The Embassy

Before I move on to look at my suggestion for a scoring system I want to summarise the problems with scoring systems that are out there already.  If we can work out what is wrong with them, we can use this to design a system that might address these problems. When I first started playing on online I remember raising a question: Why are draws scored equally? Why isn't the number of supply centres you hold at the end of the game taken into account? The answer that came back from a site mod was along the lines of the argument I use now.  At the end of a game of Diplomacy you have achieved one of three results: you've won, you've drawn, or you've lost.  If you've won, then you get all the points in the game.  If you've drawn, it doesn't matter what number of SCs you've finished the game on, the result is the same.  If you've lost... well. At the time, that site used a game result system to score games: 12 points for a win 6 points for a 2-wa...

There are, perhaps, three other types of scoring system: Placement or Rank scoring, hybrid systems that seek to combine DSS and SCS, and Tier scoring systems.  I want to have a look at each system. Placement or Rank systems Essentially, these are Supply Centre Scoring systems with the addition of bonus points.  I'm going to have a look at some more regularly used systems.  Again, here is the map I will use as an example: England  - 12 SCs Russia  - 9 SCs Turkey  - 8 SCs Italy  - 5 SCs France ,  Germany   and  Austria-Hungary   were eliminated, with 0 SCs each. C-Diplo In a drawn game points are awarded for: Participating in the game: 1 (for an online tournament, I'd only award this for participating and not surrendering). Each SC held at the end of the game: 1 . The player that 'tops the board' (has the most SCs): 38 pts. The second placed player (second highest number of SCs): 14 pts. The third p...

The thing with tournaments is that a lot of games end in a draw.  This means that DSS systems aren't necessarily going to produce a great result because a lot of players could well finish on the same score.  An alternative to DSS is a  Supply Centre Scoring  (SCS) system. I'm going to use the game above as an example to explain SCS systems.  (The game is from Playdiplomacy and so the colours are different from those I use for my maps.)  The game ended with the following outcome: England - 12 SCs Russia - 9 SCs Turkey - 8 SCs Italy - 5 SCs France , Germany and Austria-Hungary were eliminated, with 0 SCs each. Supply Centre Scoring systems are based on the number of SCs the players owned at the end of the game.  The basic pattern is: A solo results in all the points available.  No other player scores points. A draw will be scored using the number of SCs the players hold at the end of the game.  In the above game, on ...

If we're looking to score Diplomacy games based on the rules of the game, there are just three outcomes: a win, a draw, and a loss.  A scoring system based on these outcomes would therefore be based on whether the game was won, or whether it ended in a draw.  These systems are called Draw Size Scoring systems (DSS). The basic model for DSS systems is: The result is based on how the game ends only. If you win the game outright (solo), you take all the points in the game. If you are part of the draw at the end of the game, you receive the points avaialble in the game divided by the number of players in the draw. If you lose the game, you receive 0 (zero) points. The most basic version of this is the Calhamer Point system, designed by the great and good ABC himself.  If you soloed, you earned a point.  If you drew the game, you scored a number of points based on how many people you drew with.  So a 4-way draw would provide 0.25 points, a 5-way draw 0....

As I mentioned in the first post in this series , if you're playing in a tournament, you're playing a variant of Diplomacy.  This must be kept in mind when we're evaluating scoring systems.  The games are already variants so having them scored just means the variant aspect is increased. However, the scoring system should change the nature of the game as minimally as possible.  Ideally, even in the context of the variant you are playing - whether that variant is that the game is part of a tournament only, or whether it's being played online - the scoring system should try to meet the objectives of Diplomacy, not alter them. Objectives of Diplomacy The objective of the game is to win.  This means owning 18 SCs. If the game is unlikely to end in a solo victory, then the surviving players can end the game in a draw.  This means that players should be looking to survive in most cases, and certainly to be in a position to be part of the draw. Draws Inc...

