Hello Steve: there have been a few comments on it not becoming a democracy
should we buy-out GSI. In such circumstances I would agree with those
comments. I would prefer to look on it as a benign dictatorship with input
from players that we implement. (I have had experience of a large
democratic group of players attempting to strong arm us into a decision
which was clearly bad for the game I am afraid). So no storm troopers would
be needed. Dialogue pure and simple with considered perspective on what is
possible and what is not possible.
Your offer of developing the game would be very useful.
Plan would be to get the system working on the PC (I *know* Macs are some
players preferred medium - it's not within our ability to do this) to fit in
with our current accounting system and tied in with that to make the
processing of games easier. It's presently written in Pascal - something I
know a little about. We have a couple of Delphi developers already working
on some aspects of the game. I think I have put the 4-6 Stage process that
we hope to use but to re-iterate:
Stage 0 - account system has now been transported across to another system
and I think is a lot superior (certainly is for us saves us around 4 hours a
day work). We're working on the auto-attach and creation of Front Sheets
there now (hopefully later this week).
Stage 1 - a program able to put your turns into that checks the format for
simple errors and advice.
Stage 2 - Auto-input - well we're some of the route down that but have hit a
few snags. 
Stage 3 - After the game is processed we get the system to read the
Postscript file and that gets read into a file so that we can improve the
quality of the output Resultsheet
Stage 4 - Middle Earth Program editor - for those that have seen LPE
(Legends) it's that.
Stage 5 - everything combined - probably need the source code (ie GSI buy
out for that if not for Stage 2). (Might need the source code for Stage 2).
Stage 6 - Possible development of the Engine for other games/scenarios -
Middle Earth version II etc.
Various inbetween Stages are to get everything working together so that's
why we have gone for the modular design here (cough).
We're working on a business plan that we'll put forward to all our players
as soon as we can. This would show our responsibilities, our desires, our
plans, and ask for feedback on what system etc.
Clint
···
******************************************
Middle Earth Games
Website: www.middleearthgames.com
Mailto: me@middleearthgames.com
UK: Office A, 340 North Road, Cardiff CF14 3BP
USA: PO Box 280 Medford, OR 97501-0019
Phone: 011 44 29 2091 3359 (12-6.30 BST)
Fax: 011 44 29 2062 5532 (24 hours)
****************************************