10 ms·

The Board Game of the Alpha Nerds

315 points by swanson 12y ago

gknoy 12y ago
Diplomacy. It's interesting that the movement (and support) mechanics are easy, it's the social aspects that are hard.
- walshemj 12y ago
  The battle star galactic board game is another game where the social side is the important bit basically one or more of the payers are secretly cylons and have to subtly sabotage the game so that the human side loses. The fun thing is part way through the game you can suddenly find that you are a cylon and have to switch sides. The D6 generation is a good podcast that covers a lot of games both board and minatures
  - Vektorweg 12y ago
    Or The Resistance, where some hidden spies try to fail the missions. You have to choose the team members for a mission but you don't know the spies ... unless you are the spy.
- jkdearden 12y ago
  To elaborate a bit more: Diplomacy differs greatly from similar games (i.e. Axis and Allies, Risk) in that each army/fleet has the same 'strength'. There is no die-rolling involved to determine who wins in an encounter, it's just the number of units on offense/defense. It's impossible for a single army unit to capture a region so long as that region is occupied by an enemy unit, so taking territory requires either a concerted effort from multiple units that you own (which makes you weaker on other fronts), or it requires allying with other players in the game (which opens you up to being betrayed). I wouldn't quite call it "the game that ruins friendships", but since it places a lot of emphasis on the social aspects of the game, rather than the strategic, it involves lots of lying and backstabbing, which can (understandably) strain relationships between the players.
  - beat 12y ago
    I consider Diplomacy to be a brilliant game on par with chess or go - the only modern game I hold in such high regard. It's extraordinary that it's so well-balanced. Even Italy, the weakest power, has a decent win rate in online play ratings. The rules, with nothing left to chance but no alternating turns, make the game far more unpredictable than you'd expect. And in my experience, good Diplomacy players do very little lying or backstabbing. The compulsive liar types can't get the strong alliances that lead to traction. A two or three way alliance that culminates in a later betrayal are the way to win.
    - howeman 12y ago
      Really? They're all that equal? I haven't played much, but the little bit I have Austria always gets crushed.
      - LanceH 12y ago
        It's a little weird, but being weak makes negotiating easier. You get more bidders, more or less. Say you're in a 3 way dispute, with two stronger powers. It's real easy position them against each other and you're the obvious ally. This works well enough that even the weaker starting positions seem to be more influenced by alliance choices than by their objective positions.
      - squidfood 12y ago
        A solid Italy-Austria alliance (until near the end naturally) can get the job done.
        beat 12y ago
        Yeah, it's just hard to make Italy-Austria work, with the neighboring centers. Plus there's the ever-popular Lepanto. I love playing Italy, but if Austria offers me a Lepanto opening, I agree to it and then stab them immediately. Lepanto is a sucker's game.
      - beat 12y ago
- deleted 12y ago
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angersock 12y ago
For a really long running game that is guaranteed to lose you friends, try Riskopoly ( http://www.gilwood.org/riskopoly.htm http://www.gilwood.org/riskopoly.htm ). I describe it as Risk with a military-industrial complex.
- Igglyboo 12y ago
  Risk-tego is another, it's just like risk but every time you attack a territory you play a game of stratego to determine the outcome.
  - rcthompson 12y ago
    How about Risk-tego-poly?
dugmartin 12y ago
I played quite a bit in college with my friends. The most fun game I ever had was when I allied with the group's worst backstabber for the entire game and we won. The suspense every turn was awesome and the disbelief at the end was even better.
nmkn 12y ago
The Resistance is a great bluffing and lying game. I don't think it's enough to lose friends because each game doesn't last very long (roughly 20 min.), so it gives other people a chance to exact revenge or screw other people over in future rounds. However, the length of each game can go up dramatically with arguing and bickering, thus the possibility of ruined friendships.
- wahnfrieden 12y ago
  There's a new shorter one in that universe, Coup: http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/131357/coup http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/131357/coup
  - barbs 12y ago
    I've played that. It still involves bluffing etc but is much less about forming alliances. Still a pretty decent game, though.
- ShardPhoenix 12y ago
  In Resistance you're essentially forced to lie if you're one of the spies, so people are less likely to take it personally.
- chillericed 12y ago
  Resistance is great. Our group made a google spreadsheet to play the game on, which adds an interesting element because there is more data to reference instead of relying on memory of past votes.
- jboggan 12y ago
  I introduced this to my friends and it proved very popular at first and then . . . very controversial. If you've played with 9-10 players several times you know how insanely difficult it is for the Resistance to actually win. But one round the Resistance won, and the Spies were immediately yelling and screaming. It turned out that one of the chosen Spies (not his first game but his first as a Spy) had decided that working for a totalitarian regime was immoral and that it was unethical to "spy" even though that was his assigned role in the game. Thus he passed the mission for the Resistance every time, not out of a spirit of trolling but out of sincere moral belief - and he indicated that he would always cooperate with the "good guys" no matter what card he drew. The rest of the players were angry, Godwin's Law was invoked in record time, and we never invited him back for game night.
argc 12y ago
I am always looking for people to play Diplomacy and none of my friends are interested. I think I need new friends.
- beat 12y ago
  Look for online play. Much better that way anyway.
  - argc 12y ago
    But don't you miss the face to face interaction? Watching everything play out...
    - beat 12y ago
      Not a bit. You'll get to watch the playing-out in your email, or on the board. And the level of secrets makes the playout so much more interesting! If you're playing face to face and you see Russia and Germany go talk for ten of the fifteen minutes, it's no secret that they're working together. Online, it's much harder to tell.
      - adestefan 12y ago
        It's also amazing to see how emotional simple emails can become. It really does break people. Now I'm getting the itch again...
      - LanceH 12y ago
        The face to face meetings add another dimension with false signaling, too. Hey France, next round I'll talk to Germany and get that army moved out of there for you... Oh man, the emotional investment in this game is just never replaced by online play, imo.
  - baking 12y ago
    In the time I spend writing e-mails for one turn in an on-line game I probably could play most of a face-to-face game.
bhickey 12y ago
Back in 2009 I was playing a game with Brian Ecton. My Germany was on the decline -- I'd played the preceding game with the Austrian player and the tournament director erred and put us next to each other again. It was my turn to read the orders and Brian stepped out for a smoke. When I got to Brian's England, I intentionally misread his orders and put his army into disarray. He was a bit cross when he returned to the table. http://www.world-diplomacy-database.com/php/results/tournament_board.php?id_tournament=1245&id_round=2&id_board=4 http://www.world-diplomacy-database.com/php/results/tourname...
- jkdearden 12y ago
  Do you recall what the criteria were for the awards in the bottom-right of that page? I'm especially curious what one would have to do to merit the title of 'Kissing Pigs' or 'Golden Pickle'.
  - bhickey 12y ago
    I'll write to Conrad (the tournament director) and see if he can recall. Edit: 'Drunk' was almost certainly meant literally. 'Golden Pickle' was awarded to Frank who had traveled from the Netherlands. I believe the criteria was "furthest distance traveled".
  - bhickey 12y ago
