Diplomacy Zine -- Chapter Eight EP #274

From: Eric_S_Klien@cup.portal.com

Date: Sat, 04 Jul 1992 21:03:55 +0000

Issue #274 of ELECTRONIC PROTOCOL:

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                     I need quotes, send me some!
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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!

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Chapter Eight
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Table of Contents:

Diplomacy Variant Suggestion by Joel Finkle
Fleet Quiz by Jamie Dreier
A Survey on World Dipcon Rotation by Mark Nelson and Shaun Derrick
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From: jjfink@skcla.monsanto.com (Joel, 708-982-8010, 1825/A-Bsmt)
Subject: e-mail Diplomacy Variant Suggestion

One think missing from pbm diplomacy that is available in face to face
games is the fact that you know who is talking, and even if you don't
overhear, you can usually get the feeling of whether there is cooperation
or not.

One way to add a bit of this is to add a 'tattler' feature to e-mail games,
where a player could ask for post office statistics, to see who has sent
to whom.  It won't necessarily give anything away, but if England sends
Germany five messages, and Germany doesn't send any back, you get an idea
that they're NOT cooperating.

This obviously only works in Gunboat, or messages can be sent directly
to E-mail addresses.

Note that I have not tried this, but it sounds interesting.

Has anyone ever come up with a 'spy' variant that includes intercepting
couriers? :^)

Joel Finkle

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?

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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:

A SURVEY ON WORLD DIPCON ROTATION
                 by Mark Nelson and Shaun Derrick

(Editor:  Between now and World DipCon IV in Birmingham, England in
1994, the international hobby will embark upon a discussion of how
the World DipCon concept should be handled in the future.  The WDC
has now completed its trial run, with WDC I in 1988 held in
Birmingham, England, WDC II in 1990 in Chapel Hill, North Carolina,
and WDC III this past January in Canberra, Australia.  The following
are two sets of ideas concerning the rotation system to be used in
future years.  Mark Nelson writes about ideas floating around various
places in the hobby, while Shaun gives his own perspective from the
pages of his zine Globetrotter.  Read, and think.)

Mark Nelson:  For some reason, people think that doubling the
frequency of WDC can only work if you increase the number of zones.
I don't see this as being the case, and no one has actually explained
why this should be the case.  It just seems to be taken for granted
as being a good thing.

Pete Sullivan in "C'Est Mag" 104 illustrates this point:  "it would
be prefectly reasonable to have a seperate Franco-phone Europe and
Germanic Europe zone as well, certainly if you're taking hobby
population size into account.  As such, an annual World DipCon is
needed, if only to ensure that everyone gets a go!  My previous
objection, that an annual WDC wouldn't allow the true devotees to go
every time, is probably pretty hollow anyway."

Why should there be two zones for continental Europe?  Why should we
want everyone to have a go?  These questions need to be answered.
Shaun Derrick in "Y Ddraig Goch" 59 goes even further:  "There are
plenty of countries with enough conventions to be able to host WDC.
The odd-numbered years can be staged in Europe, North America or even
one of the developing Diplomacy countries such as South Africa,
Singapore or Hong Kong...  The intermittant years could become
floaters, open to bids at WDC too, or even three years in advance.
Furthermore, four-day conventions must become the norm, as there are
other games in the world besides Diplomacy and trying to find time to
play them is almost impossible when you have four Diplomacy games to
play over a weekend."

To my knowledge, there are currently no players in South Africa and
only a handful of players in Singapore and Hong Kong.  I doubt that
the total number of postal players in Singapore and Hong Kong is in
the double figures.  Of these three countries, none has run a
Diplomacy event.  Are we seriously suggesting these sites as possible
WDC sites?  The final nail in the coffin comes from "Victoriana" 47,
where Daniel Jew (one of the few Singaporean players) writes "I don't
think that there is what you call a 'Dip Hobby' here.  I would be
very surprised if any of these countries is able to run a WDC before
2005.  Similarly, there are not as many countries as Shaun suggests
which have experience in running a large Diplomacy Con.

The idea of bidding for the right to run WDC is an excellent one, and
one I have suggested on several occasions.  I would go further than
Shaun and say that all WDC sites should be selected by bidding.  It
would be a straightfoward fight between any site in the right zone
that wants to host WDC.  This would eliminate most of the problems
effecting WDC site selection.  So, when WDC goes to North America,
other sites besides the DipCon site could bid to run WDC.  Finally, I
agree that four-day cons should be the norm, not to give people the
chance to play more games but the chance to meet more people - though
these are to some extent synonymous activities.

More discussions of a new zonal system come from "C'est Mag" 106,
from Pete Sullivan:  "My own ideas on the World DipCon rotation are
crystalizing to:

Zone A  British Isles        1994, 2000, etc.
Zone B  Francophonic Europe  1995, 2001, etc.
Zone C  North America        1996, 2002, etc.
Zone D  Germanic Europe      1997, 2003, etc.
Zone E  Australasia          1998, 2004, etc.
Zone F  Rest of the World    1999, 2005, etc.

I am aware this means that there are three zones (partially) in the
E.E.C., but these are very much national/linguistic hobbies rather
than a "European" one at the moment, and I doubt that this will
change much.  Furthermore, they probably each have a hobby population
at least as large as North America - this is certainly true of the
British Isles."

There are good reasons why there should be seperate UK and
Continental Europe zones.  The British Hobby is probably the largest
Diplomacy hobby in the world; the British Hobby has wide
international links (whilst the seperate European communities don't)
and the two areas share little common hobby-wise other than
geography.  Indeed, if you want to reduce the number of zones by
teaming up two potential zones into one it would arguably make more
sense to team up the Continent with North America!

