PbEMs are games you play by submitting your commands or orders by email. Dependend on the game's turn intervals, you then get a report for your faction / party.
Eressea is the largest German PbEM with about 15,000 players.
It is set within a huge fantasy world, composed of hexagon regions in a gigantic world, divided into worlds, islands and continents.
The game is closed to registration by German players, but foreigners can still register. A translated version of the reports for English speaking people exists, and idle work is done on a French translation as well.
Before you register you can choose one of twelve different races which your faction will then be based on for the rest of your game.
There are many talents to learn, ways to accumulate money and ressources, monsters to fight, islands to discover and magic to cast. But the most fun is the interaction with the other factions, forming alliances with or against them. Diplomacy and betrayal and roleplaying are the means of communication.
War is a major component of this game and the strategies to successfully wage one are diverse.
Turns for Eressea are once a week. You get a zipped report in two versions, one in clear text (although I don't know if you have to manually turn this on) and a CR (computer report) which you can load into a client (I recommend java-based Magellan: http://sourceforge.net/projects/eressea).
The rules, where you can read up about all of that and much more, are here (HTML format), btw: http://www.eressea.de/rules/en/
There's an English forum, too, where newbies can ask questions, translations are being discussed and various other things:
http://eressea.army-of-darkness.it//
I highly recommend this game. It is a lot of fun! (･ ω ･)ノ
It does look kind of interesting. I kind of worry about the time-sink factor in any of these massively multiplayer resource gathering games. Is the 1 hour per week estimate accurate?
I used to play a turn-based resource-gathering empire-building game where if you didn't start early, you'd be left with an insurmountable disadvantage. Is progress here also limited by how long you've been playing?
> Is the 1 hour per week estimate accurate?
No. But it depends hugely on how much you get involved and how excessively you play. 1 hour per week should be suffice for the first few weeks, but in the later part of the game (after about 30-50 turns), expect to invest from 3 up to 10 hours a week (diplomacy included).
There are ways to save a lot of time writing your orders, though. Most importantly, there's the tool "Vorlage" which you can send your reports through and which is able to perform a lot of orders automatically for you. For instance, maybe you have traders which buy and sell luxury goods in some reasons. With Vorlage you could automatically let transporters ride into these regions, fetch the goods and let them bring to regions with the best price for the range they can reach, etc.
Unfortunately, the documentation is in German only.
http://www.gulrak.net/wiki/view/Gulrak/EresseaTools#vorlage
> Is progress here also limited by how long you've been playing?
Not at all. The world is continuously expanding and new players are put on islands in the youngest parts of Eressea, so you are always playing with people in your starting range.
> in some reasons
in some regions
The syntax for Vorlage is English, btw, and you could always ask in the English forum if you have questions. The people in the IRC channel (#eressea or #e-help on IRCnet) are also always a big help.
>Not at all. The world is continuously expanding and new players are put on islands in the youngest parts of Eressea, so you are always playing with people in your starting range.
Does the game ever reset, is it "won"? Or has it been continuously growing since it started? Are there any maps of the entire known world?
> Does the game ever reset, is it "won"?
Nope. It's been running for many years now, and the only way for you to "lose" is getting your entire faction killed or if you just drop out yourself.
> Are there any maps of the entire known world?
There are.
http://people.freenet.de/eressea-pbem/olbi/welten.jpg
http://people.freenet.de/eressea-pbem/olbi/eressea.jpg
http://www.wu-wien.ac.at/usr/h92/h9201833/kurz/olbiInselnamen.jpg
Thanks! Reading the english forum, dragons sound scary. Have you ever faced one?
なんだここは?
Ok, I've registered. Looks like the next tutorial turn starts Monday! :D
Human
Waha! Got my first turn n_n. Time to start exploring.
How are you gonna name your faction?
Hello, #14 here. (･ ω ･)ノ
I dropped out due to a lot of server downtime when I started. I'm back in now with a new faction, and things are running very smoothly. My new human faction started with not much silver, but I did get a nifty fortification. Right now I'm exploring my island and securing income.
I have also found a map of the new region here http://wiki.duckstein.net/Eressea/UnsereWelt and a cool isometric map. http://people.freenet.de/rat-von-podina/karten/welt.jpg
I sometimes wonder what goes on in the oldest central islands. Are they fighting? Trading peacefully and building enormous castles? Do they ever send fleets to explore, trade with, perhaps colonize the new worlds?
> I sometimes wonder what goes on in the oldest central islands. Are they fighting? Trading peacefully and building enormous castles? Do they ever send fleets to explore, trade with, perhaps colonize the new worlds?
I am pretty sure they aren't fighting. It takes massive ammounts of time, money and plenty of logistics to successfully fight a war in the old wars, and even if you win then you don't even have an enemy anymore. So there are either epic battles in which one side eradicates the other and then drops out as well or substitution battles (with gladiators and the like).
I also heard of some big ships which ventured out into the younger worlds, past the ice barriers and through the labyrinths of the firewalls. But so far, I have't seen one myself.
By the way, I am playing somewhere in the far Northern West of the map you linked. It's commonly called the 11th world. So maybe we'll meet in a year or two, who knows?
I'm actually still trying to decide on an appropriate name. Would "The Men in Tights" or "The Knights who say Ni" be too silly? :3
I am also trying to choose a school of magic to follow. Draig supposedly backfires when dealing with undead monsters, so that's out. From the descriptions in the manual, Cerrdor and Gwyrrd look interesting but I don't know if they would be as practical as the fireballs and teleportation of Tybied. I did find a spell list once, but it was in German.
>So maybe we'll meet in a year or two, who knows?
I hope so. I only have a few turns in the tutorial under my belt, so I don't know where I am. Probably not on the map yet.
> Would "The Men in Tights" or "The Knights who say Ni" be too silly? :3
Well, I have already seen factions get eradicated for too silly names, but if you are cool with your neighbours you can pretty much act like you want.
> I am also trying to choose a school of magic to follow.
Choose whatever you think fits the character of your faction best. Draig is pretty much all about destruction and bringing harm into the world, Cerrdor has a lot of spells with which to practically manipulate reality, with Illaun you can create powerful illusions and control the world of dreams. Tybied is a pretty solid school of magic with lots of counter spells and ways to easily enhance your own magic forces. Gwyrrd is pretty popular with those who want to effectively force the natural elements and ressources to their ends. So every school has its strengths - as well as its weak points.
If the choice is purely strategical, you might want to discuss with your allies what schools they have chosen and then opt for a different school so that your alliance benefits from the positive aspects of as many different kinds of magic as possible.
Thanks a lot for the advice. It's too bad we're the only two from here playing. Have you gathered any stories of adventure in your travels?
I never travelled that much, to be honest. All of the factions I played so far were busy with war most of the time and their races not very suit to go on a voyage by ship on their own.
Ok, you can call mine the Voyageurs of Bukyvused. I also found a neighbor this turn! The freihe Stadt Nuln(free City of Nuln). He's a German speaker, but I hope machine translation will get my messages across if I keep them simple.
Whoops, all this time I was still in the tutorial! Heh, we wouldn't have met at all. I'm starting the real game now. My faction will be the Voyageurs of Kodufit after the next turn resolves.
