight one-for-one basis.
Node Mastery
doubles the amount of magic power that a wizard draws from nodes of all types.

Race: Trolls
Cost triple normal amount; Regeneration: 4 hit points; +2 melee strength bonus; +3 resistance bonus; Halberdiers negate First Strike; Have 4 figures per unit

First Magician: AaronSofaer
Determines research priorities and manages persistent enchantments, as well as magic management
First Warrior: idrisz
Advises army makeup
First Minister: ineffablebob
Advises city development
First Champion: CLWheeljack
Advises hero priorities and recruitment
First speaker is unclaimed for now.

Round-robin queue:

  1. Giaddon
  2. BleedTheFreak
  3. CLWheeljack
  4. ineffablebob
  5. Staff Sargent
  6. X (new players go here)
  7. Giaddon (restart loop)
2

Sounds fun!

3

I don’t have a lot of experience with these play by forum games, but I don’t know if there would be enough for individual city mayors to do. I think you’d do better with more general advisory roles, basically a senate to advise you in general strategy, while you run the details of chunks of turns. (probably bigger chunks in the beginning, while less is happening).

So, the forum would generally say “More settlers” or “we demand you eliminate the undead menace on that node”, and you’d do your best to enact those policies, even if they’re suicide (probably best to play on easier settings?)

Specific roles could be magic advisor, overall city advisor, overall military recruiter (what kinds of units to hire), and maybe race-specific advisors for each race in your empire. I feel like heroes are so important in the game that they would merit an advisor of their own as well.

How easy is it to transfer the MoM save files for round robin play?

4

Easy.

I don’t have the link here, but we should dig up the rules for rolling random wizard/race combinations. So much fun.

5

I just got into MOM again (for the upteenth time) last year, playing probably 4 or 5 games to completion that first month I had picked it up from GOG.com, and though I don’t have an urge to play more of it myself at this point, I’d definately love to participate in this “forum” game indeed.

6

I’d totally do this, too. Very cool idea.

7

If it’s easy to transfer, it might be fun to actually pass control every so often. I was actually thinking that the forum’s unreasonable demands would lead to inevitable failure, and we could have a no-confidence vote (in keeping with the “senate” idea) to pass control to somebody else, but that’s probably a little too complicated. As I understand it you usually just pass after a certain time has elapsed, which seems more fun, and more potentially hilarious since you can totally screw somebody up in the middle of something.

8

I like anything that gives me an excuse to fire up some Master of Magic.

9

As I brought up in the Master of Magic thread long ago, there’s actually a nifty tool that allowed multiplayer in MoM. It was pretty cool, really.

The only problem was that the demo version only allowed two players, iirc - maybe someone still has the full version lying about?

rezaf

10

I love this idea, how can I participate?

11

Seriously?

12

Sure, I’m fine with a round-robin. I’d say the best system would be a queue (possibly a looping queue, depending on # of people interested) that switches after a certain # of turns has elapsed. Instituting some kind of meta-political system seems too complex :p

Let’s a get a player list going! Let me know if your name is on here and you don’t want to participate, or if your name is not on here and you do want to participate.

Shellfishguy
BleedTheFreak
CLWheeljack
peacedog
ineffablebob
Brian Rubin

Updated the first post with this list, as well.

13

I assume he is referring to the demo version of this tool he is talking about.

14

Oh, my bad then if that’s the case.

15

I’d like to be in.

16

Well, we’re still figuring that out! :p

It sounds like you can be in a queue of leaders, and be an adviser of some capacity when you are not the wizard-in-chief.

I like the idea of a general senate, with maybe some specific roles so someone has the final say? Some ideas:

First Magician: Determines research priorities and manages persistent enchantments.

First Minister: Advises city development (Civilian)

First Warrior: Advises army makeup

First Champion: Advises hero priorities and recruitment

That’s off the top of my head. Ideas welcome!

I’m also a big fan of hard time limits, to keep things moving. Like “if I don’t hear from the First Magician in 12 hours, I’m going to research cracks call.” Something like that.

17

Heh, of course that’s the case - I have a boxed copy of Master of Magic, with the wonderful spell and unit manuals. Great stuff.
And if I hadn’t, picking it up from GoG would be a no-brainer.

Btw., the tool was called “Master of Magic Multiplayer Shell”.

rezaf

18

While I will definitely check true multiplayer out, I think it’s a different proposition to a forum game, so this thread will continue as-is.

19

I’m totally in. :D

20

OK, the first thing to think about is our Wizard (which perks and spell books we want) and our race.

Someone mentioned a random generator, if that’s something we want to pursue.

The manual is here. (Wizard perks described on PDF page 18. Race details in the appendix.)
And the spellbook is here.