Diplomacy Zine -- Chapter Eight EP #275 From: Eric_S_Klien@cup.portal.com Date: Sat, 18 Jul 1992 23:56:12 +0000 Issue #275 of ELECTRONIC PROTOCOL: ************************************************************************* Mommy, Mommy... Can I brush my teeth? Yes, now shut up and get the jar! ************************************************************************* Chapter One contains: BAGHDAD, BLITZKRIEG II, KING'S GAMBIT, PASSCHENDAELE, DRAGONS, BLACK OCTOBER, OPERATION DESERT STORM, THE SOMME And is published by uunet!cti1!rlister or rlister@cti.com/Russ Lister Chapter Two contains: BATAAN, BOADICEA, CONAN, CROATIA, CUBIT, DAGGER, DIEN, DRAM, EMU, EYLAU, FONTENOY, GIGGLES, HASTINGS, IONA, KHAFJI, MARENGO, OSIJEK, PARIS, PORTNOY, QUEBEC, TIBERIUS, VEGA And is published by loeb@geocub.greco-prog.fr/Daniel E. Loeb Chapter Three contains: SQUALANE, BRUSILOV OFFENSIVE II, CULLODEN, GANDALF'S REVENGE, GOODBYE BLUE SKY, MASTERS OF DECEIT, PANDORA, NOW AND ZEN And is published by mad-2@kub.nl/Constantijn Wekx Chapter Four contains: DEADLY DAGGERS, MONTREUIL-SUR-MER, FIRE WHEN READY, THUNDERDOME, And needs a publisher. Chapter Five contains: YALTA And needs a publisher. Chapter Six contains: BERLIN WALL, HIROSHIMA, GENGHIS KHAN, SEA LION And is published by barry@brahms.udel.edu/Barry Fausnaugh. Chapter Seven contains: RIYADH'S RECKONING And needs a publisher. Chapter Eight contains: TIBERIUS, BETELGEUSE, IRON CROSS, GUERNICA, TEUNISGEK, WOLF BLITZER, THE COMMANDERS, THE SUTHERLAND CONFLICT, NOW AND ZEN, TRUST ME! ------------- Chapter Eight ------------- Table of Contents: The Encylopedia of Postal Diplomacy Zines Fleet Quiz by Jamie Dreier Letter Passing: Cause For Hanging? by Mark Fassio Don Diplomacy A Brief History of The Hobby (1963-1974) A tale of the long forgotten good ol'e days of postal Diplomacy ---- THE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF POSTAL DIPLOMACY ZINES It's been over a year in the works, and the Encyclopedia of Postal Diplomacy Zines is almost ready for distribution! This publication lists every North American postal Diplomacy zine ever published since the hobby's founding in 1963 and has entries describing over 800 zines. This Encyclopedia is the product of dozens of hobbyists' contributions in addition to a visit by the editor to the famed "Hoosier Archives" in Indianapolis, Indiana! Other features include: Over 800 postal Diplomacy zines listed. An index referencing over 500 hobbyists names over the years. Sidebars describing various aspects of the hobby. 115 pages; full faced, laser printed, spiral bound. The following is a sample of a typical entry in the Encyclopedia: BLACK FROG Jack H. Masters October 1979 Valencia, CA LKI: #60 October 16, 1982 A digest-size zine which quickly became immensely popular in the hobby as a literary zine, finishing first in the 1981 Runestone Poll. The publisher's fall from grace was just as precipitous; it was discovered he plagiarized a famous author's work and passed it off as his own in his zine. Needless to say, the zine's days were numbered after that revelation. Jack ran his Diplomacy games in a seperate publication, East of Eden. Price? Only $9.10 for the actual publication, plus $2.90 for first class postage to come to a total price of $12.00. (Canada: US$12 - overseas price: US$20) The publication will be ready for distribution by July 31, 1992 so if you'd like to order early, send $12 to: Encyclopedia of Postal Diplomacy Zines c/o Jim Meinel 2801 Pelican Drive Anchorage, Alaska 99515 (907) 243-8337 Home I am running the following quiz one more time before I hand out the prize: From: Jamie Dreier <PL436000@brownvm.brown.edu> ***FLEET QUIZ*** Here is a little quiz about the topology of fleet moves. Try to answer the questions without looking at a map. They range from very easy to quite difficult. Knights on the Rim DIPLOMACY's inventor tried to set up the size of the board, its "saturation" with pieces, and the move-power of individual pieces, so that the game would approximate chess in all those features. Of course, the pieces move more like kings than like any other piece. But fleets have a strange sort of move-power, so one might think of them (VERY roughly) as knights. All woodpushers know that a knight on the "rim" (edge of the board) loses a great deal of its power, since the number of squares it controls from there is small. There are spots on the Diplomacy board from which fleets control very little territory. 1. Which spaces have the fewest "fleet-like" neighbors? A space has n fleet-like neighbors if it can be occupied by a fleet and that fleet has a choice of n spaces to (try to) occupy on its move. (I will count the space it occupies as one of the spaces to which it can move, since it can hold.) 2. Define a "second order fleet-like neighbor" as a space to which a fleet can move in TWO moves. Thus, Mar is a second order fleet-like neighbor of WestMed. Which spaces have the fewest second order fleet-like neighbors? (Again, include HOLD orders in your calculations.) 