The world championships are this weekend www.ptks.org/wdc2018/
I’m currently here (it’s the last day), and I wasn’t quite sure what to expect with it being my first time playing in a large tournament— but I have to say it was pretty damn fun. The face to face hobby is definitely alive and well. If you enjoy strategy games, and have a bit of a masochistic bent, you’ll get along just fine.
Definitely would recommend you get some experience under your belt beforehand, to get a feel for general strategy and tactics. If you want to join the major discussion channels online to find some good games, hit me up and I’ll invite you.
I absolutely loved this game in high school. It’s very special, in that it’s primary mechanic is real world relationships placed into a tactical context. The downside is that it pulls real world relationships into a simulated zero-sum environment where the game ends but the relationships persist.
I’ve never played any game quite like it.
Unfortunately, I can’t think of a situation in which I would ever play it again, because when played well it will almost certain damage relationships, and when played poorly it’s just sort of a disappointment.
This may be my favorite game of all time, and I don’t think I’ll ever play it again.
I've been brutally betrayed twice in Diplomacy. I'm still good friends with those people. It's only a game. If you can't separate player's behavior in the context of a game with who they are outside of it, then maybe board games is not the hobby for you, or at least not social/negotiation board games, which are very common in recent years.
Games are supposed to be fun. A lot of people don't find lying, manipulating, and betraying fun, in any context. That's not a psychological failing, and it certainly doesn't mean you should avoid board games. There's plenty of socially competitive board games, but damn few of them are half as vicious as Diplomacy.
If you and your friends can enjoy Diplomacy, that's great! But I do get tired of all the people insinuating that there's something wrong with me I don't like it.
Personally I'm pretty burnt out on all those social games myself. I'd rather just play a 2 player abstract nowadays, like the GIPF series. Please don't take what I said in my original post as a scathing indictment or that there's something wrong with you. I get along with most people and I'm sure I'd have no issues playing with you at a game night.
There are certain personality types that tend to lead to negative experiences in gaming, though, and being a poor sport is one of those, and I do try to avoid gaming with those people when I can.
Diplomacy sounds unique, though, because it takes so long to play. In shorter games I might betray you and you me before the night is over. Also, maybe the length makes it eel like there's more at stake?
Both games lasted a long time (one was in person for 10 hours before we ended it, the other was an online game with one turn made per week). Both times I was completely crippled (if someone is going to betray you in Diplomacy they better cripple you or they're going to be fighting multiple fronts later, and that's really hard to do in Diplomacy), and had to basically observe what happened for the rest of it.
I still stand by my statement. It's just a game. Just because it took a few extra hours than most doesn't mean it should permanently damage friendships. Maybe take a week or two break from everyone to decompress from the absolutely intense and crazy experience, but not permanently damage a friendship. That's the sign of a very weak friendship, I feel.
As for more at stake...what's at stake? A 'yay, I won!'? It's not a poker tournament where the winner is going to take home $100,000+.
Uno has damaged friendships. We humans tend to take games a bit too seriously. Frankly, I worry about my friends who won't take a shot at winning in the mid-game when its pretty obvious the other side is about to be done. Not being able to separate a game from feelings is a problem for some.
I should point out I separate games from gambling, because money does changes things quite a bit.
I suppose close friendships is a context in which I can imagine playing this game again. Having six close friends that love strategy games and have a day to dedicate is much harder to imagine.
It’s the weak friendships that I’m concerned about damaging.
Did you try to set up a few axioms for the environment beforehand to try and contain actions within the context of the game? I always envisioned declaring a group objective of betrayal so that someone doesn't try to come in with preconceived tactics based and bonded on real world relationships.
"We're all here to win, so let's screw each other over and see who can be the most selfish"
Yup. As much as the concept is neat, fundamentally it's the 7-player and runtime requirements that ruin it.
Games are allowed to have hurt feelings and flaws and brutality if they make up for it with something cool... But the severity of those flaws is amplified by run-time. An 8-hour game that is ruined by betrayal is monstrous.
Need a "diplomacy lite" that can be wrapped up in under 40 minutes
Yeah, but Avalon or Secret Hitler have pre-defined teams. Part of the appeal of Diplomacy is that it's a free for all and you define alliances as you need them.
Thinking it over, Nash's "so long, sucker" is probably the closest example, but I don't know anybody who's actually played it.
So let's play online with other HN'ers with experience. We can set it up to require one move a week, which gives plenty of time to communicate and plot even if life's distractions come up every now and then. (I agree with you that it's the worst when you start a game and then other players stop making moves.)
