

Backstabbr: A modern web interface for the classic board game Diplomacy - brownbat
http://www.backstabbr.com/

======
memonkey
I first heard about Diplomacy via This American Life. The reporter talks about
how he played the game and eventually went on to hire an actual diplomat to
help him play at the World Championships. It's a great story in itself and I
recommend it to anybody who wants to learn more about the game.

[http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-
archives/episode/531/g...](http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-
archives/episode/531/got-your-back)

~~~
jnem
Same here, that was probably the best episode I ever listened to. I remember
waiting in my car to hear the end.

------
RevRal
In my opinion Diplomacy is a game well suited for correspondence gameplay. Not
only is it difficult to get all the players to commit the necessary time on a
day everyone is available, but it is also much more fun since you can plan
your moves more freely. We've even gotten used to planning moves with one
another using Evernote throughout the week.

Some friends and I have been playing this way for a few years now, and hands
down it is a better experience than using any of the cumbersome boards and
having to manually adjudicate everything.

Submit one move every Tuesday, it's now a tradition.

~~~
imdsm
Well, this looks fun. I'd like to play and I like the idea of playing with
turns every week or so, but nobody I know would really be bothered with this.

Where would someone find a committed group to play with?

~~~
RALaBarge
In the ArsTechnica forums, under the gaming heading, there is a group that
plays every now and then. I have gotten in on 3 of the games, and it is
exquisitely diabolical.

I am curious if in person games have as much backstabbing in them as play by
email sessions, as I always tend to get screwed over and over again by shady
dealings of other powers.

~~~
couchand
Short answer: yes. I've never played a game without a healthy level of
backstabbing. I suppose that's where the OP got the name...

------
sparkman55
If you're not sure if you want to play Diplomacy, you might read this article:

[http://grantland.com/features/diplomacy-the-board-game-of-
th...](http://grantland.com/features/diplomacy-the-board-game-of-the-alpha-
nerds/)

------
spudfkc
We started a game of Diplomacy in the office. 7 developers, 7 players, 1 day
per turn. We use Backstabbr to keep track of the game and have it drawn up on
a whiteboard - it's been a lot of fun and increased moral a decent bit.

It's 1907, no one trusts each other anymore and everyone hates everyone.

~~~
willismichael
How do "increased moral" and "no one trusts each other" go together? I almost
always leave a game of Diplomacy feeling really upset, but maybe that's just
an indication that I don't have a good ability to separate in-game
relationships from reality?

~~~
JoeAltmaier
We play similar games in our Scout troop. When they're done I ask the boys "We
were willing to do that and it was just a game. What lengths would we go to if
it was about something that really mattered? Think about it"

------
pimlottc
I can't help but wonder how renaming the game to "Backstabbr" will affect the
way people play.

~~~
na85
Backstabbing is a natural and expected part of the game. Anyone who's played
more than once knows that you cannot expect to go through a whole game without
being stabbed.

Most of the strategy revolves around predicting when, not if, your ally of
convenience will backstab you, and how long you can afford to trust them
before you'll need to stab first.

It's nice to see these things popping up. I've used similar web interfaces
before and they're great. Diplomacy is best played with the full complement of
7 players, and 7 is an awkward number of people to get together for a game
that can last up to 3 hours, but see 1-2 people eliminated in the first hour.

~~~
RevRal
Be careful when backstabbing, it is not a good mid or opening tactic. It can
be effectively used less than once per game since it is far more important to
be honest and earn the trust of everyone. Information and trust are key, not
just control of supply centers because it is very easy to lose your shit if
everyone hates/distrusts you. Backstabbing is normally too short sighted, and
a stigma can build and effect subsequent games.

~~~
thrill
Trust is the most important thing. Once you can fake that, you've got it made.

------
leoc
What form of the convoy rules is this using? (Diplomacy's convoy rules are (or
were) ambiguous in corner cases, something that multiple versions of the
official natural-language rules failed to resolve fully.)

~~~
safetymonkey
Convoy kidnapping is allowed, if that's what you're asking about. Also a fully
specified convoy path is not required either.

~~~
safetymonkey
One of the other devs suggested you might also be referring to paradox
adjudication. We use the Szykman rule.

~~~
leoc
Thanks! You should spell out all the details like this in a FAQ, or ideally on
a dedicated webpage. You know what Diplomacy players are like. ;)

~~~
safetymonkey
Yeah, a FAQ has gradually been in the works and this is definitely the sort of
thing we should put in there.

------
jboggan
I just want to say I've been playing for the past week and the first actual
order resolution will be happening in a few minutes. I'm very excited and the
platform has been fun to play with so far. I love the sandboxes.

------
acafourek
I've been looking for a way to learn Diplomacy for some time now - the
controls feel a bit cumbersome but after just using the sandbox for an hour or
so, I have a far better introduction than I've gotten from just reading
primers. Nice work.

~~~
eru
Try the DAIDE project: you can play Diplomacy against AIs. Works pretty well
nowadays. Press options are still limited.

~~~
gknoy
Thanks for this! I didn't know it existed. It might help me enjoy the
mechanical aspects without the angst of politics. ;)

[https://sites.google.com/site/diplomacyai/QuickStart/](https://sites.google.com/site/diplomacyai/QuickStart/)

~~~
qznc
On [http://www.vdiplomacy.com/](http://www.vdiplomacy.com/) you can play
2-player variants. This turns it into a pure tactics chess-like game.

Also, gunboat style (no communication possible) is quite popular online.

