
The Board Game of the Alpha Nerds - swanson
http://grantland.com/features/diplomacy-the-board-game-of-the-alpha-nerds/
======
jboggan
When I was at my last gig we had a very active board game community and
Diplomacy was eventually brought out. We played twice while I was there and it
sowed an unbelievable amount of enmity and discord. It was incredibly fun.

The first time we played a majority of the players had never played before. We
got through one "year" a week, with Spring and Autumn troop movements due by
the end of the day on Tuesday and Thursday respectively. Then we'd resolve
conflicts and submit build or retreat orders. Then we'd plot.

It was really fun but I think it was too fun - I think office productivity
seriously suffered for it. Especially considering the amount of time we spent
thinking/scheming/talking versus the scarce minutes in the evening actually
"playing" the game. Still an amazingly well balanced game once you understand
the subtleties. I fared extremely poorly by treating it like Risk and being
far too aggressive. On my second playthrough I became much more docile and
cooperative, and was thoroughly stabbed in the back for being so trusting.

~~~
peter_l_downs
Similarly, I introduced our office to Conquer Club (an online, slow-turn, RISK
clone [0]) and it led to such a lack of productivity that it was subsequently
banned. Too much fun!

[0]: [http://www.conquerclub.com/](http://www.conquerclub.com/)

~~~
DrewRWx
I have a couple friend groups that I play Warlight [0] with. It can be a slow,
massive multi-day game down to a fast paced 2-on-2 "realtime" game.

[0]: [http://www.warlight.net/](http://www.warlight.net/)

------
bhickey
Back in 2009 I was playing a game with Brian Ecton. My Germany was on the
decline -- I'd played the preceding game with the Austrian player and the
tournament director erred and put us next to each other again. It was my turn
to read the orders and Brian stepped out for a smoke. When I got to Brian's
England, I intentionally misread his orders and put his army into disarray. He
was a bit cross when he returned to the table.

[http://www.world-diplomacy-
database.com/php/results/tourname...](http://www.world-diplomacy-
database.com/php/results/tournament_board.php?id_tournament=1245&id_round=2&id_board=4)

~~~
jkdearden
Do you recall what the criteria were for the awards in the bottom-right of
that page? I'm especially curious what one would have to do to merit the title
of 'Kissing Pigs' or 'Golden Pickle'.

~~~
bhickey
I'll write to Conrad (the tournament director) and see if he can recall.

Edit: 'Drunk' was almost certainly meant literally. 'Golden Pickle' was
awarded to Frank who had traveled from the Netherlands. I believe the criteria
was "furthest distance traveled".

------
nmkn
The Resistance is a great bluffing and lying game. I don't think it's enough
to lose friends because each game doesn't last very long (roughly 20 min.), so
it gives other people a chance to exact revenge or screw other people over in
future rounds. However, the length of each game can go up dramatically with
arguing and bickering, thus the possibility of ruined friendships.

~~~
jboggan
I introduced this to my friends and it proved very popular at first and then .
. . very controversial. If you've played with 9-10 players several times you
know how insanely difficult it is for the Resistance to actually win. But one
round the Resistance won, and the Spies were immediately yelling and
screaming. It turned out that one of the chosen Spies (not his first game but
his first as a Spy) had decided that working for a totalitarian regime was
immoral and that it was unethical to "spy" even though that was his assigned
role in the game. Thus he passed the mission for the Resistance every time,
not out of a spirit of trolling but out of sincere moral belief - and he
indicated that he would always cooperate with the "good guys" no matter what
card he drew. The rest of the players were angry, Godwin's Law was invoked in
record time, and we never invited him back for game night.

~~~
teddyh
Sound like a good reason to punish and ostracize the most religiously ethical
people. I hope this was your goal.

~~~
Anderkent
Sounds like a good reason to not play with people who don't want to play the
game for their team.

Seriously, if you can't tell the difference between spying in real life, and
spying in a game, you're not the most 'ethical' person, you're the most
confused person.

------
msluyter
I'd argue that Diplomacy is only a game for "nerds" in a rather peculiar
sense. The people who are really good at it are those that are capable of
lying/acting convincingly. Face to face, that's quite difficult and falls
outside of the skill set of the classic nerd. Online games are another matter.
Here, I think long range analysis combined with good writing skills matter
more, although the social elements are still in play.

