I always had trouble picturing Mordant -- maybe because there was no map and I've come to depend on maps in the front of fantasy novels. But I did not get the same feel of the land that I got from TCTC (I suppose that's appropriate since the books are about "THE LAND" after all). I loved the way SRD described the surroundings -- I missed that in MN. Or maybe because we spent so much time in Orison -- which I actually had a pretty good idea of.
On the subject of checkers, maybe it was just kind of a fun idea for the author, but there was one thing that I thought was cool. In strategy games, you always have to think about each move and how your opponent will react. Then you have to think about how you will react to that reaction and so on. You have to think about all the possibilities and choose the most likely. That is kind of what Joyse did.
Spoiler
It seems he always knew how each person would react to the each situation and he played on that -- he depended on it. Like, he knew Elega would go with Kragen. He knew Myste would follow the Champion. The Tor was the one unpredictible player.
