[risk] Risk Communications

[Douglas Zander <dzander@solaria.sol.net>]

Subject: Risk Communications

Read the subject of this message very carefully.

While riding on the city bus just a few minutes ago, I was thinking
about the game of Risk I am currently playing and the messages I was
sending to my opponents in an attempt to make alliances, deals, contracts,
and promises.  Then I thought to myself, what if so-and-so player 
were to find out about my deal with that other player?  How would it
affect the game?  So I thought, it would be kinda neat if our messages
that we sent to other players in a specific game that concerned the
current board we were playing was somehow subject to interception by
one or more enemy players.  I wonder how others feel about a new
command specifically for Risk, call it "riskmessage";
riskmessage <boardnumber> <fromplayerid> <password> <toplayerid>
Now here is the catch, this message has a small possiblity of being
intercepted by one or more random opponents who are playing in the
same boardnumber.  Use of this command would have to rely on the honor
system; all players would have to agree that any and all communication
concerning playing the gameboard must go through the riskmessage command.
You are not allowed to send email directly to another player if it
concerns pacts, deals, promises, or any other subject matter concerning
strategy for this particular risk game.  Also, you may not encrypt the
message in any way *except* to use codewords for players and continents
that each pair of players has agreed upon before the first move of the 
game (the initial turn 1 deployment).  This means that each player would
have to write down (totalnumberofplayers - 1) [five in a six player game]
sets of codewords for each other player and that other player would
share your codewords that pertained to them.  i.e. player1 and player2
would have the Set-A-Codewords while player1 and player3 would have
Set-B-Codewords and player2 and player3 would have Set-C-Codewords.
Note that using codewords would be optional; but wise, just in case
player2 intercepts the riskmessage that player1 has sent to player3.
The determination of what codes to use could be automated by the server;
the server could simply randomly choose codewords from a list of words
and then send them to each player after the challenge command was issued.
Concerning the interception of a message;  each player would have to 
add a command to the end of their riskmessage so the server would be
able to remove any signatures that certain webmailers add to the end of
email.  Then the player who intercepts the message (he was spying with
radio equipment  :-) will receive it anonymously from the server without
knowing who the sender was nor who the receiver was meant to be:
------------------------------------------------
From: pbmserver@gamerz.net
Subject: Riskmessage Intercepted from board 123

Bluebeard, please do not attack my army at Bedrock and I agree
to withdraw my armies from Rollinghills.  Do you agree?  
signed, Twoface.

Endriskmessage
------------------------------------------------

Now read the subject of this message again.  :-)

--
 Douglas Zander                |  Watch "FarScape" on the SciFi Channel
 dzander@solaria.sol.net       |  Fridays 7:00pm Central
 Shorewood, Wisconsin, USA     |