Diplomacy games

These games have two kinds of players:

• adventurers
• factions

Adventurers form regular adventuring parties with other adventurers and play in adventure game sessions run by a referee.

Factions control all the members of their faction. This faction game is like a separate play-by-email (PBEM) game that goes on at the same time. The faction players use structured faction commands to take their turn. These commands are resolved by an umpire.

Since all games happen in real-time, the factions encountered in the adventure games are actually moving in the background without having been controlled by the referee. During an adventure game, of course, individual faction members are probably run by the referee. In this way, adventure games and diplomacy game influence each other.

In the simplest setup, the umpire of the faction game acts as the sole referee for all the adventure games. This is not necessarily so, as different locations can be run by different referees.