Who you'll meet across a Diplomacy board: Part 6: Dishonourable Mentions

I thought it might be fun to have a look at some types of player you're likely to come across when playing Diplomacy. Well, OK, it's not all fun in this series... but I'll do my best.

Finally, the people who really shouldn't be playing the way their playing no matter what. Sorry, but none of the people here ought to be playing Diplomacy.

The Davian

Davian behaviour in animals is, basically, necrophilia. Davian behaviour in Dip players isn't quite as strange, but it isn't great, either; it's still flogging a dead horse.

There are times in Dip games where the game is over. Usually there are two sides: sometimes it will be a Grand Alliance stopping a single player from winning; other times there may be two opposing alliances preventing each other from making progress. The key to this situation is that, without someone doing something stupid, the game has ended. These are deadlocked games.

A Davian is a player will who refuse to end the game in a draw. Instead of accepting that result, she will hold out, waiting for someone to do something she shouldn't. It isn't rare, in this situation, for a player to get so bored with nothing happening that they simply leave the game. And this is something like what the Davian is waiting to happen.

It isn't against the rules of Diplomacy but it it an example of terrible play. The problem is that nobody should be losing to anyone else simply because they were bored out of a game.

The Weasel

In a previous post in this series I explained what a Votive is - a player who takes over an abandoned position to help the game move along. A Weasel does the same thing: she jumps into abandoned positions. After that, it's the complete opposite.

Weasels have no desire to play the game well. All they aim to do when they take over these positions is to damage the game they're jumping into... or target one of the players in the game.

Weasels simply do this for the "fun" of it. I dunno, maybe it is fun to them. Simple things and simple minds, after all. For everyone else in the game it is simply about a game being spoiled because of some malicious dickhead.

A Weasel won't be in your game for long, but she will leave her mark, as pathetic as it is.

The Trumpian

OK, I admit: there's going to be a time when the idea of a Trumpian player in Diplomacy won't make any sense. But when I was thinking of a name for this kind of player, it just seemed to fit.

A Trumpian is a bully. I'm not necessarily talking about full on cyber-bullying, although it often does come down to that: personal abuse, racism, sexism, etc. But it can simply be a case of a player bullying her way through the game.

There's something different between being forceful and negotiating from strength, and being aggressive rude and dictatorial. This is what this kind of player does. It takes the benign, if slightly unchivalrous, behaviour of a Mysterion (as seen here) and exaggerates it beyond what is necessary.

A Mysterion will try and get you to act the way she wants - she's a puppet-master. A Trumpian will want to bully you out of the game all together. Unacceptable.

The Cheater

The types of player above won't break site rules, although there's no doubt that they can go that far. We're moving into a different realm, now, right into the players that literally shouldn't be playing in your community: cheats.

I deliberately didn't try to come up with a name for these players because I think to do so would be to somehow lessen the impact they can have on a game. There is never a reason to cheat.

There are different ways players may seek to cheat. In online play the most obvious one is multi-accounting. This is when one player has more than one account in a game, therefore controlling more than one power. This is so basically illegal that I'm not going to say any more.

A second common way to cheat is metagaming. This is, ultimately, bringing something from outside the game into the game so that it affects the way the game plays out. There are a number of categories:

Team play: When two or more players enter a game to play as a team against everyone else. This is often something that has been organised before the game, and it may be that the two simply find themselves in a game together and decide that, having worked well together in the past, they'll work together again, no matter what.
Cross-game play: When two players agree to work together in some way when they're playing in two - or more - games that are running at the same time. It might be as simple as: "If you do this for me in this game, I'll do something for you in that game."
Persistent targeting: When a player, upon finding herself in a game with a certain other player, plays against the other persistently. This may be because she doesn't like them, or as some kind of cross-game revenge.
Linking to actions outside the game: This is usually against the rules when a player takes something that has happened in a game and uses it to affect actions in this game. This isn't simply along the lines of: "She's going to stab you, she always does;" it's more about: "Take a look at what she did in these games." It's making a specific, particular link between games.

There may be other examples of this kind of cheating. Basically, the idea is that each game should, as far as possible, by a single unit itself; it should stand alone. Nothing should affect the game from outside of it.

A third and (for the purposes of this post) final form of cheating I'm going to discuss is when the rules of a specific type of game are broken. This might be by communicating in some way in Gunboat games (where no communication is allowed); revealing your identity in anonymous games, when nobody should know who is playing; that kind of thing. Many sites are likely to say that you shouldn't be communicating outside the game, anyway.

As I say, when it comes down to it, cheating is pointless.

The Embassy

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