3. Which spaces share the dubious second place distinction for fewest second order fleet-like neighbors? Air Lift 4. Suppose at the start of the game, all players cooperated to move some given army anywhere it wanted to go. Which army/destination would take the largest number of moves? (This looks like an army question, but of course it's at least as much a fleet question.) Unanswerable Fire 5. An army occupies space X, and a fleet occupies Y (count different coasts as different Y's). The army can attack the fleet, but for the fleet to attack the army would require n moves. For which X and Y is n largest? *********************************************************************** Whoever wins this quiz is entitled to a free one year subscription to the postal zine of their choice. If there is more than one winner, I will roll dice to determine the prize winner. *********************************************************************** The following was taken from Diplomacy World #66: LETTER PASSING: CAUSE FOR HANGING? By Mark Fassio For those of you who have been circling some distant planet since the advent of postal Diplomacy (or for those who live in California - same thing) "letter passing" is the art(?) of sending one person's letter, meant for your eyes, to someone else. (Usually the other person is the one mentioned in the letter to you.) The tactic of letter passing invokes heady debates on both sides of the fence as to its ethical employment in actual game situations. If we can make a relatively safe assumption, most Dip players don't like to think of themselves as a schizophrenic bunch. They look on letter-passers as the pariahs of the hobby; nothing more than greedy opportunists who compromise a trust between two correspondents. This attitude conjures up the old "gentlemen don't read other gentlemen's mail" theme that was prevelant around the turn of the century. However, the people who condemn the intrigues of letter-passing are the same pirannahs who love the game for all its attendant lying, scheming, backstabbing, and other such similar rot! You figure the math... On the opposite side, causal (or hardcore) letter-passers shrug off such monickers, saying that the tactic is merely one extra weapon in the arsenal of a good play-by-mail Dip player. What are the advantages and disadvantages of such a tactic? The obvious advantage is in gaining the trust of the person you send the letter to. Let's say Turkey sends a Winter 1900 letter to Russia which contains a letter from England. The Englishman mentions how nice it would be for Turkey to join him in a quick carve-up of Russia! Well... it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure who Russia is going to look favorably upon (especially if the Spring 1901 move is correctly predicted!) This has enormous potential in our Turkish example. Having gained the trust of the Czar, he can string him along, feeding him both truths and fibs (i.e. the name of the game) and chop him at the knees at an opportune time. This chop will be easier than if there had been mistrust from Russia in the beginning. For gaining an immense psychological advantage with a neighbor, a passed letter ranks near the top for best-used tactics. Another advantage of letter-passing is that you can "play" someone along, especially if you suspect (or know) him/her to be a letter- passer. What better way to convey false information as near-truth than if someone else (the passer) blabs something "personal" to your intended target? I usually send some identical tidbit to two players in opposite alliances on the board. One of those players (or someone they pass the info along to) helps perpetuate the (false) info, making the hit much more effective when it does occur - usally not when they both repeat and/or pass along my data. Now, to the main disadvantage of letter passing. As I stated earlier, a lot of players see letter-passers as "lower than whale feces" on the Scale of Evolution. Using the schizophrenic association mentioned above, they see nothing wrong with doing every other trick except unleashing a Pandora's Box of letter-passings per game. I cede them this point; after all, the game would rapidly degenerate into a silly exercise if everyone began passing letters for "effect", and then, later, for "payback" to the original letter- passer. No communication would be sacrosanct, and it would create a vertiable psychotic's black press/gunboat environment... Blah, the quantity squared. What is the optimum style for letter-passing, then? For some, there will never be a good reason to pass along a letter. For others, it's so common that they don't give the matter a second thought. Both viewpoints, in my opinion, are misguided and should be rethought. A letter-passing episode, done at the right moment, for the right reason, can be a gamedeciding action. Let's consider you and another person are in a semi-friendly "alliance of convenience" and are rolling up the board. If you two haven't made some blood-brother vow of alliance in 1900 for the duration, you can imagine the tense paranoia that arises as you both approach 11, 12, 13 centers. Is the guy gonna stab me? Then, bingo - player X sends you this guy's proposal to ditch you like a bad blind date so that he can go solo. You decide to show your "partner" the error of his treachery. The rest of the board now has a reprieve; new alliances can possibly be undertaken; and people can