Used to play a multi-player Lords of Midnight (the Spectrum/C64 game) where each player (up to 8) made their moves in turn. The original used a day/night turn-based system, so using that for 2-8 humans made sense.

It actually improved on the original by introducing new maps, which probably helped players unfamiliar with the original game who could probably draw the map from memory.

Games could often stall where a real-life didn't allow a player time to make their moves.