What exactly is Magic Carpet Plus? Is that the version I should play on? What's the difference?

MC plus includes the original and the expansion. I'm not sure if there is any difference in patch version. The rules are rather relaxed due to this game having high tendency to crash and not much competition. You can play any version on any speed as long as the game remains playable. You can increase game speed (cycles) in DOSBox folder or the game installation folder (if you have the GOG version) by editing the .conf-file. We don't want to exclude runs played on different options. In the future if more people want to play the game on specific rules we could add a separate category for that.

Hello there!

Just to add up to what Eino said, yes, you should definitely get Magic Carpet Plus. The original on DOS will get your game crashing constantly by the way the spells are loaded.

Here's the recommended GOG game: https://www.gog.com/game/magic_carpet