------
z3t4
I wonder about the legal aspect of this, since Diplomacy is a fairly modern
game. Do they have permission from the creator of Diplomacy? Or is it fully
legal to take a board game and make a web version of it?

~~~
safetymonkey
It is our understanding that there's kind of an unspoken agreement between the
game copyright owners (Hasbro, who purchased Avalon Hill) and website
developers that they are unlikely to interfere so long as you're not using any
of their art or instruction text directly and so long as you're clear that
your version is "inspired" by the original and provide attribution. This is
the reason that every site you visit has their own handwritten version of the
rules, for example.

In our case, we really do encourage people to go buy a copy of the board game,
preferably from your local nerd shop. There's a lot to recommend playing
Diplomacy online (I believe it was the second game playable by mail published
after chess), but there is something special about playing in person and
having all the physical materials.

~~~
renata
It's not really so much of an unspoken agreement as the fact that they can't
do jack squat about it. Game mechanics can't be copyrighted because they're
not a concrete form of expression, only the art and instructions can be.

------
georgeecollins
The problem with this implementation is you can sign up for a game that is
every 15 minutes, or every hour. Then it doesn't start for X number of hours
until it gets seven people.

So you can say at 3pm you wnat to be in a game. It can start at 3 am, and by
the time you realize you are in a game you have already lost. With seven
people, probably many in different time zones, I haven't yet seen a turn of my
game where at least two people didn't move.

Cool site though.

------
patja
I am in my first game on backstabbr and am enjoying it very much.

I love the sandboxing feature on backstabbr, but I so so wish it was faster. I
would pay good money for a native Windows or iPad client that loaded the
current game state and was strictly a fast sandboxing tool. Sandboxing is so
heavily "what if" where you want to explore maybe a dozen paths quickly that
the tool becomes frustrating when it can't keep up with your ideas.

------
melicerte
Diplomacy, loose your friends in no more less than a few hours...

------
eru
If you want to play Diplomacy, but want a more balanced experience, that has
all powers of the board interact, I can only recommend Baron Powell's
excellent 1900 map variant.

------
rurounijones
Looks interesting, is there any possibility of a "guest" account that can see
a sample in-progress game?

Or some other way to sign in that does not require Google?

~~~
safetymonkey
Hi, I'm a dev on Backstabbr. At present the only way to access anything is to
login, and the only logins we use are Google accounts. We have talked about
making a demo Sandbox available to guests, but I'm not sure when we'll get
around to that.

~~~
brownbat
Thanks for your site, and thanks for letting me steal some karma despite
having nothing to do with it. :)

Our group started on playdiplomacy a few months back, but migrated to
backstabbr for our games shortly after. PD's good too, but responsiveness,
clean visuals, easy sandboxes, and strong mobile support were huge draws for
backstabbr.

I think we originally tried PD just because after a 20 second review of each
site, it looked like you had to have a GM on backstabbr (not true at all,
adjudication is easily fully automated, we realized after a longer look).
Also, the google login requirement kept one friend from joining our game, but
most of us saw the google login as neutral to a perk.

I've been really impressed with the site, really hope it takes off and you all
find some way to get handsomely compensated.

~~~
safetymonkey
Hey, thanks for the kind words! I'm really glad you and your friends are
enjoying the site. It's been really gratifying to see so many people enjoying
our work and also to watch new players discovering the game for the first
time.

------
spb
So, reading up a little on the premise, has anybody ever tried running a game
of Diplomacy where each territory has spectator "citizens" that the players
have to answer to, ie. holding a press conference between each turn to give a
"State of the Union" address, laying out what the current party line is on
alliances and axes (and having to spin stabs to not come off as evil)?

------
qznc
Interested in a Hacker News round on vDip? I created a game:

[http://www.vdiplomacy.com/board.php?gameID=20995](http://www.vdiplomacy.com/board.php?gameID=20995)
password: backstabbr

It is the classic map with a twist: it starts with a build phase, so you can
choose between armies and fleets.

------
argc
I'm curious what languages/frameworks/platforms were used to create Backstabbr

~~~
safetymonkey
Hi, I'm a dev on Backstabbr and can help answer that question. Backstabbr was
written in Python and is hosted on Google App Engine. The web interface uses
Django and relies pretty heavily on Bootstrap 3. (At some point we'd like to
migrate from Django to Jinja2, but that probably won't float to the top of our
list anytime in the near future.)

~~~
Freeboots
Replying to you because you're the dev, just thought I'd let you know that
your gravatar system is case sensitive, it seems to only work with all
minuscules, yet google login seemed to automatically add capitals. So the
combination means gravatars dont show up.

~~~
safetymonkey
That's an interesting bug, thanks for the heads up. I'll take a look at it
during our next hack night.

------
hhaamm
Does that page has a chat? I'm already playing (I've never played Diplomacy
before) but I can't comunicate with other players.

~~~
hhaamm
I found it.. the chat is on the "Press" button.

------
jonathanyc
How does this compare to, say, webDiplomacy
([http://webdiplomacy.net/](http://webdiplomacy.net/))?

~~~
qznc
I find the fork [http://www.vdiplomacy.com/](http://www.vdiplomacy.com/) much
better, mostly because there much more variants. The classic map has various
weaknesses (e.g. army instead of fleet in Rome).

vDip also has a click-on-the-map interface, although I prefer the drop-down
variant.

~~~
tudorw
[http://www.spoilsrotten.com](http://www.spoilsrotten.com) has variations on
the maps, including some interesting geometric layouts :)

------
roymars
Playdiplomacy.com is the easiest and best site for sure.

------
bnb
[http://bit.ly/1zeUgXf](http://bit.ly/1zeUgXf)