Same for me with monopoly. Monopoly doesn't have backstabbing that much, but certainly has alliances and some people already don't take too well to other people cooperating without them.
It's been a while now, but a group of seven of us would very occasionally set aside an entire Saturday to play Diplomacy. While online and play by mail have their own flavors, the tension and negotiation strategies while face to face have a character unlike any other board game I've played.
Between sets of moves, groups of people would scatter to different corners of the house for hushed discussions, and unlike online play, you could make a decision based on who you saw talking to whom. With a large board on a dining room table, it felt like being in a war room with all of Europe at stake.
All in all, it is an extremely compelling game with strategy in both moves and alliances leaking from all seams.
You can play online if you have ever wanted to give it a try. It’s probably the best way to learn, since you can take your time communicating and planning your next moves.
Diplomacy is probably the emotionally hardest game I’ve ever played. It feels bad when people betray you, it feels bad when people utterly outsmart you, and after this happens to you (on say, turn two) you still have a couple hours in person to play, or a couple more weeks in person. You have immediately roll with the new situation, try to get help from previous enemies, and keep going with loosing your cool or your will to fight.
Even when you win it’s not great because chances are you did something shady and your friends are mad at you. This might explain why I haven’t played/ thought about this game in 30 years.
I like board games (competetive and co-op) but have no desire to play this again.
I don't enjoy deceiving my friends and having them deceive me. It's hard for me to understand what kind of person enjoys basically trying to manipulate other people for sport.
I've never noticed the issue with Risk, though I noticed it more often with Diplomacy the summer I played it multiple days a week (it was at a "pre-college" camp thing for academically inclined students). We were stuck there for 5 weeks with each other, and it was actually a good experience because it taught us to overcome how we felt towards each other. So alliances would change regularly each game, which was nice, and we all learned how to move on after and go do something else...usually Ultimate.
Risk actually has a different problem— the kingmaking problem. It’s easier for a player to decide who _won’t_ win than it is for a player to use skill to win. It’s easy in the later stages of the game to utterly cripple someone who annoys you.
> It's hard for me to understand what kind of person enjoys basically trying to manipulate other people for sport.
Your question contains the answer: it’s _for sport_. Sport and games are a place we can play out desires we’d never want to in real life. Tons of gamers like to pretend they’re shooting people. Strategy gamers orchestrate war and genocide. In sport, boxers pummel each other to unconsciousness, and many boxers are lovely people.
You're not pretending to manipulate though, you're actually doing it. There's a massive difference between deceiving an NPC in D&D and actually manipulating your friends to win at Risk. This is what makes it uncomfortable for me.
Shout out to subterfuge, another great diplomacy/strategy game involving inevitable betrayal. Takes about 7-10 days to finish a game. http://subterfuge-game.com (mobile only)
Another related game is the Game of Thrones board game - very similar to Diplomacy mechanically but tuned to shorter game lengths (on the order of 2-4 hours).
I college, I'd do 18 player games on a world map. Definitely changed your impression of people, particularly when you'd only vaguely know them otherwise - but it also got you into long-term close contact (these games were a turn a week, and would last for ~18 months before a winner was obvious).
What's interesting is how the macro-cooperation game gets completely ignored by so many people when they play a game like this. If you're never going to interact with someone again, then betrayal has no long term consequences, but if it's someone you plan to continue a relationship with in real life, then betrayal, even if it's "just a game", will damage that relationship, possibly terminally so.
It's almost like our instinctive zero-sum behaviors short-circuit our higher reasoning just enough in this simulated environment to suppress thought of the long term real-world relational consequences of our actions.
> if it's someone you plan to continue a relationship with in real life, then betrayal, even if it's "just a game", will damage that relationship, possibly terminally so.
Do you also hold it against someone in real life, if they bluff you while playing poker?
What you're saying might be true as a descriptive statement - many people can't separate gameplay from reality. But betrayal is a key mechanic that's designed into the fabric of the game, and I would encourage everyone not judge someone for using a intentionally designed feature in the game.
revealing your ability to be explicitly socially deceptive and manipulative can really undermine other peoples' real-life trust in you, especially if they notice you're particularly good at it
A poker "bluff" has always seemed poorly named to me. You aren't making any claims about your hand either way, you're just making bets. So a "bluff" is actually just the other players guessing wrong at what you're holding.
That's an overly reductive view of poker that misses the point of the game. If a high bid isn't an implied threat of high cards, what is it? Bidding is correlated to hand strength and player stacks, so a bid is a statement about your hand and the game, albeit a fuzzy one.