More seriously, it is time to dismiss Pete Sullivan's scheme.  I see
no reason why we need to have two continental European zones.  These
postal Diplomacy hobbies are very small, and have very little contact
with the rest of the world.  I see no reason why they should not be
combined into one zone.  Such a setup would encourage them to expand
their horizons.  Should every seperate language-group have its own
zone?  If we are to include a French zone, why not a Swedish zone?

Similarly, I do not see a reason for setting up a "Rest of the World"
zone.  Just exactly where is the con going to be in 1999?  Giving the
planning and preparation that is required to organize any con, this
isn't giving any emerging new Dip community much time to get started
and moving.

No, if additional zones are required then they can be added as
appropriate.  Personally, I see no reason for having more than five
zones regardless of the number of countries wanting to run WDC, and
ideally I would like the number to be four at most.  Zones should be
kept large, so that WDC moves around the world at a reasonable pace.
Consider the problem of Scandinavia, where towards the end of the
century they might press to run a WDC.  Fair enough - they can run it
when it is in the European Zone.

My own preference is for a four-zone format:  UK, North America,
Continental Europe, Australasia.  Note this avoids having successive
WDCs in Europe.  I consider this to be desirable so as to maximize
overseas attendance.  US fans will probably not want to go to
successive WDCs held in Europe, and will be faced with the choice of
going to one or the other.  Seperate them by a third WDC and there is
a greater attraction to going to both.  Given the greater costs of
traveling to Australasia, I wonder about having a blank year before
any WDC held there so that fans can save up.

Shaun Derrick:  With WDC III having now passed, we have over two
years before the next World Diplomacy Championship here in the UK.
In the meantime, it is imperative that the future of WDC be thrashed
out amongst the national hobbies of the world.  We all need a clear
idea of what is going to happen, otherwise we could get "rebel" WDCs
all over the world, all purporting to be the "official" event.  This
would do no more than damage irrevocably the strides we have made in
bringing the Diplomacy hobbies of the world together.  I would appeal
to all parties involved, in particular convention organizers, to put
forward their ideas and ensure that World DipCon will be the most
prestigious event in the International Diplomacy Hobby.

The following suggestions are my own personal ideas for WDC.  I have
attended all three previous WDCs, met many people from a number of
different nations, and believe that I have a broad idea of how "The
World" wants WDC to be organized.  Clearly the main problem seems to
be deciding on the venues after 1994 - there are now a number of
countries which could successfully stage WDC (UK, USA, Canada,
Australia, France and Austria.)  I have included the latter two as
these hobbies are well-organized but do not have large postal
hobbies, relying on their prolific convention organizers to maintain
popularity.

Holland, Germany and New Zealand are potential candidates, though
their hobbies are rather small and, in the case of Germany, the hobby
is certainly not Diplomacy-oriented.  So, we need an annual
convention, not biannual as at present!  This seems more acceptable
to most players I meet, contrary to what the ManorCon committee or
some American convention organizers would have you believe.

If we are to have an annual event we need to establish a rotation
system to ensure fair distribution of the event.  The critical
question is:  How do we decide?

Well, I believe the following rota should be acceptable to the vast
majority of Diplomacy players worldwide:

1. UK/Ireland
2. USA/Canada
3. Europe
4. Oceania
5. "Floating Year"

The idea of the floating year is to enable a country not part of the
other four groups to be able to "bid" for WDC, or for a country with
a special reason for wanting to hold WDC (e.g. Austria wishes to hold
WDC in 1996 as it is their millenium year.)  The decision on where
the floating convention will be held needs to be ascertained at least
two years in advance.  It should also be possible to trade-off your
allotted year with other hobby populations.  So, if the UK organizers
want to run it one particular year they could trade with the North
Americans, and so forth.  Bids for the floating year should be
receied as soon as possible, and they can come from any country, even
those already in one of the other four groups, though I dout that one
national hobby can support two successive WDCs.

Whom do the bids go to, you may ask?  Well, they can go to any zine
editors that have an influential part to play in their nation's hobby
- obviously, if you want to hold WDC you need to publicize your bid
as widely as possible.  As this floating year is every five years,
there is plenty of time for a consensus of opinion to polarize into
one venue, though a final decision should be made in the USA/Canada
convention if popular opinion for a particular venue is a foregone
conclusion, or if there has been only one bid, and this is generally
acceptable.  Obviously there must be a representative from each of
the bidding countries to put their case forward and a vote carried
out amongst all the delegates at the relevant WDC - one proviso is
that the hosting nation at which the vote takes place cannot be one
of the bidding nations.  The votes could be gathered by enclosing a
voting form in which the programme booklet, and, once completed,
handed to an organizer of the convention, or a nominated official.
Of course there should be a meeting at some stage of the convention
to allow bidders to put forward their "manifesto".

The final decision on venue within each group must be decided
internally, although I can foresee problems within Europe.  I would
hope that all the potential European hosts can decide on the venue
amongst themselves.  In fact, I have a strong preference for the
floaing year to be awarded to Europe more times than not, although
there may be opposition from the USA/Canada group.

My rota for the remainder of this century is thus:

1994  UK (already assigned to ManorCon)
1995  USA/Canada
1996  Austria
1997  Australia
1998  France?
1999  UK
2000  USA/Canada

As mentioned before, Austria wants WDC in 1996 due to it being their
millenimum; France in 1998 as they have the strongest case for
holding WDC out of the remainer of the world's hobbies.

Mark Nelson (21 Cecil Mount, Armley, Leeds, W. Riding, LS12 2AP,
England) is International Editor for Diplomacy World.  Shaun Derrick
(313 Woodway Lane, Walsgrave, Coventry CV2 2AP, England) is a three-
time World DipCon attendee and publisher of Globetrotter.

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.

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