    Kissing Pigs was awarded to players who habitually got into fights. The Golden Pickle for misfortune suffered during the tournament. One year someone won it for falling off a cliff.
- defen 12y ago
  > I intentionally misread his orders and put his army into disarray I've never played Diplomacy before so take this with a grain of salt...but that seems like it should be against the rules. Or is it his fault for not being present when you read the orders?
  - aberrant 12y ago
jboggan 12y ago
When I was at my last gig we had a very active board game community and Diplomacy was eventually brought out. We played twice while I was there and it sowed an unbelievable amount of enmity and discord. It was incredibly fun. The first time we played a majority of the players had never played before. We got through one "year" a week, with Spring and Autumn troop movements due by the end of the day on Tuesday and Thursday respectively. Then we'd resolve conflicts and submit build or retreat orders. Then we'd plot. It was really fun but I think it was too fun - I think office productivity seriously suffered for it. Especially considering the amount of time we spent thinking/scheming/talking versus the scarce minutes in the evening actually "playing" the game. Still an amazingly well balanced game once you understand the subtleties. I fared extremely poorly by treating it like Risk and being far too aggressive. On my second playthrough I became much more docile and cooperative, and was thoroughly stabbed in the back for being so trusting.
- virtue3 12y ago
  We had a game of it erupt at my office as well. I wasn't even an actual player to the game but had _far_ too much fun seeding discontent among the alliances and feeding real/fake information to the other players (all good friends of mine). The best is when someone actually got betrayed and then I'd get to say "I TOLD YOU THEY'D DO THAT!" Can confirm it's a game for trolls lol!
- peter_l_downs 12y ago
  Similarly, I introduced our office to Conquer Club (an online, slow-turn, RISK clone [0]) and it led to such a lack of productivity that it was subsequently banned. Too much fun! [0]: http://www.conquerclub.com/ http://www.conquerclub.com/
  - girvo 12y ago
    Hey, I didn't need to get anything done ever again anyway, cheers for linking it, it looks awesome!
  - willismichael 12y ago
    Here's another online Risk clone with a variety of maps and house rules: http://landgrab.net http://landgrab.net
adestefan 12y ago
I used to play about 10 years ago via email with a small group of rotating players. It was always a frustrating, but enjoyable experience. Maybe I'll play again someday.
pnathan 12y ago
This sounds fascinating and the kind of game I'd get a rush from. Is there a popular forum to find other face to face players?
- nnnnni 12y ago
  Yes! http://www.webdiplomacy.net http://www.webdiplomacy.net
- bhickey 12y ago
  Most tournament play is organized on mailing lists. If you e-mail me, I can put you in touch with players in Seattle.
msluyter 12y ago
I'd argue that Diplomacy is only a game for "nerds" in a rather peculiar sense. The people who are really good at it are those that are capable of lying/acting convincingly. Face to face, that's quite difficult and falls outside of the skill set of the classic nerd. Online games are another matter. Here, I think long range analysis combined with good writing skills matter more, although the social elements are still in play.
- phillmv 12y ago
  We can split hairs over the different kinds of nerds, but I'm interested in how you would describe a group of people who sit in a room for 8 hours in a row while roleplaying foreign affairs on a fin-de-siècle map of Europe ;).
  - pyrocat 12y ago
    Political science students?
    - msellout 12y ago
      We played Diplomacy for extra credit in one of my International Affairs classes at Georgia Tech.
  - msluyter 12y ago
    Even as I was hitting "submit" I was reconsidering my comment above, so your point is granted. I think I was just imagining the epitome of a great diplomacy player. In my head, this is someone not just smart, but charismatic, persuasive, and, shall we say, "ethically flexible." Say... Bill Clinton, for example; not someone I would have originally categorized as a nerd, but who might well meet that description upon reflection.
  - adamconroy 12y ago
    They are geeks not nerds.
- hibikir 12y ago
nnnnni 12y ago
I played Diplomacy once. I ended up foiling a veteran player's plan to screw me over at the end, leading to a two-way tie between us. It was great!
kqr2 12y ago
The ultimate test of endurance is probably The Campaign For North Africa game with a listed play time of 1200 Hours with 10 people. http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/4815/the-campaign-for-north-africa http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/4815/the-campaign-for-nor...
- pradn 12y ago
  That's insane. I wonder how many matches have been completed of this game.
  - wombatpm 12y ago
    Two more than a world series in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statis_Pro_Baseball http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statis_Pro_Baseball Statis Pro Baseball?
- zt 12y ago
  The campaign for north africa is a little much. It's two teams of five people -- and the five people each have roles if you're doing it right. Logistics officer, etc. I'm more a fire in the east type guy: http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/8993/fire-in-the-east http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/8993/fire-in-the-east
Tomte 12y ago
I played one game of Diplomacy by email. In preparation for that I read everything I found about (advanced) strategy, all the possibilities that are open to the different countries and so on. In the end I was probably the only English player who never managed to leave his island... After that I was so terribly frustrated that I never tried another game.
- tempestn 12y ago
  Sometimes it happens. If France and Germany decide come hell or high water they're going to take you out - maybe they've even allied in previous games, so you never had a chance - there really isn't a whole lot you can do (unless you're really lucky with all the other powers). Even so you're not likely to win, but might eek out part of a tie.
  - baking 12y ago
    When you tell your neighbors that it is your first time, they will gut you ever so quickly. New players are usually just too unpredictable and unreliable to trust. Best you can hope for is to promise to be someone's slave and do exactly what they say so maybe you can avoid being the first one eliminated.
    - tempestn 12y ago
      Or don't tell them it's your first time! :) Even if you're playing in the newbies section online, you could say you've played some FTF games, or email games on a different server or whatever. Once you figure out what power you are, just read the Diplomatic Pouch openings article for that power, and you can fake experience pretty well. IMO you want to come off as knowledgeable but not too experienced anyway. People are looking for allies who are going to be reliable (and communicate well!), but who won't be too tough to run over when the time comes. So that's what you look like... until you're ready to pull out the knife!
Lrigikithumer 12y ago
Oh man this game looks right up my alley, any idea how a man on the otherside of the world could play? I don't like the idea of playing by email or mail and I also don't want to ruin any of my friendships
- tempestn 12y ago
  You really should give play by email a chance. It can be great fun. Games usually take a few months, with turns generally once a week, sometimes every two weeks. While you could invest more, it certainly doesn't need to take up more than an hour or so a week of your time. In fact... I may have to see if I can find a game now. It's been a few years!
  - reparadocs 12y ago
    Do you know where I could go to find people who are playing it through email?
    - tempestn 12y ago
      I used to play at DipWorld, but it looks like it's a lot less active lately. It appears that the most active community now is at the Diplomatic Pouch. The site design leaves something to be desired, but after some clicking around, this appears to be a decent place for a new player to start: http://www.diplom.org/Email/ http://www.diplom.org/Email/
    - Spig 12y ago
      It's been years but http://www.redscape.com/ http://www.redscape.com/ is one location to play by email. Personally I play a bit on my phone using the Droiddippy app. However you can also play via web at http://droidippy.oort.se/web http://droidippy.oort.se/web.