There is a deep resonance to the way this game encourages lying to protect an alliance that is already being betrayed. This inspires paranoia along those who have successfully been defeated.
This is a trip down memory lane. Back at HuskyCon 2009 I was on a board with Brian Ecton. When it was my turn to read orders, he stepped away from the board for a smoke. Since he was gone I made up new orders for his fleets. Boy was he livid when he got back.
Unfortunately it seems like the face to face hobby is aging out. The last decade has seen several luminaries of Diplomacy retire from the game or pass away.
We had lots of people under 30 at WDC this weekend - including two high school students and one pre-teen (who is ... really good at handling both the complexity and the stress). Don't age us out yet!
Cheating, to be blunt. The person reading out the orders (OP) decided to ignore what was written on the paper and make up something. Difficult to pull off though - in every game I've played the written moves are shown to everyone, just to make it easier to keep track of who's doing what.
Yep, in some circles the prevailing law is that cheating is fine until you get caught. The issue here is that Brian walked away from the board while orders were being read. No one has a responsibility to make sure your orders are adjudicated correctly.
I play Diplomacy online with a group of friends, where we normally have a turn lasting 2 days. We need to do this sparingly, though, because invariably we all end up spending huge portions of our workdays messaging each other and plotting instead of actually getting anything done.
We used to play this at work with weekly turns. There was a lot of scheming throughout the week leading up to each turn day. I even learned the OS/2 display list (retained graphics api, forget the name) to make an interactive Diplomacy game reference map that lived on the LAN. Good times. Don't recall any friendships being ended.
The experiences of individuals playing this remind me of when we got first an 8 man and then a 16 or 24 man game or something and it was quite an experience. The two weeks we played this at work were probably hundreds of thousands of dollars in productivity lost.
We play using a "central timing clock" for the games at WDC - 45 boards over three days (Friday 9am Friday 5:30 / Sat 9am / 5:30pm / Sun 9:30 am) - and they keep the games moving very nicely. 34 minutes per game year, with adjustments being done on the clock. We had one game go to 1916, but most games are done in less than 6 hours.
We've had two solo wins over the 36 boards played so far.
It depends on the group attitude. There are a lot of people who keep alliances until the end then call draws. In a lot of ways this is a behavior that earns points for next time someone plays (e.g. That person will keep their word). On the other hand, there are groups that treat it as a winner-take-all game and play to win. It really depends on which group you get in with.
You'll probably know about a group victory in a short period of time (under four hours if you use a turn clock[edit]5 or ten minute turns[edit]), but it will be a long night with the must have a winner group. Most in a concede.
Colonial Diplomacy is faster and really, really brutal.
In my college experience, it would take approximately 6-8 hours for a game. Usually about 6-7 hours deep, there would be 3-4 players remaining, and 2-3 of those would join forces to eliminate the weakest player and call it a night.
My understanding is that a nerd is someone who is very intelligent or involved in pursuits associated with intelligence like academia, science, or programming. A geek is someone with an extreme interest in something like pop culture or science fiction.
Usually a geek is someone that likes "nerd stuff" but doesn't completely engages in it.
I don't want to sound judging or oversimplify it, but for example you may like cellphones or photography as a geek, but you'd never think about reading about semiconductor physics to understand what the latest stuff in sensors mean or trying to build your own camera. A geek may try some light DIY project every once in a while but it's not what makes his heart beat, and a nerd will obsess over it for months.
This needs unpacking, because it's true but not very complete. Diplomacy is correlated to human behavior that causes people to reevaluate relationships. This pattern is not caused by losing players being unable to take a game as a game. It's having a game reveal real-life patterns of manipulation and deception that ends relationships.
That said, I do recommend a game with your friends.
Apologies in advance if this is somewhat off topic, but I have some pushback against the title of this post.
No disrespect to Diplomacy, I think it's a great game. However I would respectfully submit that chess might have a stronger claim to being "the board game of the alpha nerds". (Or go, arguably, in the eastern world. But despite go's supremacy in terms of complexity, it hasn't captured the world's imagination like chess has.)
There's a reason why chess scenes always pop up in movies and literature featuring, e.g. criminal masterminds vs Sherlock, or the venerable doctor teaching strategy to the protégé. The reason is, chess (rightfully or not) is universally recognized as the quintessential game symbolizing human intelligence.
