brian@jett.UUCP (Brian Reynolds) (04/16/84)
(Army Budapest --> Serbia; Fleet Trieste --> Albania)
Is there anyone out there who would be interested in attempting
to play Avalon Hill's Diplomacy game via electronic mail? We
would need one person to be game master (I would be willing
to do this--at least for the first game) and seven others to
play the great powers. I think that the idea is feasible--
sending mail to each other to propose alliances and then
finally mailing in your orders to the game master before a
prespecified deadline date. The game master would then make
the moves and mail back the new position to each of the play-
ers. The players would proceed to write their next turn
orders, etc. If you are interested in attempting this, please
reply to me via mail. To do this, you will need a) a diplomacy
board (or access to one), and b) a usenet address. If I get
enough interest I will try to start a game in a week or two
(That is about the earliest I can make it, since I myself wont
have access to a diplomacy board until then).
-- Brian Reynolds
{ihnp4|clyde|sdcrdcf}!akgua!jett!brian
--
-- Brian Reynolds
{ihnp4|clyde|sdcrdcf}!akgua!jett!brianknight@rlgvax.UUCP (Steve Knight) (04/17/84)
I tried to go the mail route, but rlgvax doesn't know about jett...yet?
Anyway--the question of a Usenet Diplomacy game keeps resurfacing from
time to time. I think this was the third such posting I've seen since
I ran (or tried to run) such a game early in 1982. (If there's anyone
out there familiar with the existant postal Diplomacy hobby, the game
itself had Boardman Number 1982CK.) There was a fair amount of interest
from net types, in spectating as well as playing, and we even set up a
newsgroup (net.games.dip) to distribute the adjudications in an
electronic zine of sorts.
Alas, Usenet itself ended up doing the game in...sort of. Unlike the
commercial networks, such as Compuserve and the Source (both of which,
by the way, have Dip games running on them), Usenet is sufficiently
anarchic that there was no real guarantee that mail was getting through
consistently enough to play a good game of Dip. There were far too many
missed turns by players, and we had general communication problems. The
very first turn had a player claiming that his moves were changed
en route to me (definitely possible, since spool directories on many
machines are wide open). One player in the game had the precious uid=0
and happened to be on the same machine as another player who didn't;
we had to resort to an honor system of sorts, and anyone familiar with
the game is certainly aware that honor is a fickle commodity among
Diplomacy players. We tossed about the idea of using encryption to
combat these and other problems, but never really got around to it.
Now, on the other hand, the net seems to be a good bit more established
and reliable now than it was then, so it may very well be possible to
play a successful game this time around. It is not, however, a project
to be undertaken lightly, by either the players or the GM, for there's
a good chance that you'll have to end up fighting the communication
medium. Regardless, I'll be more than happy to help such a game in any
way I can (yes, the benefit of my, cough cough, *vast* experience...),
if it does get off the ground.
Oh, yeah, if there are any net historians/Dip players out there who
are interested, I'm pretty sure I still have the complete records for
the previous Usenet game somewhere around here.
--
"If you lived here, you'd be home by now."
Steve Knight
{seismo,allegra,some other sites}!rlgvax!knightbjb@whuxle.UUCP (04/18/84)
#R:jett:-20000:whuxle:32200004:000:375 whuxle!bjb Apr 17 19:05:00 1984 Perhaps the players can each tell their machine about one central machine - the one with the referee. All communications can then go directly between the referee and the players. If further security is needed, enforce a rule that each player and the referee must be on a different machine and not have access to any of the others. Please count me in! B. Beare AT&T-BL
brian@jett.UUCP (Brian Reynolds) (04/21/84)
[Build Army Budapest & Army Trieste]
The following two people have not yet replied to my path
confirmation notice:
Brad ______ at cvl!umcp-cs!brad
Tom Morgan at ariel!djm
I know I only sent the thing a few days ago, but I just
wanted to get this up so that we can start the game as
soon as possible. If you are one of these people and have
not received a message from me via mail, please reply to
this so that I can find a valid path to you.
-- Brian Reynolds
[ihnp4|clyde|sdcrdcf]!akgua!jett!brian
--
-- Brian Reynolds
{ihnp4|clyde|sdcrdcf}!akgua!jett!brian