~~~
phillmv
We can split hairs over the different kinds of nerds, but I'm interested in
how you would describe a group of people who sit in a room for 8 hours in a
row while roleplaying foreign affairs on a fin-de-siècle map of Europe ;).

~~~
pyrocat
Political science students?

~~~
msellout
We played Diplomacy for extra credit in one of my International Affairs
classes at Georgia Tech.

------
pauleastlund
Playing weekly or semi-weekly is the way to go for Diplomacy. Setting aside a
full day for it and getting a full complement is too tough.

We played a game of this in the Google NY office this way. It was glorious for
a bit -- intrigue upon intrigue upon intrigue. A week between turns really
gives you a ton of time to stew over your plans. It got pretty serious; I
remember having to call a cubemate (who wasn't part of the game) after I'd
left the office and ask him to destroy a planning map I'd realized I'd
accidentally left out.

Alas, the whole thing ended in acrimony. One guy who was getting trounced
announced he was quitting the game -- in which case his pieces just passively
stand their ground and are slowly overtaken -- but then changed his mind and
submitted moves the next round after all. Another player called that out as
bullshit (and let's be honest, it was kind of bullshit, but it was a friendly
game and the rest of us were prepared to let it slide.) It turned into an
irate shouting match in the office and the group abandoning the game halfway
through. I believe there are still people in the Google NY office that avoid
each other in hallways on account of that game.

~~~
vonzeppelin
I would argue that tricking people into thinking you were doing nothing is
what Diplomacy is all about.

------
kaeluka
In my second-to-last year at University, eight others and me implemented
Diplomacy as a "scalable web service" in Erlang. The game is hilariously
brutal; I've vowed to never play it with my girlfriend. I played it on the web
for a while after, but stopped playing, the complete lack of empathy in this
game was too much ;) Maybe I should try it again some time.

You can find some documentation here, we were the "Erlang Solutions" project:

[https://www.it.uu.se/edu/course/homepage/projektDV/ht11](https://www.it.uu.se/edu/course/homepage/projektDV/ht11)

The code is on github: [https://github.com/treacheroustalks/Treacherous-
Talks](https://github.com/treacheroustalks/Treacherous-Talks)

------
bitsweet
I never played but want too. If you live near SF and want to give diplomacy a
go with a few fellow hackers that don't know each other this Friday evening
(the 20th), email me (address in bio) first come first serve - I'll host an
event in our office (right off 16th Bart station in Mission). Once we get a
small group we can coordinate logistics over email.

------
barbs
What an excellent article. I think this needs a documentary, in the style of
Wordplay[1] and King of Kong[2].

[1][http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wordplay_(film)](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wordplay_\(film\))

[2][http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_of_kong](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_of_kong)

~~~
prawks
Agreed, it sounds like this game breeds interesting stories.

------
mathattack
We played this a lot when I was younger. The biggest challenge for us was
patience. The friend who was the best at it ultimately wound up a tenured
political science faculty member in the DC area. Go figure.

------
swombat
I learned a lot of my people skills from Diplomacy. It also helped me work out
a number of trust issues.

Before someone gets worried about the first statement, it does not mean that I
am the kind of person who will betray someone - in fact, all my friends will
testify that I am unreasonably loyal even under difficult circumstances. What
it does mean is that after playing Diplomacy, I became much more self-aware
about what I was doing to build friendships and/or relationships, and what
others were doing, and also much more flexible at considering things from
other people's point of view and therefore constructing deals that actually
work for all parties.

------
angersock
For a really long running game that is _guaranteed_ to lose you friends, try
Riskopoly (
[http://www.gilwood.org/riskopoly.htm](http://www.gilwood.org/riskopoly.htm)
).

I describe it as Risk with a military-industrial complex.

~~~
Igglyboo
Risk-tego is another, it's just like risk but every time you attack a
territory you play a game of stratego to determine the outcome.

~~~
rcthompson
How about Risk-tego-poly?

------
kqr2
The ultimate test of endurance is probably _The Campaign For North Africa_
game with a listed play time of 1200 _Hours_ with 10 people.

[http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/4815/the-campaign-for-
nor...](http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/4815/the-campaign-for-north-africa)

~~~
pradn
That's insane. I wonder how many matches have been completed of this game.

~~~
wombatpm
Two more than a world series in
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statis_Pro_Baseball](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statis_Pro_Baseball)
Statis Pro Baseball?