make quite a few new moves secure in the knowledge that you, the recipient of the passed letter, have your "trust meter" regarding your former ally now set at "zero". One passed letter, at the right time, is all it takes. The true wizened Diplomacy sage knows from experience just when the right time is. The other side of the coin is that perpetual letter-passsing is Bad Karma. In such a small hobby as ours, even a secret letter-pass may be revealed during the course of a game, or in future meetings. If a person gets a reputation as a "letter-passer" many people will forever equate the guy with "check forger", "wife beater" or even (shudder) "Democrat"! And despite the avowed goal of all of us to play each game new, with no cross-game ties to previous matches and people, we all know that personalities drive our negotiations to a very great extent. If you don't appreciate letter-passing, what's the first thought you'll have if you're adjacent to a known, perpetual letter-passer and it's Winter 1900? I rest my case. It will be Ostracism City for that player, and I say "bully" for it. By now you should know that I, unlike others, admit to be schizophrenic when it comes to letter-passing. I frown on it when it's done routinely, because it cheapens the game and brings bad reputations on both the passer and original author in most cases. However, when done judiciously and with just the right sense of timing, I acept the tactic as a normal game action. I admit to passing about 5 or 6 letters myself since 1976, and I am considered neither a Dip Hall of Famer nor a candidate for effigy or Mafia assassination. Did the passed letters impact the games in any way? In one match, absolutely; in the remaining games, not a whit. But that's true of all the tactics you have available as a master gamesman. Like Kenny Rogers sang in "The Gambler": you got to know when to hold'em and know when to fold'em. Don't reject any tactic until you've tried it (except blatantly illegal or unethical ones, naturally.) Next article: Forgery - The Overlooked Art. (Nah, just kidding!) >Mark Fassio (CAD-B, Unit 26708 Box 5265, APO AE 09235) is an Air Force Detachment Commander in Berlin, Germany, and has been playing Diplomacy since 1976, mostly in the zines Terran and Europa Express. From: amt5man@SUN.LEEDS.AC.UK ========================================================================= DON DIPLOMACY DON DIPLOMACY DON DIPLOMACY DON DIPLOMACY Designed by Adrian and Paul Appleyard Originally printed in their Australian Zine: Popular Cutlery 6 (June 1992) ========================================================================== (1) The rules of Diplomaacy apply except where amended below. (2) A player has the option of playing the GREASING TRAIN manouver and the LATEX FIST manouver on ANY ONE UNIT per year. eg A player uses GREASING TRAIN in Spring to move A(Ank)-Bul. He/she may not use GEASING TRAIN in Autumn, but uses LATEX FIST on F(Aegean) to take Greece. (3) GREASING TRAIN manouver. A player's unit may move two places. This applies only to movement, not to attacking, i.e it does not have the power of two units in attack. (4) LATEX FIST: When this power is bestowed upon a unit, it becomes unstoppable in attack, and immobable in holding. The obvious exceptions is if a LATEX FIST empowered unit attacks another LATEX FIST empowered unit that is holding, even if it has support in attack it will fail. ======================================================================== Comments by Mark Nelson <amt5man@sun.ecusun.leeds.ac.uk> (1) The name of the variant and the powers refer to events which happened at the NSW Dip Championships in 1992. (2) The basic idea behind this variant (special powers) has been used many times in dip variants and has been independantly invented on at least four occasions. The best known design using this concept is the VAIN RATS series of variants, originally written by Steve Doubleday and Richard Sharp in 1978 and updated on many occasions and by many designers since then. Retyped for email distribution by Mark Nelson (6th July 1992) ======================================================================== Subject: A Brief History of The Hobby (1963-1974) ((Reprinted from the American zine AREN #40 (February 1974).)) THE HOBBY TO A NOVICE THE HOBBY TO A NOVICE THE HOBBY TO A NOVICE BY EDI BIRSAN BY EDI BIRSAN BY EDI BIRSAN BY EDI BIRSAN It all started in Brooklyn, like most things of value, when John Boardman, a mild mannered physics and science fiction fan started to publish *Graustark*, a zine to run a postal section of diplomacy between several science fiction people who wanted to play. As in science fiction fandom the publishing habit is a highly developed form of expression, it is only natural that they would initiate the first major zines and start press releases; seeing that 99% of the people then involved in the fandom were bent towards writing anyway. With *Graustark* came the idea of a GM who adjudicates the moves and charges a flat fee for his costs. From 1963-1965 the hobby spread through the normal channels of Science Fiction Fandom and pulled in many of their publishers into the production of Diplomacy zines. Starting in the winter of 1965-66 John McCallum