  - Lrigikithumer 12y ago
    I dunno I'm kind of hesitant to do that because I'm much better face to face and appealing to emotion than I am writing out convincing speeches to get people to support me but you and the above commentor convinced me so I'll have a look around when I get my holidays soon
ph0rque 12y ago
So, here's a crazy idea: create an AI to play as one of the players in the web/mobile version of the game. It's a modified Turing test.
- tempestn 12y ago
  Cool idea. I'd actually really like to see that. You could start by programming it for gunboard (no-press) games, then expand from there to adding the communication elements. (Which, while challenging, would be much easier than a standard Turing Test, since the scope is limited. Plus, even if a potential ally is able to identify the computer player, they may very well still be willing to ally with it.
  - Anderkent 12y ago
    There are some diplomacy AIs - I worked on a simple one as a project in college. There's a standard for communication and a range of bots already implemented. See the mailing list at https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/dipai/info https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/dipai/info
kosei 12y ago
We never got into it at my office, but there's another game that offers similar tactics and is playable online, called Neptune's Pride[0]. It offers similar amounts of negotiation (and backstabbing), and we found that the game grew so contentious that people legitimately lost trust with each other in the office. Could be that we're just a sensitive bunch, but it was surely an interesting dynamic change. [0]: http://np.ironhelmet.com/ http://np.ironhelmet.com/
- sj4nz 12y ago
  Everything I've read about [Eve Online][0] and [Metagaming][1] is about how this kind of diplomacy games are so socially challenging that I'm beginning to wonder if this might be a generally useful skill for anyone. I just can't figure out the balance between the time in the game and time for everything else. I don't play these games because of that. However, if you're playing against a larger pool of people (outside the office) it would probably prevent trust decay. (Off topic) I didn't think that HN did Markdown in comments but your post convinced me that it is perfectly useful in that zero-based endnote-format style you used that I'm going to co-opt it. [0]: http://www.eveonline.com/ http://www.eveonline.com/ [1]: http://eve-tribune.com/index.php?no=2_38&page=5 http://eve-tribune.com/index.php?no=2_38&page=5
- PhineasRex 12y ago
  Be warned: Neptune's Pride has the fatal flaw (or killer feature, depending on who you ask) of occurring in real time. Later in the game, as it speeds up, players who log in more often gain a tactical advantage.
  - jamie_ca 12y ago
    There's a sequel out now, at http://triton.ironhelmet.com http://triton.ironhelmet.com that has the option of progressing time in steps once everyone confirms orders. So you can set it to 12h steps, get payday every 2 steps, or whatever you feel like. With the right settings, if everyone is active during the day you can get maybe 4 or 5 steps complete and then nothing happening over the weekend.
mathattack 12y ago
We played this a lot when I was younger. The biggest challenge for us was patience. The friend who was the best at it ultimately wound up a tenured political science faculty member in the DC area. Go figure.
barbs 12y ago
What an excellent article. I think this needs a documentary, in the style of Wordplay[1] and King of Kong[2]. [1]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wordplay_(film) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wordplay_(film) [2]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_of_kong http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_of_kong
- prawks 12y ago
  Agreed, it sounds like this game breeds interesting stories.
- Uhhrrr 12y ago
  Hell, it needs a reality show. Poker proved to be popular!
willismichael 12y ago
I have to put in a plug for Scott Nesin's http://gamesbyemail.com http://gamesbyemail.com, which has an implementation of Diplomacy, as well as several other great games.
LandoCalrissian 12y ago
We play Diplomacy at our office and I jokingly refer to it as "team building". All said everyone has a pretty good time and can recognize it's a game. We play one move a day and games typically last around a month. I have been certainly been hurt by broken alliances, but I think it's a great character building experience to go trough. All is fair in diplomacy.
bitsweet 12y ago
I never played but want too. If you live near SF and want to give diplomacy a go with a few fellow hackers that don't know each other this Friday evening (the 20th), email me (address in bio) first come first serve - I'll host an event in our office (right off 16th Bart station in Mission). Once we get a small group we can coordinate logistics over email.
adamconroy 12y ago
I would argue that its a geek game, not a nerd game. Either way I have wasted dozens of hours playing, and it taught me how tedious other people can be.
jmspring 12y ago
Played many years of it with friends... The before D&D claim is dubious on the basis of pooularity. I've been a big friend of Avalon Hill titles over the years.
- Sniffnoy 12y ago
  Regardless, the roots of D&D can be traced back to Diplomacy; Jimmy Maher talks about it here: http://www.filfre.net/2011/07/dungeons-and-dragons/ http://www.filfre.net/2011/07/dungeons-and-dragons/
cfontes 12y ago
Very interesting. But I hate this kind of writing. It's way to long and runs in circles to many times for my taste.
- prawn 12y ago
  I have to agree. I'm sure it's great for those with the time, but there was nothing for those wishing to skim through and get an idea of what the game/story is about. I'm interested in this sort of game, but I already have a lot of long-form in my "To Read" bookmark folder, and a stack of books beside the bed as it is.
  - barbs 12y ago
    An ironically lengthy way of saying "tl;dr".
    - prawn 12y ago
      Except that if anyone sees this longer explanation, they can realise there are often ways to improve the way they've presented their story and create something to that appeals to a broader range of people. Things like bullet points, pullquotes, images and so on are a bit like an inline TL;DR.
- josephlord 12y ago
  > It's way to long and runs in circles to many times for my taste. I think the game can play like that too...
marmarlade 12y ago
Nice! Has anyone here played War on Terror http://www.waronterrortheboardgame.com/ http://www.waronterrortheboardgame.com/? Think Risk, but with an Axis of Evil, Terrorists, and a balaclava (not baclava, unfortunately) included in the game pack. It was also branded criminal by the police - couldn't ask for better promotion: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/war-on-terror-boardgame-branded-criminal-by-police-889287.html http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/war-on-terror-boa...
kaeluka 12y ago
In my second-to-last year at University, eight others and me implemented Diplomacy as a "scalable web service" in Erlang. The game is hilariously brutal; I've vowed to never play it with my girlfriend. I played it on the web for a while after, but stopped playing, the complete lack of empathy in this game was too much ;) Maybe I should try it again some time. You can find some documentation here, we were the "Erlang Solutions" project: https://www.it.uu.se/edu/course/homepage/projektDV/ht11 https://www.it.uu.se/edu/course/homepage/projektDV/ht11 The code is on github: https://github.com/treacheroustalks/Treacherous-Talks https://github.com/treacheroustalks/Treacherous-Talks
kaeluka 12y ago
In my second-to-last year at University, eight others and me implemented Diplomacy as a "scalable web service" in Erlang. The game is hilariously brutal; I've vowed to never play it with my girlfriend. I played it on the web for a while after, but stopped playing, the complete lack of empathy in this game was too much ;) Maybe I should try it again some time. You can find some documentation here, we were the "Erlang Solutions" project: https://www.it.uu.se/edu/course/homepage/projektDV/ht11 https://www.it.uu.se/edu/course/homepage/projektDV/ht11 The code is on github: https://github.com/treacheroustalks/Treacherous-Talks https://github.com/treacheroustalks/Treacherous-Talks
swombat 12y ago
