A brief guide for players follows, copied from the recruitment thread for the benefit of those people who come straight to this one.


New to Empire!?
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Empire! is a collaborative world-building game where you take on the role of the ruler of a region and their heirs and successors, perhaps turning your small starting powerbase into a great kingdom or empire, forming alliances, fighting wars and establishing colonies along the way. While the GM has some oversight and final approval, the setting’s content is driven by the players. There is no limit to the number of people who can play and we are always accepting new players.

The game is played in turns, each lasting two real-life weeks and representing three years in the game world. Every turn you have a number of actions you can take, which represents the significant activities of your ruler and country over that period. Each action improves your ruler’s ability to do things in future and helps contribute to the ongoing development of your region.

As well as the mechanical side of things, there is a substantial roleplaying element. Every turn or so, someone will usually host an event, a gathering of important people from nearby realms, so that you can interact with each other, form alliances, pursue romances and feuds, and just generally get to walk around in your characters’ shoes. Eventually, your ruler will die or step down to be replaced by their heir or chosen successor, and the cycle begins anew.

If this sounds like something you’d be interested in, check out the game rules in this thread. Don’t be daunted by the size: the rules are actually very straightforward in essence, with a lot of the content being explanatory, details of special abilities you can acquire later in the game, and other things that aren’t immediately relevant to new players.

Then claim a region for your own, and write it up for review and approval by the GM, Aedilred. We have a friendly group of players who are always happy to welcome new players to the game and help them get settled in.

The IC game is due to start in early-mid January.



Played Empire! Before?
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If you played E1 or E2, the basic rules of the game will no doubt be familiar. However there are a number of differences and new features for E3 which will probably affect the way you approach the game.

Unlike in previous games of Empire!, the playable area no longer covers the whole surface of the world. The land in which players start is a single continent, with regions being correspondingly smaller and fewer in number. As the game progresses, new areas may be opened up, to allow for new players joining the game, but player-driven exploration into the fringes of the map will no longer be such a feature of the game. Instead, players have the opportunity to explore off the map entirely, sending off people across the oceans to establish colonies in distant lands.

The time period associated with the game has also changed, from the early medieval feel of E2 to the dawn of the Renaissance in E3. We think that this will fit slightly better with players’ preconceptions of a fantasy world, as well as making some of the character and player interactions more “realistic” and in keeping with the time period the game evokes.

It is also likely that the NPC religion (there is only one at the start of the game this time) will play a larger role than has often been the case. Players may still establish their own religions or variations of the main one, but those who do so may well incur the church’s wrath, with calls for crusades against them.

We hope that in this game it will be harder for people to find themselves cut off and ignored, become isolated at the edge of the map, or to build up huge empires with many regions that never get any attention. We also hope that the new rules will encourage people to build a setting with depth as well as breadth, and that regions will remain living entities which change and evolve after they’ve been initially written up.


Specific rules changes


Possibly the best introduction to the new rules would be to listen to the Empire podcast for November where we talk in detail about most of the major changes to the game for E3. For those who don’t have the time or facilities to listen to it, some of them are outlined here. Players are of course advised to read all the rules, even if they’ve played before.

The former Curiosity attribute has been removed, and replaced with Economy and Intrigue. Intrigue serves as a stat to cover the espionage and secret action side of Curiosity, as well as some oddities like the half-and-half actions used for assassinations and the like. Economy effectively replaces the rest of the Curiosity stat and covers economic development, trade, technology, logistics, artistic patronage, and the like.

Luck has been removed as a separate attribute. Instead of gaining Luck points to spend on making actions successful, players may now use Resolution actions to gain the maximum possible on a given roll. Doing so comes at a cost (a drastic reduction in the value of the attribute), but can be done unlimited times per ruler.

While it was always the case that losing your last region wasn’t necessarily the end of the game, your starting region is now unconquerable. This doesn’t mean that you’re immune from the natural consequences of your actions, and other players can still enact unpleasant vengeance on you for your crimes, but it does mean you can’t be forced out of the game against your will.

While it is still possible to acquire additional regions on the mainland, if you want to build an empire you will likely have to explore overseas for land to colonise. Land you discover in such ventures is largely in the abstract and will probably not be officially mapped, but you can use the resources you find there to benefit your main holdings.

Trade has been changed (again). Rather than tracking trade routes, each region now contains a number of trading posts which can be controlled either by the player who owns the region or by other players. Controlling a trading post gives access to that region’s resource, but they can be attacked directly. Resource requirements have also been simplified a little and apply only to capital regions.

Faith now is now tracked similarly to the new trade rules, with the population-wide majority/minority definition replaced with control of holy sites or centres within the region. Otherwise it works largely as in the past.

Gaining extra actions is no longer entirely reliant on territorial expansion to create Great Kingdoms or Empires. If you control enough trading posts, or your religion is sufficiently widespread, you can gain six actions as a Holy Land or as a Merchant Prince. Such rulers are more restricted in their actions than Great Kingdoms but can still take six.

Colonisation of mainland regions is no longer possible. Players who want to build large contiguous mainland empires will need to rely on conquest (or, with more difficulty, claims).

There is a new Military 5 action that allows the recruitment of secondary commanders. These commanders may be even better than your ruler, but are more vulnerable to being killed in battle.

There have been some alterations to the way your troop cap is determined and a redistribution of the size-based calculations for bonus losses.

Most of the remaining distinctions between unit types and region types have been removed. It is possible to write up your people as living underground but such regions are not treated differently in the rules.

Less a rule than a policy, but NPCs are to be severely trimmed and will be much less a feature of the game. Players who drop out will usually leave their lands available for claim by others, rather than continuing as NPCs indefinitely, and there will probably be fewer GM-introduced NPCs.



Getting your region approved
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What you put in your region is largely up to you, but the GM has final say over what is approved for play.

Try to make your region writeup reasonable in length. You don’t need to write a novel (and that would be going way too far the other way!) but detail is always appreciated, as is paying some attention to your map location. If you want to start in an island paradise covered with rainforest, obviously don’t pick a landlocked mountainous region in the far north of the map.

Try not to go overboard with fantasy elements or other wild ideas in your initial writeup. Empire! has seen some remarkable events over previous games but the setting remains relatively “low” fantasy in many respects, especially at the start of the game. This is not to say you can’t do something original and exciting, but, for instance, impractically huge buildings, lots of magic flying around, or giant robotic dinosaurs are unlikely to be approved. The starting setting of the game is roughly analogous to Europe in the early 15th century; as time passes during the game, you’ll be able to introduce new technologies, build wonders of the world and cause supernatural effects during play itself.

Due to the single-continent nature of the setting, monstrous races and highly alien cultures are less likely to be accepted, at least without serious revision and/or acceptable justification in the region write-up itself. To an extent this will be determined by the write-ups that the playerbase as a whole provides, of course.

Try not to write your region in a way which prejudices regions around it. It is a world-building game and input from players to create a shared world history and setting is part of what the game is all about. But writing your region in such a way that (for instance) it was the capital of a ruthless empire which dominated all its neighbours until being toppled last week, or one which suffers from major natural catastrophes likely to have an effect for hundreds of miles, will severely impede the ability of nearby players to create their own regions without either directly contradicting yours or implicitly accepting your authority over their background. Best to keep such ideas in reserve and discuss them with the players it’s likely to affect once the game gets going.

Obviously all regions are approved on a case-by-case basis and some ideas that might not be acceptable in one context might be allowed if they are presented sufficiently well or in an interesting manner.