From the same team that brought you... "Lawrence of Glareorgan"... "Bridge Over the River Trent"... "The Mad Woman of Biggleswade"... and "Krakatoa, East of Learnington"... comes the story of three people and a woman united by fate who set out in search of the fabled Pole of the Sahara and found... themselves.
Okay, not three exactly, unless I am *really* unlucky. And I am not sure about the Pole of the Sahara either.
Midnight/MU is a browser-based multiplayer remake of the famous ZX Spectrum classic, Lords of Midnight. It features PBEM-styled gameplay for up to 8 players per scenario, with an option for "classic" (i.e. original Lords of Midnight ruleset sans few minor details) or "advanced" (paid mercenaries, dragon riding, various skills etc) rulesets. There are 9 scenarios available, including classic Lords of Midnight and it's sequel Doomdark's Revenge maps, as well as 7 new maps submitted by players, some including such new features as ships and water expanses, new races like Marsh Fey and Ice Trolls, and other stuff.
With an introduction out of the way, let's proceed with the game at hand! Several people on the forum expressed their wish to join the proposed session, and so I start creating the game:
Having chosen the number of players, I proceed to setting up the game. We chose The Rift as a setting, the largest scenario available in the game. With its 100x100 map, it is as large as Doomdark's Revenge and a half. It has rivers and seas (and ships), marshes and Marsh Fey, and all the bells and whistles.
There is a plenty of stuff to set up here. We'll go for a Citadel Grab game (whoever controls 20 citadels out of 26 present, wins), limited to 200 days (whoever has best score by that time, wins). Newly recruited lords are going to be at same time of the day their recruiter is (imagine, in original Lords of Midnight new recruits started at dawn, while it was well past the noon to whoever signed them up). The mountains are going to be impassable, except for mountaineering races and heroes. We aren't letting commanders just fire their lazy infantry in the field, they'll have to provide them tickets home first in some citadel or fort, to keep Labor Union off their asses. Finally, we're going to play with all the advanced rules, such as mercenary lords (only join when paid), dragon riding, rogues (those useless skulkrin characters can finally justify their existence by poisoning enemy armies) et al.
Now, we select the players (preferably those we already agreed to play with on the forums), and the session is created. Once all of them confirm their participation and select their race, the game is on.
A note on races: there are five playable ones, the Free (humans, no advantage), the Fey (elves, better and faster in the forests), the Targ (barbarians, good when riding on the plains, suck in the forests and when dismounted), the Foul (aka Icelords from Doomdark's Revenge, no advantage) and the Giants (infantry-only, but fast). There are also recruitable Dwarves (infantry-only, slow, better and faster in the hills, can pass mountains), Marsh Fey (infantry-only, better and faster in the swamps) and Ice Trolls (never recruited one) and a bunch of non-military types of characters: the Wise (mages), the Dragons (can fly anywhere for a long distance, but can't recruit), the Skulkrin (nearly useless, but can pass mountains and can serve as scouts) and even a werewolf (can pass mountains). Recruiting a lord not of your race costs significantly more time, so being seeded in the area populated by your own people is a significant advantage on start. But since seeding is random, a racial choice is mostly one of personal preference, affected by the terrain (Fey are better for heavily forested scenarios) and map populace (the more lords of your race are around, the better).
Two of the players chose the Fey (the blue riders), one a Targ (in red helmet), one a Free (the yellow guy) and one a Giant (this one should be obvious). And so it begins!
While the game is originally intended to be played via browser alone, most players use a supplemental program called Midnight/MU Campaign Manager. It provides a scenario map, automatically tracking your lords and garrisons and allowing to manually keep track of the discovered stuff - enemy lords sighted, random treasures like horse herds or magic scrolls, and so on. Most of the older maps are fully available in MUCM, so you can know immediately where each neutral lord resides, and plan your recruiting strategy accordingly. Unfortunately, The Rift is one of the newer maps, and so we'll have to play in Discovery mode, making a map as we go. I had a couple more Rift games running and revealed a sizable portion of the map for myself. Hopefully I'll end somewhere I know my way around.
Fuck. Half the world away from anywhere I know my way around is more like it.
Ghaaroth stands on the Great Grasslands of Nicobar looking northwest to the Sundered Forest. I look in all directions, not a sign of some neutral army around to sign up. Only the sea to north and east, a forest to northwest with some tower inside, and endless plains to south and west. Fuckity fuckity fuck.
We march a couple of cells southwest. I see a citadel on the horizon, with an army lingering on it. Finally, my first would be recruit.