I learned a lot of my people skills from Diplomacy. It also helped me work out a number of trust issues. Before someone gets worried about the first statement, it does not mean that I am the kind of person who will betray someone - in fact, all my friends will testify that I am unreasonably loyal even under difficult circumstances. What it does mean is that after playing Diplomacy, I became much more self-aware about what I was doing to build friendships and/or relationships, and what others were doing, and also much more flexible at considering things from other people's point of view and therefore constructing deals that actually work for all parties.
effenponderous 12y ago
don't promote shit titled like this in Hackr News
GotAnyMegadeth 12y ago
I have never played this, it sounds great. If you are playing over email and one person becomes unresponsive, what is the standard thing to do?
- euccastro 12y ago
  There are established deadlines for submitting orders. When someone misses it, one of the following things happens (which one happens is agreed upon before the game starts): - units for which orders haven't been submitted just hold still, or - whenever anyone's orders are missing after the deadline, the game gets paused and there is an open call for replacement players in a mailing list.
ZoFreX 12y ago
If you want a video game that engenders the same kind of backstabbing, tension and mistrust, you might want to give Defcon a go. It's nerve-wracking.
pauleastlund 12y ago
Playing weekly or semi-weekly is the way to go for Diplomacy. Setting aside a full day for it and getting a full complement is too tough. We played a game of this in the Google NY office this way. It was glorious for a bit -- intrigue upon intrigue upon intrigue. A week between turns really gives you a ton of time to stew over your plans. It got pretty serious; I remember having to call a cubemate (who wasn't part of the game) after I'd left the office and ask him to destroy a planning map I'd realized I'd accidentally left out. Alas, the whole thing ended in acrimony. One guy who was getting trounced announced he was quitting the game -- in which case his pieces just passively stand their ground and are slowly overtaken -- but then changed his mind and submitted moves the next round after all. Another player called that out as bullshit (and let's be honest, it was kind of bullshit, but it was a friendly game and the rest of us were prepared to let it slide.) It turned into an irate shouting match in the office and the group abandoning the game halfway through. I believe there are still people in the Google NY office that avoid each other in hallways on account of that game.
- vonzeppelin 12y ago
  I would argue that tricking people into thinking you were doing nothing is what Diplomacy is all about.
kriro 12y ago
Why would you play Diplomacy if you can play Twilight Imperium 3, A Game of Thrones the Board Game or War of the Ring instead? Pretty sure us "alpha-nerds" would rather battle it out in fantasy/scifi settings than with boring old "real world" troops (Here I Stand is excellent if you want that). All of those games are also a lot better imo. Always thought Diplomacy was pretty meh :)
- EvanKelly 12y ago
  I can't speak to the other games, but similar to Chess and Go, I love Diplomacy because there is zero chance involved in the game. Nothing ever comes down to a dice roll or coin flip.
- dmix 12y ago
  Nerds don't necessarily prefer fantasy/scifi to historical settings. You may be conflating nerds with geeks.
- pessimizer 12y ago
  Because ick? Some people like games, some people like pretending to be fantasy creatures, and some people like both.
- kriro 12y ago
  In case it wasn't clear I thought the term "alpha-nerd" was a pretty poor choice in the article and he should have gone full cliché while he was at it. Otherwise I really enjoyed the article. I'm for anything that promotes board gaming in any way (as a graduate from the University of Duisburg-Essen @Essen that comes with the territory I suppose)
cbr 12y ago
Here are the maps from the silliest game of diplomacy I ever played: http://www.jefftk.com/p/dip-space-nine http://www.jefftk.com/p/dip-space-nine There are many rule variants, but Star Trek is just too much.
snake_plissken 12y ago
Hmm I thought it would have been BattleTech.
aberrant 12y ago
Each year for the past 3-5 years me and my friends have been getting together for a weekend to play a few years of WWII. The game that we have been mostly playing is Columbia Games' Eastfront II, which covers the eastern war with Germany and Soviet Russia. It's basically a hex-based map with different terrains, rivers, weather changes, HQ-driven troop mobilization and combat - the rules are abstract but not overly so to uphold an enjoyable immersion. The game also employs fog of war with thick wooden standing unit pieces, which certainly adds to the excitement. The game is advertised for 2 players, but we went ahead and modded the rules for 6 players + a referee. We made both sides consist of 3 field commanders plus a supreme commander. We looked at the map and divided it into 3 parts: the north, the middle and the south. For each part of the map, a German field commander and a Soviet counterpart would sit against each other and hold command of their own area. They saw only units that moved on their map. We decided that each 4 turns (a turn was a fortnight) the field commanders could all go have a meeting with their supreme commander, discuss strategy and synchronize information. We usually set these meetings to last for about 10-15 minutes. The role of the supreme commander was to dole out repair points plus reinforcements and to send messages to their field commanders. Each turn the supreme commander could send a message to all of his subordinates, and each turn all of his field commanders could send one message to their supreme commander and one message to their fellow field commander. A message could be intercepted with a possibility of 1/6. Intercepting the message meant that the referee would toss a die and if it turned out one, he would take it to the enemy supreme commander without the sender knowing about it until the next meeting. As an addition, the supreme commander had a map, but he had nothing in it except his own unit, which was good for moving singular units, sending paratroops and air strikes. The supreme commander would also get all the dead units brought out to him when units started dying. You would definitely know things were bad when infantry that were at the edge of Moscow 3 turns ago (or so you recall...) were handed to you by the referee! Last year we upped the ante and tried out EuroFront II by Columbia Games. It was an epic attempt to play the final year of the war with the whole map of Europe, the winner being the one who holds the most Victory Cities (historically notable European cities) in their supply network by May 1945. With over a dozen players we anticipated problems in our message delivery system, which mainly consisted of a two guys gathering a bunch of papers from players and throwing dice for each message per turn per player side. We opted for an easier solution and I set out to build a simple messaging system. It was a horrible PHP Slim-based Bootstrap webapp, with business rules written in postgresql functions and code structure being an implementation of pasta. I suspected it would be a maintaining nightmare (and it sure was!), but it worked without a problem during that weekend. Everyone loved it, including our refs' feet. This year the game is Eastfront II and the messaging is modified for two player sides. We will also allow messages to pass through to their original recipient even if they are captured. With this we will experiment whether the turns will become more interesting for the players whose messages are always captured. Based on this horrid ad-hoc prototype of mine, I'm currently working on building a more generic, a rule-based messaging system for our guys. Definitely more maintainable this time, promise. Ps. For what it's worth, the ultimate alpha nerd war game seems to be The Campaign for North Africa. I will invite you to read the description of the game as described in Board Game Geek [0]. [0] http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/4815/the-campaign-for-north-africa http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/4815/the-campaign-for-nor...
georgeecollins 12y ago
I love Diplomacy and have played it forever, in person, by email, even as kid by snail mail. There is a great variant called 1900 by Baron VonPowell that is actually better. But it is my all time favorite game.

