Olympia Play-by-Email

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Olympia PBEM

"Some of the best fun I've ever had in a PBM game."
-- Russell Wallace (russell.wallace@tcd.ie)
Designer of Galaxy, Atlantis and Judgement Day

Join hundreds of players in an evolving fantasy campaign. Build ships, castles, towers, inns, siege engines, temples and mines. Slay monsters, or your enemies. Study necromancy and aura-blast your foes to cinders. Distill ratspider venom and eat your victim's brains to steal their knowledge. Gate-jump across continents. Become King of the Cloudlands. Map Hades. Hack your way through the tunnels beneath the Imperial City to get to the Underworld. Get filthy rich finding new trade routes.

Introduction

Olympia is a computer moderated play-by-electronic-mail (PBEM) fantasy simulation. Each player controls a small group of nobles, who may lead commoners, fight, build ships and castles, explore, trade, slay monsters, study skills such as construction, beastmastery or combat, and research spells in the six schools of magic.

Olympia campaigns have no set conclusions, and typically run for several years, with new players continually joining. The map has thousands of provinces, each containing features such as cities, ruins, lairs, sacred groves, castles, etc. The game is capable of supporting hundreds of players in the same world.

Click here to add yourself to the game

More Information

Online rules
How to Join
Articles about Olympia:
- Olympia Survival Kit by Jaxon Rice
- Getting started in Olympia by Jay Legue and Dan Corrin
- The Olympia Primer by Van Norton
- A review from Shadis
- A review from Paper Mayhem

Live Game Information

   
There are 148 active players as of Tuesday 08-Jun-2004

Web-based game turn reports
Current player list for Olympia G2.
The latest issue of The Olympia Times, and archives of all past issues.

Miscellaneous

Olympia Design and history archive
Old magazine ad (gif, 16k)
There is a mailing list for Olympia G2 players to chat about the game.
A web archive of the mailing list discussion is available:
Browse by thread, date, subject or author.
Links to player sites:

Olympia game G1

Olympia game G1 was the first version of Olympia commercially run. It is still open for new players. Walk the same lands as the famed Bastrestric ther Archymonyaged, Oleg the Loudmouth, and Dogmatix.

Olympia G1 rules:
- Browse online
- Download a compresed tar file
Current player list for game G1
Join game G1

May 5, 2009 update: Olympia source code available

Olympia has been dormant for many years now. A few folks have asked me for olympia-related materials, so I've decided to make the source code and background files publicly available. This release includes both the g1 and g2 source trees, and the associated skill files, rules documentation, and so forth.
I doubt anyone would be interested in getting this running again, but I'm making it available for historical interest. The old C code has rotted a bit, so this is released "as is" - no support. Enjoy. :)
download olympia.tgz

There is a game running based on the above source code at http://olympia.v-labs.be. Enjoy!
Scott Turner's Olympia: The Age of Gods: download olympia-tag.tgz

-- Rich

"Hi, I've been playing in your excellent game for ages now,
and I think it is the best PBEM or PBM I've ever been in."
-- Ben Liddicott (b.liddicott@ic.ac.uk)