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Diplomacy: The Board Game of the Alpha Nerds (2014)

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Re: Diplomacy: The Board Game of the Alpha Nerds (2014)

#41

Post by mikelevins »

I've been part of a gaming group for about 45 years. The gmes we have focused on have varied over the years, and so has the lineup of players. For a while we played a lot of Diplomacy.

For a couple of years, while we were playing a lot of Diplomacy, we played on some unusual maps. My first wife worked for the USGS Map Sales office, and she could sometimes bring home discarded maps. We tried several of them as Diplomacy boards, including world maps of both Mars and Venus.

Mars wasn't that interesting, really. If you use its actual topography to decide where bodies of water go then you pretty much get one modest-sized polar ocean and several circular lakes in impact craters.

Venus, though, has an interesting topography that worked great for Diplomacy.

I might even have a couple of the hand-colored maps lying around the house (made in the middle 1980s).

Re: Diplomacy: The Board Game of the Alpha Nerds (2014)

#42

Post by Someone »

regus wrote: post #6

I’ve always wanted to play this, however a few things hold me back. Experience has thought me that it is very difficult to wrangle a lot of people to play complicated games. Simple party games are easy, but the moment you try to explain anything complicated to a large group all their eyes glaze over. Then there is the issue of the extreme play length. The people in my play group will complain if something takes an ho…

“And finally there is the “take that!” aspect of this game that I find worrying”

I wonder whether introducing a small amount of luck into the game would improve that. For example, in case of a standoff, if (and only if) the attacker rolls a six and the defender rolls a one, let the attacker win, or add a rule that, if two sixes are rolled, a player’s orders in a turn are ignored.

If every player were to have a tiny bit of misfortune in a game, maybe, their mind would put the blame on that and not on the backstabbing that made them lose zillions of encounters (“if only I had won that, I could have convinced X to support me, and…”). I guess players even might put the blame of not winning the game on being too lucky (“if I hadn’t had luck three times in a row, they wouldn’t have cooperated to kick me out of the game”)

It would be difficult or impossible to find just the right amount of luck to add, though.

Re: Diplomacy: The Board Game of the Alpha Nerds (2014)

#44

Post by jgalt212 »

ryanmarsh wrote: post #39
michaelmior wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In grad school we did something fairly similar when a new faculty member suggested it as a team building exercise...I'm not sure how well it worked :)

Diplomacy played in small groups with friends is a great way to end up with less friends. To win you basically have to lie to their faces. Still, it’s a great game.

I hear this a lot, and I've never played Diplo. That being said, how is a backstab more personally unsettling than a bluf in poker?

Re: Diplomacy: The Board Game of the Alpha Nerds (2014)

#45

Post by simonh »

jgalt212 wrote: post #44
ryanmarsh wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Diplomacy played in small groups with friends is a great way to end up with less friends. To win you basically have to lie to their faces. Still, it’s a great game.

I hear this a lot, and I've never played Diplo. That being said, how is a backstab more personally unsettling than a bluf in poker?

Poker is always zero sum, for me to win you must lose. That is never not true. But in Diplomacy you cannot win without successfully cooperating with other players. Yes there can only be one ultimate winner, but at any given moment in the game you need to successfully collaborate to make progress, so betrayals are much more painful. A poker bluff isn’t a betrayal because it’s not offering you anything you need or making any commitments to you.

Re: Diplomacy: The Board Game of the Alpha Nerds (2014)

#46

Post by dbmikus »

Syzygies wrote: post #26

The way I recall this game, habitual players need fresh meat to pretend to befriend, then screw over. Perhaps this isn't how it's played at the top. Like Wall Street, you see other people making money through pure genius, so you cut ethical corners trying to do as well?

Habitual good players actually have a metagame that spans across individual games. If you are too backstabby, it hurts your chances in further games, so you need to be very selective with your betrayals.

Re: Diplomacy: The Board Game of the Alpha Nerds (2014)

#48

Post by secabeen »

regus wrote: post #6

I’ve always wanted to play this, however a few things hold me back. Experience has thought me that it is very difficult to wrangle a lot of people to play complicated games. Simple party games are easy, but the moment you try to explain anything complicated to a large group all their eyes glaze over. Then there is the issue of the extreme play length. The people in my play group will complain if something takes an ho…

Diplomacy is fun, but I don't think the amount of time and stress is compensated for by additional fun. I'd much rather play two games of sidereal than one game of Dip.

Re: Diplomacy: The Board Game of the Alpha Nerds (2014)

#49

Post by IIAOPSW »

cableshaft wrote: post #2

This game takes like 8-12 hours, but if you do it in person, it just FLIES by. I was too afraid to take a food break or even a bathroom break because I didn't want to be out of earshot of everyone else so they could scheme against me. We had 15 minutes for planning each turn, and that never seemed like enough. You want to talk to everyone, sometimes including one person, then again after that person leaves to talk to…

Try playing online with 48 hour deadlines. Diplomacy isn't a thing that's over in a day, its a thing that just happens in the background for weeks at a time. The paranoia gets to you man.

playdiplomacy.com

Re: Diplomacy: The Board Game of the Alpha Nerds (2014)

#50

Post by andrepd »

cableshaft wrote: post #2

This game takes like 8-12 hours, but if you do it in person, it just FLIES by. I was too afraid to take a food break or even a bathroom break because I didn't want to be out of earshot of everyone else so they could scheme against me. We had 15 minutes for planning each turn, and that never seemed like enough. You want to talk to everyone, sometimes including one person, then again after that person leaves to talk to…

I've found it's best when played by a group of friends at a turn per day. Every day at 18:00, for example, moves are due and revealed. It lets people scheme and talk during the day.
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