315 points by swanson 12y ago

gknoy 12y ago

Diplomacy. It's interesting that the movement (and support) mechanics are easy, it's the social aspects that are hard.

walshemj 12y ago
The battle star galactic board game is another game where the social side is the important bit basically one or more of the payers are secretly cylons and have to subtly sabotage the game so that the human side loses. The fun thing is part way through the game you can suddenly find that you are a cylon and have to switch sides. The D6 generation is a good podcast that covers a lot of games both board and minatures
- Vektorweg 12y ago
  Or The Resistance, where some hidden spies try to fail the missions. You have to choose the team members for a mission but you don't know the spies ... unless you are the spy.
jkdearden 12y ago
To elaborate a bit more: Diplomacy differs greatly from similar games (i.e. Axis and Allies, Risk) in that each army/fleet has the same 'strength'. There is no die-rolling involved to determine who wins in an encounter, it's just the number of units on offense/defense. It's impossible for a single army unit to capture a region so long as that region is occupied by an enemy unit, so taking territory requires either a concerted effort from multiple units that you own (which makes you weaker on other fronts), or it requires allying with other players in the game (which opens you up to being betrayed). I wouldn't quite call it "the game that ruins friendships", but since it places a lot of emphasis on the social aspects of the game, rather than the strategic, it involves lots of lying and backstabbing, which can (understandably) strain relationships between the players.
- beat 12y ago
  I consider Diplomacy to be a brilliant game on par with chess or go - the only modern game I hold in such high regard. It's extraordinary that it's so well-balanced. Even Italy, the weakest power, has a decent win rate in online play ratings. The rules, with nothing left to chance but no alternating turns, make the game far more unpredictable than you'd expect. And in my experience, good Diplomacy players do very little lying or backstabbing. The compulsive liar types can't get the strong alliances that lead to traction. A two or three way alliance that culminates in a later betrayal are the way to win.
  - howeman 12y ago
    Really? They're all that equal? I haven't played much, but the little bit I have Austria always gets crushed.
    - LanceH 12y ago
      It's a little weird, but being weak makes negotiating easier. You get more bidders, more or less. Say you're in a 3 way dispute, with two stronger powers. It's real easy position them against each other and you're the obvious ally. This works well enough that even the weaker starting positions seem to be more influenced by alliance choices than by their objective positions.
    - squidfood 12y ago
      A solid Italy-Austria alliance (until near the end naturally) can get the job done.
      - beat 12y ago
        Yeah, it's just hard to make Italy-Austria work, with the neighboring centers. Plus there's the ever-popular Lepanto. I love playing Italy, but if Austria offers me a Lepanto opening, I agree to it and then stab them immediately. Lepanto is a sucker's game.
    - beat 12y ago
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]

angersock 12y ago

For a really long running game that is guaranteed to lose you friends, try Riskopoly ( http://www.gilwood.org/riskopoly.htm http://www.gilwood.org/riskopoly.htm ). I describe it as Risk with a military-industrial complex.

Igglyboo 12y ago
Risk-tego is another, it's just like risk but every time you attack a territory you play a game of stratego to determine the outcome.
- rcthompson 12y ago
  How about Risk-tego-poly?

dugmartin 12y ago

I played quite a bit in college with my friends. The most fun game I ever had was when I allied with the group's worst backstabber for the entire game and we won. The suspense every turn was awesome and the disbelief at the end was even better.

nmkn 12y ago

The Resistance is a great bluffing and lying game. I don't think it's enough to lose friends because each game doesn't last very long (roughly 20 min.), so it gives other people a chance to exact revenge or screw other people over in future rounds. However, the length of each game can go up dramatically with arguing and bickering, thus the possibility of ruined friendships.

wahnfrieden 12y ago
There's a new shorter one in that universe, Coup: http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/131357/coup http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/131357/coup
- barbs 12y ago
  I've played that. It still involves bluffing etc but is much less about forming alliances. Still a pretty decent game, though.
ShardPhoenix 12y ago
In Resistance you're essentially forced to lie if you're one of the spies, so people are less likely to take it personally.
chillericed 12y ago
Resistance is great. Our group made a google spreadsheet to play the game on, which adds an interesting element because there is more data to reference instead of relying on memory of past votes.
jboggan 12y ago
I introduced this to my friends and it proved very popular at first and then . . . very controversial. If you've played with 9-10 players several times you know how insanely difficult it is for the Resistance to actually win. But one round the Resistance won, and the Spies were immediately yelling and screaming. It turned out that one of the chosen Spies (not his first game but his first as a Spy) had decided that working for a totalitarian regime was immoral and that it was unethical to "spy" even though that was his assigned role in the game. Thus he passed the mission for the Resistance every time, not out of a spirit of trolling but out of sincere moral belief - and he indicated that he would always cooperate with the "good guys" no matter what card he drew. The rest of the players were angry, Godwin's Law was invoked in record time, and we never invited him back for game night.

argc 12y ago

I am always looking for people to play Diplomacy and none of my friends are interested. I think I need new friends.

beat 12y ago
Look for online play. Much better that way anyway.
- argc 12y ago
  But don't you miss the face to face interaction? Watching everything play out...
  - beat 12y ago
    Not a bit. You'll get to watch the playing-out in your email, or on the board. And the level of secrets makes the playout so much more interesting! If you're playing face to face and you see Russia and Germany go talk for ten of the fifteen minutes, it's no secret that they're working together. Online, it's much harder to tell.
    - adestefan 12y ago
      It's also amazing to see how emotional simple emails can become. It really does break people. Now I'm getting the itch again...
    - LanceH 12y ago
      The face to face meetings add another dimension with false signaling, too. Hey France, next round I'll talk to Germany and get that army moved out of there for you... Oh man, the emotional investment in this game is just never replaced by online play, imo.
- baking 12y ago
  In the time I spend writing e-mails for one turn in an on-line game I probably could play most of a face-to-face game.

bhickey 12y ago

Back in 2009 I was playing a game with Brian Ecton. My Germany was on the decline -- I'd played the preceding game with the Austrian player and the tournament director erred and put us next to each other again. It was my turn to read the orders and Brian stepped out for a smoke. When I got to Brian's England, I intentionally misread his orders and put his army into disarray. He was a bit cross when he returned to the table. http://www.world-diplomacy-database.com/php/results/tournament_board.php?id_tournament=1245&id_round=2&id_board=4 http://www.world-diplomacy-database.com/php/results/tourname...

