Offer meaningful choices
When a battle is about to happen, a Proposal can turn it into a choice: accept a deal, or refuse and fight.
Diplomats · faction overview
Every battle begins with a choice.
Diplomats turn impending battles into negotiations. Proposals give the opponent a choice: accept a deal and avoid the fight, or refuse and face the consequences.
- Victory
- Run the Gauntlet or complete the Peace Treaty
- System
- Influence · Proposals
- Leaders
- Ambassador · Senator
At the table
How the Diplomats play.
Diplomats do not avoid Gauntlet's battles; they make every battle politically expensive. A Proposal can resolve the conflict peacefully or make refusal create leverage for the Diplomat.
Make refusal matter
Influence gives your negotiations weight. A well-timed Proposal can reward acceptance or make saying no increasingly uncomfortable.
Build legitimacy
Successful Proposals can become ratified Treaty Articles, giving you visible progress toward a Peace Treaty while the territorial game continues.
Signature system
What makes the faction different.
Influence
Influence is the political capital behind your Proposals and other faction effects. Spend it carefully: it supports both negotiation and tactical leverage.
Proposals
Each Proposal frames a different bargain. Some are tempting to accept; others are valuable because refusal creates pressure or opens the door to imposition.
Ratification
Accepted or successfully imposed Proposals can become Treaty Articles. Six different ratified Proposals complete the Peace Treaty.
Victory
How the Diplomats win.
Run the Gauntlet
Diplomats can win through the normal territorial route, using settlements and political pressure to improve their position.
Peace Treaty
Build a Peace Treaty from six different ratified Proposals. Complete the Treaty to win.
Faction Leaders
Two ways to lead.
Each Leader uses the same Proposals and Influence, but approaches political risk very differently.
Agreement, card flow, and settlement
Ambassador
“Words first. War last.”
The Ambassador rewards accepted Proposals with extra cards, letting successful diplomacy advance the Peace Treaty without starving the rest of your game.
Why it matters
The more often the opponent accepts your offers, the more card flow you gain. The Ambassador favors Proposals that are genuinely tempting rather than empty threats.
Risk management, resilience, and imposition
Senator
“Procedure endures.”
The Senator can trade cards to protect Influence when a rejected Proposal ends badly, making bold negotiations less dangerous.
Why it matters
The Senator has more room to take political risks, but that protection costs cards. He rewards calculated pressure rather than reckless stakes.
Archetype and setting
An institution—and a method of power.
Diplomats represent courts, envoys, assemblies, councils, and the political networks through which recognition, agreement, law, and legitimacy become forms of power. The Ambassador works through negotiation, correspondence, personal trust, and relationships across jurisdictions; the Senator works through legislation, procedure, rhetoric, coalition, and institutional authority.
Leader inspirations: Ambassador — Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, and Talleyrand: the cultivated envoy, negotiator, and political correspondent. Senator — John Adams, Edmund Burke, and the classical tradition of Cicero: the legislator and orator who exercises power through law, argument, and procedure.
Gauntlet takes place in an eighteenth-century powder-and-parchment world of competing provinces, chartered territories, autonomous cities, commercial possessions, and independent native nations. The six factions are institutional spheres that cross political and cultural borders: methods of exercising power rather than six countries or peoples.
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