Summary
Games are very much “for enjoyment”, both for players and also myself. Although you pay a turnfee, they’ve not risen for 20+ years, and I run the games because I enjoy doing so, to keep them going for loyal players. Please bear that in mind, because I won’t accept aggressive, abusive or threatening messages (those are pretty rare) nor players trying to take liberties (not quite so rare).
If there is a problem, then I’ll always make a decision I think is fairest all round, and my decision is final. If you don’t like it or agree with it, I’m afraid that won’t mean I will change it, though I will try to explain it.
Turnfees
As a rule of thumb, you are charged one credit for each turn you play, though this can be higher if you choose certain optional reports, or extended reports, or in a very few cases ask me to post a game report (which will be second class post, as first class post is ridiculous). Turnfees can only be paid by credit card via the orders website (www.softsim.co.uk) and are generally ten or twenty turn tickets. The payment providers do take a portion of every turnfee, so we don’t do smaller numbers. If you are in more than one game, then a payment can be split (e.g. five turns allocated to each of two Raceplan games).
Game Reports
Are generally sent out via email. Most players choose to receive them as PDF reports, though a few get them in a “raw text” format and then use their own software to decode them. We’ve never supported this method (i.e. you’re on your own trying to get the decodes to work) so if you need more details, you’ll need to be on the players’ forum.
Deadlines
Hopefully everyone is aware of when their deadline is (it’s UK time, which if you’re overseas isn’t hard to check on the internet) so please make sure orders are in on time. The vast majority of players do this perfectly, but there’s a small number (and it’s the same people) who seem to think “a little bit late” should be OK, when all it does is hold me up, or possibly give them an advantage. If your orders are late, please assume they won’t be accepted. I need to be fair to everyone (including me).
Submitting Orders
If at all possible, please submit orders via www.softsim.co.uk – this is the easiest, and most reliable method. There are a handful who still post orders (post early, because the speed and reliability of post is only going in one direction) and for Run Chase (which isn’t available on www.softsim.co.uk) I accept scanned orders (preferably PDF’s). Everything else is via www.softsim.co.uk
Please avoid submitting multiple sets of orders. If you do then both may get input (and you get charged 0.1 of a credit) or only the last one (it all depends on when I extract orders from the site), and you’ve no way of knowing. The simple mantra – if you only submit one set, there’s no risk of a problem, if you submit more than one, don’t be surprised if something unexpected happens (and don’t complain about it).
Errors
We don’t generally have many errors, but once a game has been run it won’t generally be corrected. I will add a couple of credits if I’ve messed something up which adversely affects your turn, and in extreme situations will re-run a turn, but this is rare. It’s all my judgement call so please respect that.
New Players
New players are always welcome. The days of these games being “cutting edge” are long gone, so finding new players is difficult (most tend to be people who stumble across the game they played 30+ years ago, and can’t believe it’s still running) but if you do want to introduce someone, please do. I don’t offer free credits for introducing new players any more, but there is the Free Startup option to benefit them.
One heads up for new players is that I never give out details of which teams are available – I’ll ask a new player to let me have a list of preferences, and I’ll sort out the first one available. The rationale for that hasn’t changed in thirty years – no-one has their enjoyment of the game increase by knowing if certain teams aren’t coached, so the more mystery (even if it’s not much) about that the better.
Rules
All of the rulebooks are available on this site, though I am now starting to put “rules updates” up here as web-pages, because a PDF document is becoming somewhat old hat. If you really, really do want those updates as a PDF, feel free to write them yourselves (and let me have a copy)!