jkdearden 12y ago
Do you recall what the criteria were for the awards in the bottom-right of that page? I'm especially curious what one would have to do to merit the title of 'Kissing Pigs' or 'Golden Pickle'.
- bhickey 12y ago
  I'll write to Conrad (the tournament director) and see if he can recall. Edit: 'Drunk' was almost certainly meant literally. 'Golden Pickle' was awarded to Frank who had traveled from the Netherlands. I believe the criteria was "furthest distance traveled".
- bhickey 12y ago
  Kissing Pigs was awarded to players who habitually got into fights. The Golden Pickle for misfortune suffered during the tournament. One year someone won it for falling off a cliff.
defen 12y ago
> I intentionally misread his orders and put his army into disarray I've never played Diplomacy before so take this with a grain of salt...but that seems like it should be against the rules. Or is it his fault for not being present when you read the orders?
- aberrant 12y ago

jboggan 12y ago

When I was at my last gig we had a very active board game community and Diplomacy was eventually brought out. We played twice while I was there and it sowed an unbelievable amount of enmity and discord. It was incredibly fun. The first time we played a majority of the players had never played before. We got through one "year" a week, with Spring and Autumn troop movements due by the end of the day on Tuesday and Thursday respectively. Then we'd resolve conflicts and submit build or retreat orders. Then we'd plot. It was really fun but I think it was too fun - I think office productivity seriously suffered for it. Especially considering the amount of time we spent thinking/scheming/talking versus the scarce minutes in the evening actually "playing" the game. Still an amazingly well balanced game once you understand the subtleties. I fared extremely poorly by treating it like Risk and being far too aggressive. On my second playthrough I became much more docile and cooperative, and was thoroughly stabbed in the back for being so trusting.

virtue3 12y ago
We had a game of it erupt at my office as well. I wasn't even an actual player to the game but had _far_ too much fun seeding discontent among the alliances and feeding real/fake information to the other players (all good friends of mine). The best is when someone actually got betrayed and then I'd get to say "I TOLD YOU THEY'D DO THAT!" Can confirm it's a game for trolls lol!
peter_l_downs 12y ago
Similarly, I introduced our office to Conquer Club (an online, slow-turn, RISK clone [0]) and it led to such a lack of productivity that it was subsequently banned. Too much fun! [0]: http://www.conquerclub.com/ http://www.conquerclub.com/
- girvo 12y ago
  Hey, I didn't need to get anything done ever again anyway, cheers for linking it, it looks awesome!
- willismichael 12y ago
  Here's another online Risk clone with a variety of maps and house rules: http://landgrab.net http://landgrab.net

adestefan 12y ago

I used to play about 10 years ago via email with a small group of rotating players. It was always a frustrating, but enjoyable experience. Maybe I'll play again someday.

pnathan 12y ago

This sounds fascinating and the kind of game I'd get a rush from. Is there a popular forum to find other face to face players?

nnnnni 12y ago
Yes! http://www.webdiplomacy.net http://www.webdiplomacy.net
bhickey 12y ago
Most tournament play is organized on mailing lists. If you e-mail me, I can put you in touch with players in Seattle.

msluyter 12y ago

I'd argue that Diplomacy is only a game for "nerds" in a rather peculiar sense. The people who are really good at it are those that are capable of lying/acting convincingly. Face to face, that's quite difficult and falls outside of the skill set of the classic nerd. Online games are another matter. Here, I think long range analysis combined with good writing skills matter more, although the social elements are still in play.

phillmv 12y ago
We can split hairs over the different kinds of nerds, but I'm interested in how you would describe a group of people who sit in a room for 8 hours in a row while roleplaying foreign affairs on a fin-de-siècle map of Europe ;).
- pyrocat 12y ago
  Political science students?
  - msellout 12y ago
    We played Diplomacy for extra credit in one of my International Affairs classes at Georgia Tech.
- msluyter 12y ago
  Even as I was hitting "submit" I was reconsidering my comment above, so your point is granted. I think I was just imagining the epitome of a great diplomacy player. In my head, this is someone not just smart, but charismatic, persuasive, and, shall we say, "ethically flexible." Say... Bill Clinton, for example; not someone I would have originally categorized as a nerd, but who might well meet that description upon reflection.
- adamconroy 12y ago
  They are geeks not nerds.
hibikir 12y ago

nnnnni 12y ago

I played Diplomacy once. I ended up foiling a veteran player's plan to screw me over at the end, leading to a two-way tie between us. It was great!

kqr2 12y ago

The ultimate test of endurance is probably The Campaign For North Africa game with a listed play time of 1200 Hours with 10 people. http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/4815/the-campaign-for-north-africa http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/4815/the-campaign-for-nor...

pradn 12y ago
That's insane. I wonder how many matches have been completed of this game.
- wombatpm 12y ago
  Two more than a world series in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statis_Pro_Baseball http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statis_Pro_Baseball Statis Pro Baseball?
zt 12y ago
The campaign for north africa is a little much. It's two teams of five people -- and the five people each have roles if you're doing it right. Logistics officer, etc. I'm more a fire in the east type guy: http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/8993/fire-in-the-east http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/8993/fire-in-the-east

Tomte 12y ago

I played one game of Diplomacy by email. In preparation for that I read everything I found about (advanced) strategy, all the possibilities that are open to the different countries and so on. In the end I was probably the only English player who never managed to leave his island... After that I was so terribly frustrated that I never tried another game.

tempestn 12y ago
Sometimes it happens. If France and Germany decide come hell or high water they're going to take you out - maybe they've even allied in previous games, so you never had a chance - there really isn't a whole lot you can do (unless you're really lucky with all the other powers). Even so you're not likely to win, but might eek out part of a tie.
- baking 12y ago
  When you tell your neighbors that it is your first time, they will gut you ever so quickly. New players are usually just too unpredictable and unreliable to trust. Best you can hope for is to promise to be someone's slave and do exactly what they say so maybe you can avoid being the first one eliminated.
  - tempestn 12y ago
    Or don't tell them it's your first time! :) Even if you're playing in the newbies section online, you could say you've played some FTF games, or email games on a different server or whatever. Once you figure out what power you are, just read the Diplomatic Pouch openings article for that power, and you can fake experience pretty well. IMO you want to come off as knowledgeable but not too experienced anyway. People are looking for allies who are going to be reliable (and communicate well!), but who won't be too tough to run over when the time comes. So that's what you look like... until you're ready to pull out the knife!

