Gorlos is an open ended computer game that allows a player to build an empire, become a warlord, a magician, a trader price, a bandit leader or anything else he desires. Set on the ancient and feudal world of Gorlos where sword and magic reign supreme. Once rich and mighty, the old empire dissolved in bloody succession wars that swept the entire realm for nearly 10 long bloody years. Now the barons and the princes lie dead and possibly buried in graves unknown and uncared for.

The lands lie open once more for exploration and exploitation. Many of the old towns and cities still survive and welcome both trader and explorer. Old skills still may be learnt, some at great expense. Great treasure lies unclaimed, rich merchants await escorts through the dangerous barren wastes. Reports of strange deadly monsters wandering in the mountains have been heard throughout the realm.

A player's position is called a "clan". Each clan has a name and a number (the number is assigned by the computer, and used for entering orders). Each clan is composed of a number of "units", each unit being a group of one or more people loyal to the clan. You start the game with a single unit consisting of one leader character, plus a sum of money. More people and leaders can be hired during the course of the game, and formed into more units. You may have any number of units as long as you afford to feed them! A clan is only considered destroyed, and the player knocked out of the game, if ever all its units are killed or disbanded. If your clan is wiped out, you can rejoin the game with a new starting character.)

Each turn, the Gorlos server takes the orders file that you send in, and assigns the orders to the respective units. A daily turn is equal to one game week. A unit can do many actions at the start of the week, that only take a matter of hours, such as buying and selling commodities, or fighting an opposing clan. Each unit can also do exactly one action that takes up the entire turn, such as harvesting timber or moving from one region to another. At the end of a real week all populations may grow, or die, markets are re assessed, tax and services recalculated etc.

TURNS may be sent in as often or infrequently as you wish. However ORDERS MUST be sent in in ASCII format via Internet to crusader@intonet.co.uk Results will be sent out via Internet to your email address.

This is intended to be a low cost, fast turn round game.

I usually check my mail first thing in the morning, noon and once or twice in the evening. I TRY to reply within a couple of hours but this depends on amount of mail and other commitments... I hope that bugs, errors and glitches will be minimal but the play test has been running for 15 months so most of them should have been found by now!

Commercial costs:

Email only... rulebook free .. at least two web sites hold current rule books and other info....see below. Free entry into commercial game with 1 weeks play , then startup cost of 4 weeks cost or greater.. after that up to the player.

1 turn a day with the production run every Sunday night.. after 6.00PM Hopefully a weekly newsletter with player announcements etc

1 weeks play 1.5 English pounds approx 20p a turn (us $2.5 / 35c a turn) 4 weeks play 5.0 English pounds 16p (us $8.0 / 28c ) 12 weeks play 12.50 English pounds 14p (us $20.0/ 24c )

I can take pounds sterling, international PO/cheques, Eurocheques in GBP or I will accept Dollar bills or other local hard currency bills as long as they are for reasonable amounts. I cannot take personal cheques not drawn in sterling as it costs too much to cash them. I cannot take VISA as yet..

Anyone introducing a new player will get a weeks free credit once he/she has paid the startup for the game.

Rule book is on Tightbeam web... also A simple order checker is on : Tightbeam website ftp://ftp.tightbeam.com/pub/tightbeam/cargo/crusader/gorlos/check.zip

Web page for Gorlos material on site

http://www.antsnest.demon.co.uk/Specifically

http://www.antsnest.demon.co.uk/crusader/index.html

If all else fails Geoff can email a zipped rulebook or if desperate a plain text one..