Hi all! Greetings from a returning player. Well, I have had a good, long look at the Kin-Strife scenario these past few days and it’s promising. I’ve decided to join the Gunboat version that is forming up now. I think for MEPBM to be maximally fun for a veteran player, the amount of information available at game start must be scrambled and limited. What does your enemy start the game with? That depends on what he chose. Who will get the game’s major artifacts first? That depends on who finds out the corresponding artifact numbers; at game start, those numbers are randomized. Who will recruit The Blue Wizard to join their nation? What!?! You can do that? Yea, and ditto with Treebeard, Saruman, Gandalf, and other NPCs.
I think Kin-Strife solves a lot of the issues many people had with game design in 1650 and 2950 open games. Way back in 2005, Greg Shaffer wrote about them in a News from Bree article here: http://www.middleearthgames.com/mewp/wp-content/uploads/bree27.pdf
Anyway, I’m chomping at the bit to get a game started these days, so consider this bit of promotional cheerleading a call to arms. Game #678, Gunboat Kin-Strife, just needs a few more players! Let’s match wits and get this war rolling!