------
cfontes
Very interesting.

But I hate this kind of writing.

It's way to long and runs in circles to many times for my taste.

~~~
prawn
I have to agree. I'm sure it's great for those with the time, but there was
nothing for those wishing to skim through and get an idea of what the
game/story is about. I'm interested in this sort of game, but I already have a
lot of long-form in my "To Read" bookmark folder, and a stack of books beside
the bed as it is.

~~~
barbs
An ironically lengthy way of saying "tl;dr".

~~~
prawn
Except that if anyone sees this longer explanation, they can realise there are
often ways to improve the way they've presented their story and create
something to that appeals to a broader range of people.

Things like bullet points, pullquotes, images and so on are a bit like an
inline TL;DR.

------
willismichael
I have to put in a plug for Scott Nesin's
[http://gamesbyemail.com](http://gamesbyemail.com), which has an
implementation of Diplomacy, as well as several other great games.

------
marmarlade
Nice!

Has anyone here played War on Terror
[http://www.waronterrortheboardgame.com/](http://www.waronterrortheboardgame.com/)?
Think Risk, but with an Axis of Evil, Terrorists, and a balaclava (not
baclava, unfortunately) included in the game pack.

It was also branded criminal by the police - couldn't ask for better
promotion: [http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/war-on-terror-
boa...](http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/war-on-terror-boardgame-
branded-criminal-by-police-889287.html)

------
argc
I am always looking for people to play Diplomacy and none of my friends are
interested. I think I need new friends.

~~~
IvyMike
Then when you find new friends, you can play a game... and you will need new
friends again.

~~~
Alex3917
There's no such thing as friends, only people you haven't yet played diplomacy
with.

~~~
swombat
Counter: There is not such things as enemies... only people you haven't played
Diplomacy with.

------
kosei
We never got into it at my office, but there's another game that offers
similar tactics and is playable online, called Neptune's Pride[0]. It offers
similar amounts of negotiation (and backstabbing), and we found that the game
grew so contentious that people legitimately lost trust with each other in the
office. Could be that we're just a sensitive bunch, but it was surely an
interesting dynamic change.

[0]: [http://np.ironhelmet.com/](http://np.ironhelmet.com/)

~~~
PhineasRex
Be warned: Neptune's Pride has the fatal flaw (or killer feature, depending on
who you ask) of occurring in real time. Later in the game, as it speeds up,
players who log in more often gain a tactical advantage.

~~~
jamie_ca
There's a sequel out now, at
[http://triton.ironhelmet.com](http://triton.ironhelmet.com) that has the
option of progressing time in steps once everyone confirms orders.

So you can set it to 12h steps, get payday every 2 steps, or whatever you feel
like. With the right settings, if everyone is active during the day you can
get maybe 4 or 5 steps complete and then nothing happening over the weekend.

~~~
kosei
Yep - this is what we ended up playing. Though we did just do it time-based,
which also created a bit of a hit on productivity :-)

------
ph0rque
So, here's a crazy idea: create an AI to play as one of the players in the
web/mobile version of the game. It's a modified Turing test.

~~~
tempestn
Cool idea. I'd actually really like to see that. You could start by
programming it for gunboard (no-press) games, then expand from there to adding
the communication elements. (Which, while challenging, would be much easier
than a standard Turing Test, since the scope is limited. Plus, even if a
potential ally is able to identify the computer player, they may very well
still be willing to ally with it.

~~~
Anderkent
There are some diplomacy AIs - I worked on a simple one as a project in
college. There's a standard for communication and a range of bots already
implemented. See the mailing list at
[https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/dipai/info](https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/dipai/info)

------
LandoCalrissian
We play Diplomacy at our office and I jokingly refer to it as "team building".
All said everyone has a pretty good time and can recognize it's a game. We
play one move a day and games typically last around a month. I have been
certainly been hurt by broken alliances, but I think it's a great character
building experience to go trough.

All is fair in diplomacy.

------
gknoy
Diplomacy. It's interesting that the movement (and support) mechanics are
easy, it's the social aspects that are hard.

~~~
walshemj
The battle star galactic board game is another game where the social side is
the important bit basically one or more of the payers are secretly cylons and
have to subtly sabotage the game so that the human side loses.

The fun thing is part way through the game you can suddenly find that you are
a cylon and have to switch sides.

