The Game

Above is what the progress from turn 1 to turn 34 looked like. All credit goes to the original creator and moderator, Anthro. Note: As a player, I was among the second wave of new players. The islands to the east were added specifically for the three of us. (Palanteinc: Purple)

About the mapgame

The original mapgame – that I participated in and from which the Palanteinc were born – took place between the summer of 2021 and fizzled out by September of 2022. The mapgame was hosted on the Stellaris Community Multiplayer Server (“SCM”) in a channel seperate from other Stellaris and videogame-related content. It was dubbed “Glorious Morning” by the gamemaster (“GM”), Anthro, a moderator of the server. The second moderator did not find the time, but helped in creating the ruleset. At its height, there were about 18 players playing, with some being more, some less active in the chat.

How is the game played?

There are three core aspects to the game:

  1. The map: The fictional earth we played on was always present as a map. Our cities, settlements and armies were marked as well as wonders and other outliers. The map was divided into tiles that players could explore, pass or claim as their own.
  2. Roleplay: The players engaged in (mostly but not exlusively) text-based roleplay with each other. Some messages were broadcasted (“announced”) for a wider audience while some conversations between state members were done in specific channels or threads or even via direct messages.
  3. Submitting your turn: Two times a week, every player had to fill out an elaborate google sheet, filling out what they were using their action points and other resources for. This included army and navy movement on the map. Our GM then updated the map according to our actions.

Rules

The google document detailing the rules for the mapgame was about 18 pages long. It detailed what resources and how many action points it cost to build a city, what prerequisites had to be met and much more. Overall, the rules were very detailed and thorough and the GM sometimes brainstormed new rules with the players.