Chat or Article - take your pick
- Writing Orders for Diplomacy Or "My GM is an idiot" by Mark Mizak is an excellent article on how to write Diplomacy orders, especially if you're playing email games on this site.
- Way back in April '01 Jim Burgess asked me to write an article for his glossy
magazine [forgot which one now - if you're reading this Jim, sorry] saying: "perhaps
you could write about the "behind the scenes" issues involved in starting and
running a Diplomacy Web Site like you have, with multiple GMs etc.?"
Now as I'm hoping more and more GMs/webmasters will be attracted to writing their own sites [Mike Dean for one], and Jim must have used the article by now, so I thought it might be 'safe' for me to put this up - 'Creating and Running a Diplomacy Website'. - Differences - the 'Old' and 'New': an article from Guy Fraser-Sampson, on the perceived difference in style of play in Diplomacy games run many years ago, to the style of play we see today.
- Receiving Fake Emails: Are you worried you might receive fake orders or Diplomacy emails? Check this - it just might not be as bad as you thought.
- Sopwith discussion - should the rules be changed?
- MIDCON 2002 REPORT can be found here from our very own Duncan Proffitt. It's so nice to see one again.
- USING REALPOLITIK ON DIP2000 - Tom Craig has written a really good article about using Realpolitik for Dip 2000 GMs. It explains quite a bit. Thanks TC for the explanation.
- The Art of Lying by Nicolas Demers. Are there any of you out there who feel guilty about the lies and deceit in Diplomacy? Yeah right. I may be wrong but I get the feeling this was written because of the debate on the Message Board on Endgame Statements.
- CONDITIONAL DIPLOMACY BUILD MISTAKES: Recently
a couple of players have made mistakes on conditional diplomacy builds. Now
I know this is probably not a new issue, but as it has happened twice in
one week I think players should be reminded -- when writing conditional moves
there should always be an ELSE after it. For example...
"If England moves to Denmark then build A(Kie), else build F(Kie)."
Now remember, there is also a subtle differences here. There is a difference, for example, between 'moves' and 'moved'. You might want a build if England even TRIES to move to Denmark, and a different build if he has actually moved there.
So please keep in mind when you are writing to our poor overworked GMs, that most of the times we take what we read in orders literally. So if you make a mistake, remember it is not OUR (GMs) mistake. In the end we are only here to collect the pieces of paper and adjudicate the game.
AVOIDING NMRs: As this site is still at learning what's what with email Diplomacy , we're [your GMs] still trying to work out what is best for us, this website, and you. One of the problems is NMRing - do we stick rigidly to the deadline, allow for some excuses and not others, are our contacts even enough? Certainly we cannot publish our phone numbers on the web [Richard H has too many enemies :-) ]. So, what to do? Richard writes -
"A lot of the problems can be resolved by submitting conditional orders fairly soon after the adjudication, and I believe we should educate players thus. How about a little mention of this in the `chat`. I shall recommend it when sending out my next adjudications."
So here it is, it's mentioned. It really is a good idea to send in conditional/preliminary orders just in case there's that power cut, the kids send a football through your monitor, the cat pees in your keyboard, or, heaven forbid, your server goes down. It really is up to you... so, DO AS YOU'RE TOLD. :-) After all, it's only what we do... and we're good. [Do you think I mentioned it enough, Richard?]
Tom