began to make the bridge between the then existing Diplomacy world and the large untapped group of Avalon Hill wargamers. This brought in a flood of players that tripled the size of the hobby. Meanwhile the hobby had also made contact with the Bridge groups and along with Science Fiction fans and Wargamers they formed the third group, by background, to enter the hobby. In 1968 the hobby was introduced by England through the publishing of *Albion* by Don Turnbull. Unlike the North American experience the British zines started by first going though the Wargamers and then around 1970-72 making modest contacts with the Science Fiction groups. In 1970, Games Research (the people who manufacture Diplomacy) started to place a flyer in the game listing the various zines that were available around the world. The first response to that flyer was none other than Walter Buchanan who was fascinated by the hobby and determined to form up an archive of all zines with the hope of an eventual book publication on moves etc along the lines of chess development... which he was aquainted with being a chess player for some time before he started Diplomacy. From 1970 on the Hobby began to be subjected to a new kind of novice which came from all walks of life and was not distinguished by any set background such as the wargamers, Bridge and Science Fiction fans. This explosion of people also brought more zines on the scene, to satisfy everyone's desire to play and publish. Unfortunately the explosion also brought a burst of games folding due to publishers dropping out and games ruined or hurt because players dropped out. The size of the hobby was such that the whole structure threatened to come down in chaos if the past methods were left to the individual anarchistic or existential systems. So after numerous failures at forming an organization the IDA: International Diplomacy Association was formed to help provide the needed services and news medium so as to keep the hobby together. And that is about as brief a review of the past as you are going to find. It should be also noted that not a single publication has ever been known to make a profit and at best the attempt with game fees and subscription rates is to break even. ============================================================================ Retyped for email distribution by Mark Nelson on 8th July 1992 <amt5man@sun.ecusun.leeds.ac.uk> Comments: (1) I believe that Don didn't publish the first UK zine until 1969. (2) Take the second to last paragraph with a pinch of salt, Edi was President of the IDA for several years and his views are coloured by this! The IDA did not save the hobby! =========================================================================== ======================================================================== A TALE OF THE LONG FORGOTTEN GOOD OL'E DAYS OF POSTAL DIPLOMACY BY MARK NELSON BY MARK NELSON BY MARK NELSON BY MARK NELSON In the days of old before the 1971 rulebook was written games of diplomacy were played using the 1961 rulebook (subsequent rulebooks, such as the 1966 rulebook, did not change the rules). There were a number of problems with the 1961 rulebook (which is why, of course, it was revised). One rule which was changed was the victory rule, although this was not a problem rule... why it was changed I'm none too sure. Anyway, I hope y'all are sitting comfortable? Then I'll begin. In these far-off days the criteria for victory was "a majority of units on the board in *any* season". This has two ramifications: you can win the game owning fewer than 18 centres (which happened in at least one game) and if you can't build an 18th unit then you don't win the game. In fact one American game in the 1960's finished in a draw because the player on 18 centres couldn't build another unit. This is a tale about game run by Conrad von Metzke in his zine *Costaguanna*. The player of record had reached 18 centres in the previous Winter season but had been unable to build the 18th unit. In the subsequent Spring season he moved his units out of his home centre to enable a build. In the Autumn season he NMRd and a standby was called. In the Winter season all the player had to order was a build and he would win the game! He NMRd again and the standby's orders were used instead. The standby won the game with one build order! A player who only had to order a build to win the game dropped out! This is a unique record. =========================================================================== Rewritten for email distribution by Mark Nelson on 9th July 1992 <amt5man@sun.ecusun.leeds.ac.uk> ========================================================================== Publisher comments: I need scribes to type in articles. I am also interested in people's experiences with scanners. I would like to know what brands of scanners and OCR software are the best. I am also very interested in finding two players for a new 1914 game. ****************************************************************************** To join in the fun, send your name, home address, home and work phone numbers, and country preferences to Eric_S_Klien@cup.portal.com. ****************************************************************************** Up