In this role-playing game, players negotiate with eachother on behalf of hostile factions to try to protect or establish peace.
There are three eras in the game. In the first, players simply play a competitive game to establish the balance of power between their factions. In the second stage, they negotiate by making offers counter offers and drawing cards. In the third stage they decide whether to accept a settlement or reject it, and the consequences of their choice is revealed.
For any given game, the players set the stakes for the conflict by establishing a setting and theme. For example a game could be set in a colonial era in which one faction is a pastoral society which has dwelt in a land for hundreds of generations and the other is an invading force with overwhelming numbers that is taking the land and its resources for themselves. Another setting might be a negotiation between a start-up company and a venture capital firm, or mega-corporation. Or perhaps the setting could be fantastical featuring a negotiation between the old gods and a new generation of restless immortals. Features that I tend to think will be generally essential to the game, are that whatever the factions are, they are pluralistic in that they contain subfactions and splinters within themselves. These splinters can represent extremists or other elements that might seek to sabotage negotiations. Another feature I think is important is that most negotiations played out in this game should be asymetrical. That is obectively one side should appear to vastly overshadow the other. I have yet to put my finger on why this feature feels important to me but I'll keep thinking about it. As a result, the negotiators must see themselves as naturally having some degree of divided loyalty. Of course they both desire what is best for their own faction, but they believe, or at least the negotiator for the powerfule faction believes, that preservation of the weaker party is ultimately in the best interests of all, even if this view is not endorsed by its majority. For the weaker faction, often the choice is between survival and extermination. While extermination may be undesirable, there may be terms under which it would be preferable to survival. For this negotiator, they must weigh what is more valuable than mere survival and strive to protect it.
with or even complement world-building, and it should lead to assymetrical results. I picture it a game that represented seizing of territory or assets or advantages such that once one side gets ahead, it snowballs rapidly. It would also be good if it had an abrupt stopping place, some event that forces the game to stop, and opens up the opportunity for negotiations. I think the game could be played in two different ways: in one the players decide who will be the winning side in advance and that choice affects the start of the game. In the other, the players don't know at first who will win, but the snowball mechanic will quickly determine a winner.
A 'would be nice' feature of phase one is if it was still an opportunity for the players to lay the ground work for the second stage. For example, if the resources or advantages fought for in phase one represent something that can be used in negotiations, the players can still strategize in order to influence the tone or the stakes of the upcoming stage.
If this game can be played with more than two players, and I'm not sure that it can, then this phase might also determine relations between the multiple factions.