The D6 generation is a good podcast that covers a lot of games both board and
minatures

~~~
Vektorweg
Or The Resistance, where some hidden spies try to fail the missions. You have
to choose the team members for a mission but you don't know the spies ...
unless you are the spy.

------
dugmartin
I played quite a bit in college with my friends. The most fun game I ever had
was when I allied with the group's worst backstabber for the entire game and
we won. The suspense every turn was awesome and the disbelief at the end was
even better.

------
cbr
Here are the maps from the silliest game of diplomacy I ever played:
[http://www.jefftk.com/p/dip-space-nine](http://www.jefftk.com/p/dip-space-
nine)

There are many rule variants, but Star Trek is just too much.

------
adestefan
I used to play about 10 years ago via email with a small group of rotating
players. It was always a frustrating, but enjoyable experience. Maybe I'll
play again someday.

------
nnnnni
I played Diplomacy once. I ended up foiling a veteran player's plan to screw
me over at the end, leading to a two-way tie between us. It was great!

------
pnathan
This sounds fascinating and the kind of game I'd get a rush from. Is there a
popular forum to find other face to face players?

~~~
nnnnni
Yes! [http://www.webdiplomacy.net](http://www.webdiplomacy.net)

------
Tomte
I played one game of Diplomacy by email.

In preparation for that I read everything I found about (advanced) strategy,
all the possibilities that are open to the different countries and so on.

In the end I was probably the only English player who never managed to leave
his island...

After that I was so terribly frustrated that I never tried another game.

~~~
tempestn
Sometimes it happens. If France and Germany decide come hell or high water
they're going to take you out - maybe they've even allied in previous games,
so you never had a chance - there really isn't a whole lot you can do (unless
you're really lucky with all the other powers). Even so you're not likely to
win, but might eek out part of a tie.

~~~
baking
When you tell your neighbors that it is your first time, they will gut you
ever so quickly. New players are usually just too unpredictable and unreliable
to trust. Best you can hope for is to promise to be someone's slave and do
exactly what they say so maybe you can avoid being the first one eliminated.

~~~
tempestn
Or don't tell them it's your first time! :) Even if you're playing in the
newbies section online, you could say you've played some FTF games, or email
games on a different server or whatever. Once you figure out what power you
are, just read the Diplomatic Pouch openings article for that power, and you
can fake experience pretty well.

IMO you want to come off as knowledgeable but not _too_ experienced anyway.
People are looking for allies who are going to be reliable (and communicate
well!), but who won't be too tough to run over when the time comes. So that's
what you look like... until you're ready to pull out the knife!

------
Lrigikithumer
Oh man this game looks right up my alley, any idea how a man on the otherside
of the world could play? I don't like the idea of playing by email or mail and
I also don't want to ruin any of my friendships

~~~
tempestn
You really should give play by email a chance. It can be great fun. Games
usually take a few months, with turns generally once a week, sometimes every
two weeks. While you could invest more, it certainly doesn't need to take up
more than an hour or so a week of your time. In fact... I may have to see if I
can find a game now. It's been a few years!

~~~
reparadocs
Do you know where I could go to find people who are playing it through email?

~~~
tempestn
I used to play at DipWorld, but it looks like it's a lot less active lately.
It appears that the most active community now is at the Diplomatic Pouch. The
site design leaves something to be desired, but after some clicking around,
this appears to be a decent place for a new player to start:
[http://www.diplom.org/Email/](http://www.diplom.org/Email/)

------
georgeecollins
I love Diplomacy and have played it forever, in person, by email, even as kid
by snail mail. There is a great variant called 1900 by Baron VonPowell that is
actually better. But it is my all time favorite game.

------
ZoFreX
If you want a video game that engenders the same kind of backstabbing, tension
and mistrust, you might want to give Defcon a go. It's nerve-wracking.

------
jmspring
Played many years of it with friends... The before D&D claim is dubious on the
basis of pooularity.

I've been a big friend of Avalon Hill titles over the years.

~~~
Sniffnoy
Regardless, the roots of D&D can be traced back to Diplomacy; Jimmy Maher
talks about it here: [http://www.filfre.net/2011/07/dungeons-and-
dragons/](http://www.filfre.net/2011/07/dungeons-and-dragons/)

------
GotAnyMegadeth
I have never played this, it sounds great.

If you are playing over email and one person becomes unresponsive, what is the
standard thing to do?