A couple cells more, and night falls. Shit. Hopefully I'll recruit the guy, whoever he is, by the end of the next day. Stay tuned!
Okay, not three exactly, unless I am *really* unlucky. And I am not sure about the Pole of the Sahara either.
Midnight/MU is a browser-based multiplayer remake of the famous ZX Spectrum classic, Lords of Midnight. It features PBEM-styled gameplay for up to 8 players per scenario, with an option for "classic" (i.e. original Lords of Midnight ruleset sans few minor details) or "advanced" (paid mercenaries, dragon riding, various skills etc) rulesets. There are 9 scenarios available, including classic Lords of Midnight and it's sequel Doomdark's Revenge maps, as well as 7 new maps submitted by players, some including such new features as ships and water expanses, new races like Marsh Fey and Ice Trolls, and other stuff.
With an introduction out of the way, let's proceed with the game at hand! Several people on the forum expressed their wish to join the proposed session, and so I start creating the game:
Having chosen the number of players, I proceed to setting up the game. We chose The Rift as a setting, the largest scenario available in the game. With its 100x100 map, it is as large as Doomdark's Revenge and a half. It has rivers and seas (and ships), marshes and Marsh Fey, and all the bells and whistles.
There is a plenty of stuff to set up here. We'll go for a Citadel Grab game (whoever controls 20 citadels out of 26 present, wins), limited to 200 days (whoever has best score by that time, wins). Newly recruited lords are going to be at same time of the day their recruiter is (imagine, in original Lords of Midnight new recruits started at dawn, while it was well past the noon to whoever signed them up). The mountains are going to be impassable, except for mountaineering races and heroes. We aren't letting commanders just fire their lazy infantry in the field, they'll have to provide them tickets home first in some citadel or fort, to keep Labor Union off their asses. Finally, we're going to play with all the advanced rules, such as mercenary lords (only join when paid), dragon riding, rogues (those useless skulkrin characters can finally justify their existence by poisoning enemy armies) et al.
Now, we select the players (preferably those we already agreed to play with on the forums), and the session is created. Once all of them confirm their participation and select their race, the game is on.
A note on races: there are five playable ones, the Free (humans, no advantage), the Fey (elves, better and faster in the forests), the Targ (barbarians, good when riding on the plains, suck in the forests and when dismounted), the Foul (aka Icelords from Doomdark's Revenge, no advantage) and the Giants (infantry-only, but fast). There are also recruitable Dwarves (infantry-only, slow, better and faster in the hills, can pass mountains), Marsh Fey (infantry-only, better and faster in the swamps) and Ice Trolls (never recruited one) and a bunch of non-military types of characters: the Wise (mages), the Dragons (can fly anywhere for a long distance, but can't recruit), the Skulkrin (nearly useless, but can pass mountains and can serve as scouts) and even a werewolf (can pass mountains). Recruiting a lord not of your race costs significantly more time, so being seeded in the area populated by your own people is a significant advantage on start. But since seeding is random, a racial choice is mostly one of personal preference, affected by the terrain (Fey are better for heavily forested scenarios) and map populace (the more lords of your race are around, the better).
Two of the players chose the Fey (the blue riders), one a Targ (in red helmet), one a Free (the yellow guy) and one a Giant (this one should be obvious). And so it begins!
While the game is originally intended to be played via browser alone, most players use a supplemental program called Midnight/MU Campaign Manager. It provides a scenario map, automatically tracking your lords and garrisons and allowing to manually keep track of the discovered stuff - enemy lords sighted, random treasures like horse herds or magic scrolls, and so on. Most of the older maps are fully available in MUCM, so you can know immediately where each neutral lord resides, and plan your recruiting strategy accordingly. Unfortunately, The Rift is one of the newer maps, and so we'll have to play in Discovery mode, making a map as we go. I had a couple more Rift games running and revealed a sizable portion of the map for myself. Hopefully I'll end somewhere I know my way around.
Fuck. Half the world away from anywhere I know my way around is more like it.
Ghaaroth stands on the Great Grasslands of Nicobar looking northwest to the Sundered Forest. I look in all directions, not a sign of some neutral army around to sign up. Only the sea to north and east, a forest to northwest with some tower inside, and endless plains to south and west. Fuckity fuckity fuck.
We march a couple of cells southwest. I see a citadel on the horizon, with an army lingering on it. Finally, my first would be recruit.
A couple cells more, and night falls. Shit. Hopefully I'll recruit the guy, whoever he is, by the end of the next day. Stay tuned!