Lrigikithumer 12y ago

Oh man this game looks right up my alley, any idea how a man on the otherside of the world could play? I don't like the idea of playing by email or mail and I also don't want to ruin any of my friendships

tempestn 12y ago
You really should give play by email a chance. It can be great fun. Games usually take a few months, with turns generally once a week, sometimes every two weeks. While you could invest more, it certainly doesn't need to take up more than an hour or so a week of your time. In fact... I may have to see if I can find a game now. It's been a few years!
- reparadocs 12y ago
  Do you know where I could go to find people who are playing it through email?
  - tempestn 12y ago
    I used to play at DipWorld, but it looks like it's a lot less active lately. It appears that the most active community now is at the Diplomatic Pouch. The site design leaves something to be desired, but after some clicking around, this appears to be a decent place for a new player to start: http://www.diplom.org/Email/ http://www.diplom.org/Email/
  - Spig 12y ago
    It's been years but http://www.redscape.com/ http://www.redscape.com/ is one location to play by email. Personally I play a bit on my phone using the Droiddippy app. However you can also play via web at http://droidippy.oort.se/web http://droidippy.oort.se/web.
- Lrigikithumer 12y ago
  I dunno I'm kind of hesitant to do that because I'm much better face to face and appealing to emotion than I am writing out convincing speeches to get people to support me but you and the above commentor convinced me so I'll have a look around when I get my holidays soon

ph0rque 12y ago

So, here's a crazy idea: create an AI to play as one of the players in the web/mobile version of the game. It's a modified Turing test.

tempestn 12y ago
Cool idea. I'd actually really like to see that. You could start by programming it for gunboard (no-press) games, then expand from there to adding the communication elements. (Which, while challenging, would be much easier than a standard Turing Test, since the scope is limited. Plus, even if a potential ally is able to identify the computer player, they may very well still be willing to ally with it.
- Anderkent 12y ago
  There are some diplomacy AIs - I worked on a simple one as a project in college. There's a standard for communication and a range of bots already implemented. See the mailing list at https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/dipai/info https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/dipai/info

kosei 12y ago

We never got into it at my office, but there's another game that offers similar tactics and is playable online, called Neptune's Pride[0]. It offers similar amounts of negotiation (and backstabbing), and we found that the game grew so contentious that people legitimately lost trust with each other in the office. Could be that we're just a sensitive bunch, but it was surely an interesting dynamic change. [0]: http://np.ironhelmet.com/ http://np.ironhelmet.com/

sj4nz 12y ago
Everything I've read about [Eve Online][0] and [Metagaming][1] is about how this kind of diplomacy games are so socially challenging that I'm beginning to wonder if this might be a generally useful skill for anyone. I just can't figure out the balance between the time in the game and time for everything else. I don't play these games because of that. However, if you're playing against a larger pool of people (outside the office) it would probably prevent trust decay. (Off topic) I didn't think that HN did Markdown in comments but your post convinced me that it is perfectly useful in that zero-based endnote-format style you used that I'm going to co-opt it. [0]: http://www.eveonline.com/ http://www.eveonline.com/ [1]: http://eve-tribune.com/index.php?no=2_38&page=5 http://eve-tribune.com/index.php?no=2_38&page=5
PhineasRex 12y ago
Be warned: Neptune's Pride has the fatal flaw (or killer feature, depending on who you ask) of occurring in real time. Later in the game, as it speeds up, players who log in more often gain a tactical advantage.
- jamie_ca 12y ago
  There's a sequel out now, at http://triton.ironhelmet.com http://triton.ironhelmet.com that has the option of progressing time in steps once everyone confirms orders. So you can set it to 12h steps, get payday every 2 steps, or whatever you feel like. With the right settings, if everyone is active during the day you can get maybe 4 or 5 steps complete and then nothing happening over the weekend.

mathattack 12y ago

We played this a lot when I was younger. The biggest challenge for us was patience. The friend who was the best at it ultimately wound up a tenured political science faculty member in the DC area. Go figure.

barbs 12y ago

What an excellent article. I think this needs a documentary, in the style of Wordplay[1] and King of Kong[2]. [1]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wordplay_(film) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wordplay_(film) [2]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_of_kong http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_of_kong

prawks 12y ago
Agreed, it sounds like this game breeds interesting stories.
Uhhrrr 12y ago
Hell, it needs a reality show. Poker proved to be popular!

willismichael 12y ago

I have to put in a plug for Scott Nesin's http://gamesbyemail.com http://gamesbyemail.com, which has an implementation of Diplomacy, as well as several other great games.

LandoCalrissian 12y ago

We play Diplomacy at our office and I jokingly refer to it as "team building". All said everyone has a pretty good time and can recognize it's a game. We play one move a day and games typically last around a month. I have been certainly been hurt by broken alliances, but I think it's a great character building experience to go trough. All is fair in diplomacy.

bitsweet 12y ago

I never played but want too. If you live near SF and want to give diplomacy a go with a few fellow hackers that don't know each other this Friday evening (the 20th), email me (address in bio) first come first serve - I'll host an event in our office (right off 16th Bart station in Mission). Once we get a small group we can coordinate logistics over email.

adamconroy 12y ago

I would argue that its a geek game, not a nerd game. Either way I have wasted dozens of hours playing, and it taught me how tedious other people can be.

jmspring 12y ago

Played many years of it with friends... The before D&D claim is dubious on the basis of pooularity. I've been a big friend of Avalon Hill titles over the years.

Sniffnoy 12y ago
Regardless, the roots of D&D can be traced back to Diplomacy; Jimmy Maher talks about it here: http://www.filfre.net/2011/07/dungeons-and-dragons/ http://www.filfre.net/2011/07/dungeons-and-dragons/

cfontes 12y ago

Very interesting. But I hate this kind of writing. It's way to long and runs in circles to many times for my taste.

prawn 12y ago
I have to agree. I'm sure it's great for those with the time, but there was nothing for those wishing to skim through and get an idea of what the game/story is about. I'm interested in this sort of game, but I already have a lot of long-form in my "To Read" bookmark folder, and a stack of books beside the bed as it is.
- barbs 12y ago
  An ironically lengthy way of saying "tl;dr".
  - prawn 12y ago
    Except that if anyone sees this longer explanation, they can realise there are often ways to improve the way they've presented their story and create something to that appeals to a broader range of people. Things like bullet points, pullquotes, images and so on are a bit like an inline TL;DR.
josephlord 12y ago
> It's way to long and runs in circles to many times for my taste. I think the game can play like that too...

marmarlade 12y ago

Nice! Has anyone here played War on Terror http://www.waronterrortheboardgame.com/ http://www.waronterrortheboardgame.com/? Think Risk, but with an Axis of Evil, Terrorists, and a balaclava (not baclava, unfortunately) included in the game pack. It was also branded criminal by the police - couldn't ask for better promotion: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/war-on-terror-boardgame-branded-criminal-by-police-889287.html http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/war-on-terror-boa...

kaeluka 12y ago

In my second-to-last year at University, eight others and me implemented Diplomacy as a "scalable web service" in Erlang. The game is hilariously brutal; I've vowed to never play it with my girlfriend. I played it on the web for a while after, but stopped playing, the complete lack of empathy in this game was too much ;) Maybe I should try it again some time. You can find some documentation here, we were the "Erlang Solutions" project: https://www.it.uu.se/edu/course/homepage/projektDV/ht11 https://www.it.uu.se/edu/course/homepage/projektDV/ht11 The code is on github: https://github.com/treacheroustalks/Treacherous-Talks https://github.com/treacheroustalks/Treacherous-Talks

kaeluka 12y ago

swombat 12y ago

I learned a lot of my people skills from Diplomacy. It also helped me work out a number of trust issues. Before someone gets worried about the first statement, it does not mean that I am the kind of person who will betray someone - in fact, all my friends will testify that I am unreasonably loyal even under difficult circumstances. What it does mean is that after playing Diplomacy, I became much more self-aware about what I was doing to build friendships and/or relationships, and what others were doing, and also much more flexible at considering things from other people's point of view and therefore constructing deals that actually work for all parties.