~~~
euccastro
There are established deadlines for submitting orders. When someone misses it,
one of the following things happens (which one happens is agreed upon before
the game starts):

\- units for which orders haven't been submitted just hold still, or

\- whenever anyone's orders are missing after the deadline, the game gets
paused and there is an open call for replacement players in a mailing list.

------
aberrant
Each year for the past 3-5 years me and my friends have been getting together
for a weekend to play a few years of WWII. The game that we have been mostly
playing is Columbia Games' Eastfront II, which covers the eastern war with
Germany and Soviet Russia. It's basically a hex-based map with different
terrains, rivers, weather changes, HQ-driven troop mobilization and combat -
the rules are abstract but not overly so to uphold an enjoyable immersion. The
game also employs fog of war with thick wooden standing unit pieces, which
certainly adds to the excitement.

The game is advertised for 2 players, but we went ahead and modded the rules
for 6 players + a referee. We made both sides consist of 3 field commanders
plus a supreme commander. We looked at the map and divided it into 3 parts:
the north, the middle and the south. For each part of the map, a German field
commander and a Soviet counterpart would sit against each other and hold
command of their own area. They saw only units that moved on their map. We
decided that each 4 turns (a turn was a fortnight) the field commanders could
all go have a meeting with their supreme commander, discuss strategy and
synchronize information. We usually set these meetings to last for about 10-15
minutes.

The role of the supreme commander was to dole out repair points plus
reinforcements and to send messages to their field commanders. Each turn the
supreme commander could send a message to all of his subordinates, and each
turn all of his field commanders could send one message to their supreme
commander and one message to their fellow field commander. A message could be
intercepted with a possibility of 1/6\. Intercepting the message meant that
the referee would toss a die and if it turned out one, he would take it to the
enemy supreme commander without the sender knowing about it until the next
meeting.

As an addition, the supreme commander had a map, but he had nothing in it
except his own unit, which was good for moving singular units, sending
paratroops and air strikes. The supreme commander would also get all the dead
units brought out to him when units started dying. You would definitely know
things were bad when infantry that were at the edge of Moscow 3 turns ago (or
so you recall...) were handed to you by the referee!

Last year we upped the ante and tried out EuroFront II by Columbia Games. It
was an epic attempt to play the final year of the war with the whole map of
Europe, the winner being the one who holds the most Victory Cities
(historically notable European cities) in their supply network by May 1945.
With over a dozen players we anticipated problems in our message delivery
system, which mainly consisted of a two guys gathering a bunch of papers from
players and throwing dice for each message per turn per player side.

We opted for an easier solution and I set out to build a simple messaging
system. It was a horrible PHP Slim-based Bootstrap webapp, with business rules
written in postgresql functions and code structure being an implementation of
pasta. I suspected it would be a maintaining nightmare (and it sure was!), but
it worked without a problem during that weekend. Everyone loved it, including
our refs' feet.

This year the game is Eastfront II and the messaging is modified for two
player sides. We will also allow messages to pass through to their original
recipient even if they are captured. With this we will experiment whether the
turns will become more interesting for the players whose messages are always
captured.

Based on this horrid ad-hoc prototype of mine, I'm currently working on
building a more generic, a rule-based messaging system for our guys.
Definitely more maintainable this time, promise.

Ps. For what it's worth, the ultimate alpha nerd war game seems to be The
Campaign for North Africa. I will invite you to read the description of the
game as described in Board Game Geek [0].

[0] [http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/4815/the-campaign-for-
nor...](http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/4815/the-campaign-for-north-africa)

------
effenponderous
don't promote shit titled like this in Hackr News

------
snake_plissken
Hmm I thought it would have been BattleTech.

------
adamconroy
I would argue that its a geek game, not a nerd game.

Either way I have wasted dozens of hours playing, and it taught me how tedious
other people can be.

------
kriro
Why would you play Diplomacy if you can play Twilight Imperium 3, A Game of
Thrones the Board Game or War of the Ring instead?

Pretty sure us "alpha-nerds" would rather battle it out in fantasy/scifi
settings than with boring old "real world" troops (Here I Stand is excellent
if you want that). All of those games are also a lot better imo.

Always thought Diplomacy was pretty meh :)

~~~
EvanKelly
I can't speak to the other games, but similar to Chess and Go, I love
Diplomacy because there is zero chance involved in the game. Nothing ever
comes down to a dice roll or coin flip.

