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Ed wrote on Wed, Feb 4, 2004 06:52 PM UTC:
Hello, 

As a boy back in the 60’s I owned Robert Abbott’s book and learned of
Ultima from it. I was so impressed by the game, that I made my own
physical board and pieces and have taught a few people the rules from
memory. In fact, not more than 2 days ago, I taught the game to my new
wife. However, I had run across a couple of sticky problems and did not
remember if they were addressed in the rules. I told my friend about this
game yesterday at work and to my surprise I found an email with a website
with information on the actual game. It lives!

 I looked through everything and did not see the complete rules but it
alluded that they were expounded on by Mark-Jason Dominus. I would
appreciate any more info I could obtain, the more detail the better. I
remember from memory that Abbott had even mentioned the historical
sources
for some of the pieces (Greece, Rome, Madagascar, etc.). I found this
interesting because one of the things that appealed to me about chess was
its historical aspect.  

Also, the site mentioned that Abbott had changed the rules, but that
everyone liked the original version better and still plays that one. Was
this rule change that he wanted to remove the distance limitation (if on
the 1st row, you can move only 1 space, if on the 2nd row, you can move
only 2 spaces, etc.)? Were there other changes also? Any info you can
e-mail to me would be thankfully received.

Looking forward to hearing from you,
Ed Kennedy

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