effenponderous 12y ago

don't promote shit titled like this in Hackr News

GotAnyMegadeth 12y ago

I have never played this, it sounds great. If you are playing over email and one person becomes unresponsive, what is the standard thing to do?

euccastro 12y ago
There are established deadlines for submitting orders. When someone misses it, one of the following things happens (which one happens is agreed upon before the game starts): - units for which orders haven't been submitted just hold still, or - whenever anyone's orders are missing after the deadline, the game gets paused and there is an open call for replacement players in a mailing list.

ZoFreX 12y ago

If you want a video game that engenders the same kind of backstabbing, tension and mistrust, you might want to give Defcon a go. It's nerve-wracking.

pauleastlund 12y ago

Playing weekly or semi-weekly is the way to go for Diplomacy. Setting aside a full day for it and getting a full complement is too tough. We played a game of this in the Google NY office this way. It was glorious for a bit -- intrigue upon intrigue upon intrigue. A week between turns really gives you a ton of time to stew over your plans. It got pretty serious; I remember having to call a cubemate (who wasn't part of the game) after I'd left the office and ask him to destroy a planning map I'd realized I'd accidentally left out. Alas, the whole thing ended in acrimony. One guy who was getting trounced announced he was quitting the game -- in which case his pieces just passively stand their ground and are slowly overtaken -- but then changed his mind and submitted moves the next round after all. Another player called that out as bullshit (and let's be honest, it was kind of bullshit, but it was a friendly game and the rest of us were prepared to let it slide.) It turned into an irate shouting match in the office and the group abandoning the game halfway through. I believe there are still people in the Google NY office that avoid each other in hallways on account of that game.

vonzeppelin 12y ago
I would argue that tricking people into thinking you were doing nothing is what Diplomacy is all about.

kriro 12y ago

Why would you play Diplomacy if you can play Twilight Imperium 3, A Game of Thrones the Board Game or War of the Ring instead? Pretty sure us "alpha-nerds" would rather battle it out in fantasy/scifi settings than with boring old "real world" troops (Here I Stand is excellent if you want that). All of those games are also a lot better imo. Always thought Diplomacy was pretty meh :)

EvanKelly 12y ago
I can't speak to the other games, but similar to Chess and Go, I love Diplomacy because there is zero chance involved in the game. Nothing ever comes down to a dice roll or coin flip.
dmix 12y ago
Nerds don't necessarily prefer fantasy/scifi to historical settings. You may be conflating nerds with geeks.
pessimizer 12y ago
Because ick? Some people like games, some people like pretending to be fantasy creatures, and some people like both.
kriro 12y ago
In case it wasn't clear I thought the term "alpha-nerd" was a pretty poor choice in the article and he should have gone full cliché while he was at it. Otherwise I really enjoyed the article. I'm for anything that promotes board gaming in any way (as a graduate from the University of Duisburg-Essen @Essen that comes with the territory I suppose)

cbr 12y ago

Here are the maps from the silliest game of diplomacy I ever played: http://www.jefftk.com/p/dip-space-nine http://www.jefftk.com/p/dip-space-nine There are many rule variants, but Star Trek is just too much.

snake_plissken 12y ago

Hmm I thought it would have been BattleTech.

aberrant 12y ago

Each year for the past 3-5 years me and my friends have been getting together for a weekend to play a few years of WWII. The game that we have been mostly playing is Columbia Games' Eastfront II, which covers the eastern war with Germany and Soviet Russia. It's basically a hex-based map with different terrains, rivers, weather changes, HQ-driven troop mobilization and combat - the rules are abstract but not overly so to uphold an enjoyable immersion. The game also employs fog of war with thick wooden standing unit pieces, which certainly adds to the excitement. The game is advertised for 2 players, but we went ahead and modded the rules for 6 players + a referee. We made both sides consist of 3 field commanders plus a supreme commander. We looked at the map and divided it into 3 parts: the north, the middle and the south. For each part of the map, a German field commander and a Soviet counterpart would sit against each other and hold command of their own area. They saw only units that moved on their map. We decided that each 4 turns (a turn was a fortnight) the field commanders could all go have a meeting with their supreme commander, discuss strategy and synchronize information. We usually set these meetings to last for about 10-15 minutes. The role of the supreme commander was to dole out repair points plus reinforcements and to send messages to their field commanders. Each turn the supreme commander could send a message to all of his subordinates, and each turn all of his field commanders could send one message to their supreme commander and one message to their fellow field commander. A message could be intercepted with a possibility of 1/6. Intercepting the message meant that the referee would toss a die and if it turned out one, he would take it to the enemy supreme commander without the sender knowing about it until the next meeting. As an addition, the supreme commander had a map, but he had nothing in it except his own unit, which was good for moving singular units, sending paratroops and air strikes. The supreme commander would also get all the dead units brought out to him when units started dying. You would definitely know things were bad when infantry that were at the edge of Moscow 3 turns ago (or so you recall...) were handed to you by the referee! Last year we upped the ante and tried out EuroFront II by Columbia Games. It was an epic attempt to play the final year of the war with the whole map of Europe, the winner being the one who holds the most Victory Cities (historically notable European cities) in their supply network by May 1945. With over a dozen players we anticipated problems in our message delivery system, which mainly consisted of a two guys gathering a bunch of papers from players and throwing dice for each message per turn per player side. We opted for an easier solution and I set out to build a simple messaging system. It was a horrible PHP Slim-based Bootstrap webapp, with business rules written in postgresql functions and code structure being an implementation of pasta. I suspected it would be a maintaining nightmare (and it sure was!), but it worked without a problem during that weekend. Everyone loved it, including our refs' feet. This year the game is Eastfront II and the messaging is modified for two player sides. We will also allow messages to pass through to their original recipient even if they are captured. With this we will experiment whether the turns will become more interesting for the players whose messages are always captured. Based on this horrid ad-hoc prototype of mine, I'm currently working on building a more generic, a rule-based messaging system for our guys. Definitely more maintainable this time, promise. Ps. For what it's worth, the ultimate alpha nerd war game seems to be The Campaign for North Africa. I will invite you to read the description of the game as described in Board Game Geek [0]. [0] http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/4815/the-campaign-for-north-africa http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/4815/the-campaign-for-nor...

georgeecollins 12y ago

I love Diplomacy and have played it forever, in person, by email, even as kid by snail mail. There is a great variant called 1900 by Baron VonPowell that is actually better. But it is my all time favorite game.