Olympia II ========== Rules of Play Olympia, its rules, documentation and game text are Copyright 1991-1994 by Rich Skrenta. All rights reserved. Questions, comments, to join: info@pbm.com Introduction ============ Olympia is an open-ended computer moderated fantasy simulation. Characters move, battle, explore and study in the Olympian world. Each week, players submit orders for their units. After the turn runs, Olympia sends reports to the players detailing what happened. Olympia is set in a low technology fantasy world. Characters do not have fixed goals. They may study whatever skills they believe will be useful and pursue goals as they find them. Olympia has no victory conditions; no winner is ever declared. An aspiring heroic fighter may purchase weapons, study combat and slay monsters. Business-minded individuals can establish a profitable trading empire. The study of magic could furnish tools to advance dark plans. An explorer could trade his gold to a shipbuilder for a galley, and set out on the high seas to find adventure and treasure. Olympia turn reports tend to be long, detailed and dense. Since your player character may hire other units which can study, move and fight on their own, large factions of characters may be organized. Supplying orders for many units in a large faction can be a lot of work! A turn report for a new player controlling three characters is about five (66 line) pages. Average turn reports tend to be 15-25 pages. The size of the report will depend on whether a player chooses to concentrate development in a few characters, or to pursue an empire- building strategy of acquiring many units and controlling as much territory as possible. Overview -------- Each player begins with control of one character and a sum of gold, the Olympian currency. Characters may hire subordinates, study skills, trade items, build things, and explore. Each turn a player submits orders for all of the characters they control. These include the initial character, known as the Player Character, and any vassals of the player character, which belong to the player's faction. The Olympia program will execute orders for characters in parallel. Each order may take no time or some number of game days to complete. As many orders will be processed for each character as game time allows. Orders not completed by the end of the turn may continue into the next. Each turn covers one month of game time. An Olympian month lasts 30 game days. Turn schedule ------------- Turns are run once per week, on Wednesday. Orders are due at 6:00pm, Eastern U.S. time. Players should receive their turn reports by the following morning. Late orders will queue for the next turn. Beware! Even if mailed before the deadline, your message may take some time to get to the order scanner. Send your orders in a day early to avoid grief. This will also give you time to correct mistakes reported by the order scanner. New player additions are performed just after the turn is run on Wednesday. Olympia Times ------------- Players may submit articles or notices to The Olympia Times. The _Times_ is published once per week, if there is sufficient material. Submissions may be creative stories about your characters, advertisements for goods to be sold within the game, proclamations, etc. Generally anything in good taste with some relevance to the game will be accepted. Any reasonable submission will earn 25 gold. To receive payment, the "Subject:" header of your Times article MUST say "CREDIT ", where is the entity-number of the character to receive the 25 gold. For example: To: times@g1.pbm.com Subject: credit 501 Plans are being drawn up to build a place of worship just outside of Drassa. Worshipers of the Twilight Goddess are gathering for the blessing. The worship circle shall not be the temple of some dogmatic religion, we are not seeking followers, only fellowship with friends. Please limit articles to a line length of 72 characters, to prevent lines from wrapping after formatting. Diplomatic email forwarding service ----------------------------------- Players can send mail to the player controlling an entity by mailing to @.pbm.com. For example, suppose you saw the following characters: Seen here: Circe [2225], with three peasants, accompanied by: Hephaestus [3446], with 11 peasants Circe's lord isn't identified, so you don't know what player is controlling her. However, it is still possible to send Circe's owner a message. Mail to: 2225@g1.pbm.com and the message will be forwarded to whatever player is controlling Circe [2225]. Forwarding works for character and player entities. Mail sent to other entity numbers, or to unaffiliated characters, will be silently discarded. Forwarded mail is not anonymous. The original headers on your message will be preserved. Compensation for errors ----------------------- What if there's a bug which ruins your whole turn? What if an error in the combat system lets all of your men be killed in one day? o I will not re-run turns. Turns can't be rerun for one player, the entire simulation has to be run for everyone. This takes some time and produces a large amount of data which is mailed out. Only for the most serious of game disasters would I consider rerunning a turn. o If you are stung by a bug, I may grant items for compensation, but I won't alter the universe. I might give you 1,000 gold if you are the victim of some heinous bug, or perhaps even an NP, but I won't move a unit that should have been in Pactra to Drassa. Cheating -------- 1. A player may not have more than one faction in the game. Also, multiple players from the same account are not allowed. Each player must have their own unique email address. 2. Players should not send in orders for another player's faction, to ruin that person's turn or otherwise benefit. 3. Players must inform the GM of any game bugs found. 4. Anti-social behavior, including harassing telephone calls, sending obscene/obnoxious unwanted communications, mail bombing, etc. will not be tolerated. Punishment for serious violations is generally banishment from Olympia. So don't cheat, play fair, and be a good sport. All decisions of the GM are final. Olympian Calendar ----------------- The Olympia calendar has two months for each season, for a total of eight months per Olympian year. Each month is 30 game days long. Season Month Name ------ ----- ---- Spring 1 Fierce winds Spring 2 Snowmelt Summer 3 Blossom bloom Summer 4 Sunsear Fall 5 Thunder and rain Fall 6 Harvest Winter 7 Waning days Winter 8 Dark night Game additions and rule changes ------------------------------- Features may be added to Olympia every so often, such as new areas in the map, NPC races, magical artifacts, skills, spells, etc. It is also sometimes necessary to make slight alterations to existing game mechanics to correct bugs or flaws in game balance. While it is inevitable that some players will be affected by rule changes, every effort is made to not disrupt existing game positions. This is mentioned only as a warning that the rules may evolve over time. Changes are announced via email to all players. How do I join? -------------- Get a signup sheet by sending mail to info@pbm.com, or from the ftp.pbm.com ftp server. Fill it out, and mail it to info@pbm.com. Turns cost US$2.50 each. Players may send a US check to Shadow Island Games or elect to have their credit card billed US$30 quarterly. Compuserve ---------- Olympia players on Compuserve may obtain support by posting in the PBMGAMES forum. Shadow Island Games is Compuserve ID 74361,2617. The following files may be downloaded from library 15 in the PBMGAMES forum: RULES.OLY Olympia rules (this file) SIGNUP.OLY Olympia signup form START.OLY "Getting Started in Olympia", by Jay Legue and Dan Corrin Compuserve players download the weekly issue of the Olympia Times from the PBMGAMES forum instead of receiving it via email. Email address, etc. ------------------- Joining, info: info@pbm.com Order scanner: orders@.pbm.com The Olympia Times: times@.pbm.com Diplomatic forwarding: @.pbm.com The latest rules, back issues of the _Olympia Times_, and other game related material may be downloaded via anonymous ftp from ftp.pbm.com. Visit the Olympia WWW server: http://www.pbm.com/oly-top.html Shadow Island Games P.O. Box 6435 Somerset, NJ 08875-6435 Telephone: 908-469-1992 (answers 24 hours; leave message)