Post date: Nov 30, 2019 9:45:06 PM
The 2060 Turn for the Great Game is now open! You will have 3 weeks, December 21 at 1200 UTC, to submit to me your written orders portion for the new turn. All players, the newer players especially, are encouraged to submit trial orders to the Referee so I can review them, this is a complicated game and mistakes are all too easy to make. Players that have been with us for a while might note that this turn is starting without the traditional publication of new written news articles. Articles are being written and will be published eventually but I have decided to not wait, the turn schedule will no longer be tied to article publication as they have been. From now on articles will be published when they are ready.
I have made a great many updates, most behind the scenes, to the spreadsheets used in the game. Once again most of these have to do with handling Oil SRU. I told Castle, the Referee at the time who introduced them, that bringing in Oil was a mistake, that it would consume the game. I was right, and no matter how many times I slash into how Oil is handled it keeps finding new ways to get complicated again. For now though I can be comforted that, better than ever before, the way Oil is handled matches up closer to what the rules says it does.
Important notes:
When writing your orders it is very important that you be clear about the 'to' and 'from' of anything is just WHICH SETTLEMENT YOU ARE TALKING ABOUT!! Many players already have multiple Settlements, many more Settlements are expected over the course of the game. We have all got to get into the habit of being exact about this, you cannot expect the Referee to always intuitively understand just which Settlement you are referring to. Soon I will also have to do a major redesign on how our budget spreadsheets look, they were set up long before we ever thought about dealing with multiple Settlements. As is our Budget Spreadsheets are nearly useless for Colonies, and a quirk in how GoogleSheets work, having multiple Settlements makes them much more labourious for me to create than they should be.
If you need to contact the Referee directly be sure to use the address greatgamereferee2300ad@gmail.com* , not my kelvinsoice@hotmail.com address anymore. While I have no plans on leaving the role, in case I do then whoever follows me needs access to everything. On a related point: I still see on RPOL people including the character 'GMDirector' in their posts. The character 'GMDirector' is a dead mailbox that I would have changed/deleted long ago but certain quirks of the RPOL site mechanics do not allow me to. DO NOT address anything to the character GMDirector!
*For most situations though you should be using the RPOL threads to contact the Referee, specifically the 'Follow-up <Nation name>' threads for anything dealing directly with your nation.
As I have said many times before, there are large portions of our game that have never had a valid test, one of these portions is the detailed combat rules. This is your warning that for at least one combat that occurs soon the Referee is going to declare that we will not be using the Quick Combat Rules but rather the full, detailed combat rules.
Recruitment:
We need more players! This game is more fun wh
en you can actually deal with another person instead of somebody's low priority alt. Spread the word around! On that note, welcome to Paul Og! Paul takes over as the player for Canada.
Bonus PA points:
[to those new to the game, this is where the Referee hands out rewards for good play]:
3 to Sergey, for excellent for contributions
2 to Laurent, for excellent roleplaying and audacity
1 to Sergey, for good roleplaying