According to the homepage
, 'Battle Master is a team-oriented browsergame merging strategy and roleplaying. It is set in a low-fantasy middle-ages world and players take the role of nobles and lords.' This is essentially accurate, although like most strategy games it's much more complicated than it sounds at first.
Playing somewhat like a multiplayer version of Koei's Romance of the Three Kingdoms games, the main focus of Battle Master is - shock! - the battles and state of warfare between player controlled nations called 'realms'. PCs can engage in direct field combat or siege warfare, as well as the various home-front activities like trading, farming, or diplomatic shennanigans.
This game provides examples of:
- The continents of Belluterra and Dwilight have daimons, some of which look like Eldritch Abominations.
- Blood Knight: Thanks to a mechanic known as 'Too Much Peace', everyone is this. If a realm doesn't engage in enough violence, their citizens and soldiers start getting cranky and mutinous. This mechanic has since been removed.
- Apocalypse How: Specifically, in Beluaterra. Parts of it suffered a Regional Physical Annihilation and the rest of the continent a societal destruction after both the 4th and 5th invasions when regions were either blighted or removed entirely from the map, though Overlord in the 5th showed the willingness and the potential ability to make a Species Extinction, Total Extinction or Physical Annihilation at the planetary level.
- Feuding Families: Surprisingly few given the setting and nature of the game, but familial conflicts can get nasty and when they get nasty, they get bloody. More features have been suggested to give additional options to blood feuds.
- Alternative Calendar: Many players use the current date minus 1000 years as the date of time in the setting, meaning that it is now the year 1012.
- A Wizard Did It: A common explanation for out of character issues that effect the game such as glitches and multi-account cheating.
