Groentje Players Manual Ch1
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Contents
WHAT IS THE REINCARNATION
The Reincarnation is a massive multi-player turn-based game, played using your web browser and internet connection, on a The Reincarnation server. The game is ‘massive multi-player’ because 1000’s of players play their mages on a server simultaneously, constantly interacting (allying, warring) in month-long battles for land and power. The game is ‘turn-based’ as each action in the game costs turns.
The game is designed for players who have day to day internet access: at home, during breaks at school or at work, or on mobile devices. Players generally log in once or twice a day to spend their accumulated turns. They may check much more often, just to verify their kingdom's status. Some players are online for long periods of the day, just monitoring their kingdoms and hoping for the ideal opportunity to enlarge their power.
Playing the game is entirely free. Players voluntary donate money to communally pay for server hosting only. The game is free of advertizement. The game runs on multiple servers with slightly different rules (group and solo play, old school and new school magic, faster and slower play).
Turns and Time
Turns accumulate automatically as time passes by, whether you are online or not. Turns generate fast on 'GUILD' and 'SOLO' servers: 1 turn / 7. On the 'ARCH' server, the pace is slower. A player can only stock up a maximum amount of turns though (200 on GUILD and SOLO, 150 on ARCH). Players log in regularly (semi-daily) to play as much as possible of their ever accumulating turns.
but want to play 15 times every day
and is in your mind all day!
The game is turn-based, but it has a strong real-time element too. You never know when another player decides to spend turns and what will happen to your kingdom. Also, you never know how many turns another player may have stocked up at a specific time. Therefore, the game records when battles took place. It lets you browse the record (‘chronicle’), so you can make educated guesses about the activities of other players. Timing your actions by login in and spending turns at the right time, is an essential part of the game and can be a real thrill. The game runs for a couple of months (real time), after which the server resets and The Reincarnation starts over again with a fresh competition. Scheduled server resets are announced by the developers. It is also possible that players themselves trigger an early reset of a server, when seven of them successfully cast the awesome Armageddon spell.
Competition
Each player plays his/her own mage and manages its kingdom. Ultimately, only one mage will turn out the dominant mage on a server. However, players are encouraged to coordinate their actions (within some regulations) to group their kingdoms (so-called ‘guilds’) and support each other with battle power and strategy. The names of the 10 most powerful mages of the old world may be immortalised (in the Hall of Immortals), but all that rests the players is to hatch a new mage for The Reincarnation.
Note that The Reincarnation gives no real time information on enemy mages. Updating information on the status and whereabouts of your enemies comes in with delay (e.g. ranklists) or takes turns (e.g. status of your enchantments). On the SOLO server anonymous play is enforced by hiding mage names and adding a random component on the ranking statistics.
Mage specialities (colours)
The mages that rule the kingdoms in ‘The Reincarnation’ belong to one of five orders, each with its own speciality and colour. The strengths of the specialities are well balanced: there is no colour that dominates all other colours; it is possible to maintain high ranks with any colour. Any colour can win any battle against any colour, although in some cases this requires a lot of skill. Each speciality has its own qualities and associated strategies. For example, their magic differs (see: Chapter on MAGIC) and the units they can recruit differ (see: Chapter on INTERIOR). It is easy to learn the basics of each speciality, but it is very hard to master a speciality, and it is very-very-very hard to master all specialities.
Players choose their speciality the moment they reincarnate their mage on a server. Players that can't decide on a mage colour let the server pick it at random. Once the mage has come alive, its speciality cannot be changed. A player has to delete its character and reincarnate a new mage to change colour. Mages can attack other mages of the same speciality just like they can attack mages of other specialities. Mages can ally and team up with any other mage, regardless of their specialities. Note that if your mage is in a guild, you can only ally with other mages that are also in guilds.
Groentje Players Manual Ch2
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