In my opinion as a former competitive chess player, chess skill actually isn't correlated with general intelligence, in the sense that if you're smart enough to get good at chess, at some point you realize that there are more worthwhile things to be doing with your time. But that's neither here nor there.
My main argument is that if we did a vote among all the world's "alpha nerds" to determine who is the alpha-est and nerdiest of us all, I suspect that current world chess champion Magnus Carlsen might place higher than any of these Diplomacy masters. I have no idea how this survey methodology would work (could anyone declare themselves an alpha nerd, or would they need to be confirmed by other nerds with official titles in nerdy activities?), but you get my point.
I don't deny chess is the game with the higher status, but I don't think that's what the term alpha was trying to get at. Alpha here is used in a social context, ie the leader of a pack. Some traits of an alpha, as opposed to a beta, include being aggressive, intimidating, capable of convincing others to join your agenda, and willing to lie for your benefit. It's hard to display alpha traits in a one on one game like chess.
I’m with you up until you associate alpha with being intimidating and willing to lie. Alpha implies leadership 100%. It is possible to be a strong and convincing leader without these negative traits. In practice, most leaders are in fact more ruthless as you portray. But look at the #metoo movement for one data point of how the balance of power is shifting.
All of that notwithstanding, it is very possible and in fact extremely common for alpha traits to be displayed in chess, both the Machiavellian style and the more “woke” for lack of a better term. In a one on one game, this is communicated in the non-game communication ie body language. In a club or team setting all of the usual social dominance tactics apply.
Apologies if I implied intimidation and lying are good traits. However, I do maintain that they are alpha traits. Lying, maybe not sure much, but intimidating, definitely. Being alpha isn't necessarily a good thing. Like all labels, and especially for a label as complicated as "alpha", there are good and bad parts to it.
Honestly I dislike using the term alpha, because it's so inflammatory. Its hard to talk about what alpha means without bringing up beta, and the moment you use those two words then it sounds like redpill-speak. However, there are certain kinds of people who are confrontational and very much extroverted, the kinds who don't back away when challenged. I see alpha as a way to describe these traits as they are, with no moral conclusions attached.
For sure Chess players can display alpha traits, but it's hard to see how Chess players are MORE alpha than Diplomacy players. An entire game of Chess can finish without a single word exchanged, and it's rare and unprofessional for violence to show up in Chess, though it does show up time to time. In diplomacy, violence, albeit only verbal, is the norm. A nonconfrontational person will never survive in diplomacy, but they can do well in Chess.
So I think the term "alpha" is leading to a lot of confusion here. It could mean "person in charge who maintains control through deception and fear, much like a psychopath", or it could mean "leader". True leadership involves dealing with conflicts and confrontations, but doing it with integrity and respect at all times. That's how good leaders inspire others to follow them. Only charlatans need to rely on brute force methods like intimidation.
For that reason, I encourage you to stop conflating "alpha" with antisocial character traits. Words matter. The very idea that this is acceptable behavior for leaders, that sometimes violence is the answer, perpetuates the social norms that allow bullies to stay in power.
Also, your conception of diplomacy needs work. Again, anybody who is actually any good at diplomacy understands how it is possible to convey a firm position with minimal violence. Diplomacy is more of a dance. You don't want to be the kind of lead dancer who's violently swinging your partner around the room.
If you really believe that confrontation can't be resolved without violence, I recommend a meditation practice known as "metta" [compassion]. Reading the Art of War may also provide inspiration and guidance on this front.
Ah, but obscurity is one of the factors of nerdiness. If you're into sci-fi films, you're more nerdy than someone into action blockbusters. If you're into 50s sci-fi B-movies specifically, you're even more nerdy.
To say the least. This concept of "alpha" humans has no basis in psychology, biology and anthropology.
It implies that humans are evolved to live in a hierarchical and purely competitive society which is known to be false (not only for us but for many mammals).
Humans are not insect nor lobsters.
Chess shows up in popular culture because it’s more popular. Everyone has heard of Chess. You don’t have to explain Chess. If you did have to explain it, its rules and concept are very easy.
Go, and a lot of modern heavy strategy games are way more complex than Chess.
I’m currently here (it’s the last day), and I wasn’t quite sure what to expect with it being my first time playing in a large tournament— but I have to say it was pretty damn fun. The face to face hobby is definitely alive and well. If you enjoy strategy games, and have a bit of a masochistic bent, you’ll get along just fine.
Definitely would recommend you get some experience under your belt beforehand, to get a feel for general strategy and tactics. If you want to join the major discussion channels online to find some good games, hit me up and I’ll invite you.