Barren Realms Elite, an
oldsk0ol BBS door game created by
Mehul Patel, is all about war, diplomacy, and numbers.
BRE is a game that was played by thousands and thousands of
hard core BBSers in the mid-1990's.
BRE is turn-based with a modifiable default of 12 turns a day, with each day constituting a year. Each turn, certain tasks are automatically completed. Feeding the masses, dealing with attacks, developing land, covert operations and diplomacy, managing the military, and visiting the bank - among other things - are done every turn. Once all turns are used up for a day, the player must wait until the game
cycles at night when the datafiles are reset, thus giving them their daily alotment of turns. Turns are not carried over, so if a player did not play those turns were lost.
It was one of the first truely
InterBBS games. Playing in an
InterBBS League required intelligence,
teamwork,
diplomacy, and knowing the art of the
Gooey Kablooie.
SysOps also usually had a "local" game running that wasn't
InterBBS, and it was one of the most brutally
competitive BBS doors out there on such a small scale.
Mehul Patel
sold the rights and source code to
BRE to
John Dailey Software not too long ago, and it's still being updated.
JDS distributes and handles registration for the game, so if you're still
SysOp'n you can grab an authentic version from there.