Hello,
Here is the start of a Twillight Imperium core game. It will be unmoderated. To start, I suggest players introduce themselves a little, particularly indicating where they are in the world and also what preference they have for races. If there are any conflicts, then we can roll off. It is in this forum that we will post log files and also give a summary of our turn actions.
I hope to have a great game.
Ryan
I will start. My name is Ryan, I live near Toronto, Canada (EST). I have two children named Jack and Natalie. I would be interested in playing The Sardakk N’orr
Hi, I’m Andrew. I’m currently living in North Carolina (est). No kids yet, but I have a girlfriend. This will be my first game of TI, so please be patient with me ;D. I have no real affinity for any particular race.
Hi Andrew. I will be learning the Vassal version and becoming more accustomed to the game myself. SO no worries. 
Hello, I’m Jeremy. I live in Virginia (DC Metro). I have two children ages 5 and 2. I have played TI once before (live) with some experience players and am now hooked. 
I am going to be participating in one other PBF GM-ed game that is starting up now as well. It will be interesting to compare the experiences.
This game I would like to play Sol.
Hi Jeremy. It looks like we are all in the same time zone (so far). Sometimes, if it is prudent, we may feel it necessary to meet to roll or draw cards when the rollers are online. Thoughts? Is this something that could work?
Nice to meet you Jeremy and Ryan!
Probably good we’re in the same time zone, easier to communicate and play. I’m available almost all hours everyday, with few exceptions. I can’t wait for this to get started, so excited to play with you fine gentleman!
Also, there was a request to use the leaders optional rules. I am okay with that, any objections?
Is that shards or shatterd expansion?
Leaders is a core optional rule. I did request it, so I still want it
I can be available for some live meetings but only after about 10 most nights.
Have we heard from the 4th player yet?
No GM? Hmm, I would strongly advise you to find somebody to volunteer, otherwise problems will be inevitable. How are you planning to handle dice rolls and combat in general? Do you want to meet online? Otherwise due to possible AC plays, those could drag on forever…
He messaged me that he was having difficultly registering with vassal. I will look into it more. Hopefully the issue can be resolved soon.
I think it is our intention to go live from time to time to speed up play and avoid as many problems as possible. We could also use the bgg roller to facilitate rolling. Thoughts everyone?
I am not sure how battles work in PBF games with or without a GM. There are so many action cards, racial abilities, and other scenarios involved that I am not sure how they can work if the two parties aren’t essentially live. Fairness requires either impartial mediation or transparency (and trust of course).
We can work through the problems as they come up. Unless shaunm is volunteering to serve as the GM for this game, his input is not really helpful at this point.
I’m not sure what the best course of action is. BGG has a dice roller feature, right? So we could create a forum used for combat on that site and normal actions use this forum. I don’t know how we could keep track of our AC. and now that I’m thinking about it, SO cards will have the same problem. Either everything is public or 1 or more persons will need to keep a record. I wouldn’t be against the honor system, but we run the problem of multiple players drawing the same cards.
The log files take care of “drawing the same card”, at least I think… For that matter, Vassal has die rollers as well, but putting it in a more visible forum is fine with me.
I was thinking the same about the die rolling, create a thread on bgg and do the rolling there. As for the AC and objectives we could draw them only when we are live OR just trust that we are not cheating and one player draws and then posts the log file on this forum for the next player to draw and so on… I am currently trying to modify the vassal file to make cheating more difficult but I dont think the modifications will be done in time.
Sorry if my comment seemed ill-advised. I am currently GMing two games and just thought I’d share my experiences with you. We’ve been having situations in every game until now where I participated either as a player or as GM, where an impartial party was required. Of course it CAN work without a GM, but it may cause trouble. I will be following this game just out of curiosity.
Not ill advised, shaunm, just late. We have accepted the risk at this point.
I, for one, will still appreciate the outside observer. We are all pretty new to both PBF and TI3, so if we misinterpret any rules, please let us know.
I don’t mind playing a three player game, if he can’t get in for some reason.