Tournaments have come to be a big part of Diplomacy, whether face-to-face or online.  If you're running a tournament you need to be able to find a winner, and so a scoring system has to be introduced.  In this series of posts I'm going to look at different types of scoring systems and discuss the pros and cons of each one.  And I'll end the series by discussing my own, as yet, prototype system. The first thing to be aware of is that a scoring system will change the way people play the game.  It has to do.  If you're playing and you need to do well then you need to play to the system.  This means that the way the system affects the way Diplomacy is played. Tournament games are already a variant of Dip.  Ideally, they wouldn't be.  Players would be able to play x  number of games and play them as they would any other game.  In FTF play, you'd expect the game to run until they're finished or time runs out.  Online, there should ...

I've separated this from gamesmanship because it is something different.  However, mind games have the same impact on the Dip community as gamesmanship, for very similar reasons. Mind games are anything that you can do to get under the skin of another player.  They can be irritants, impoliteness or meant to simply build paranoia. Silence Sending messages and getting no response is frustrating.  I know - I send a lot of messages and find it annoying if I'm getting nothing back from someone with whom I'm supposed to be working. Now, what happens when that silence is  deliberate ?  When someone decides that they're not going to answer messages, or keep their answers to a minimum?  Why would they do  that ? Well, it is usually to cause some disruption in your thinking.  If you're concerned that she isn't messaging back, you're going to be concerned about what your plans were going to be. I know at least one player who hates this,...

This is a sticky one, frankly.  If you want to win a game of Diplomacy what isn't allowed?  Some of the stuff that isn't allowed should be obvious and I've discussed much of it in previous posts in this series.  That leaves things that you can do to win that are questionable and, in the final analysis, come down to personal choice. How far are you prepared to go to win at Diplomacy ?  That is probably what defines whether you think something is "gamesmanship" or not, and whether you think it is acceptable. Slow Play Some players in the online game are what I call Pussycats .  They want to play as quickly as possible and they want to move the game on.  Some will hassle through Public Press.  "Has everyone finalised yet?" "Who hasn't finalised?" "Come on - FINALISE!!!" Now this, itself, is something that becomes annoying.  If you join a game with certain deadlines, you need to expect to play to those deadlines.  If you...

Teamplay during an online game is likely to be banned under metagaming rules.  It's clearly unfair if a couple of players enter a game to play together, supporting each other and attacking others, when everyone else in the game is playing as an individual.  Well, I say clearly but that isn't always the case; some people just don't think there's anything wrong with it. However, it is also something that can arise in FTF tournaments and it has often been banned, for obvious reason... again, I'd say obvious reasons. It is (or was) common for a tournament or convention to combine individual competitions with team competitions.  A local club or organisation might have a number of players attend, therefore, and this is often true when there wasn't a team competition, simply because it's nice to go with your mates. It didn't take long for teamplay to be outlawed.  What was happening was that players from the same club would help each other out in ga...

It's difficult in online play to impersonate anyone else.  The websites have power-to-power messaging, and even when you message everyone (known as Public Press on Playdiplomacy) it comes up with your power's name.  But elsewhere, impersonating another player, or even a GM, is possible. Press Press, in Diplomacy, is when players send messages.  When playing on a website you will be able to send messages to players directly.  This isn't really press although a couple of websites count it as this. Usually, press is seen as being messages to be published to all players.  It origninated in postal games; when players submitted orders they would submit press which would be published alongside those orders.  There were three types: white press, grey press and black press. White Press This is press where the player sending it is identified.  In the postal game, each power was issued with a standard ID, or dateline , which might be the name of the p...

The online game is full of aliases.  If you join a website to play Diplomacy then you're asked to provide a username.  There's nothing wrong with that although it does, perhaps, take away something from the community of the Dip hobby. As in most things, there's a history of this in postal Diplomacy and this is usually seen as a way to be anonymous. With online play, however, it may be possible to change your username.  This might be simply because you realised the name you chose was not a good choice.  For instance, a number of players may use a version of their email address which may not be the best idea.  If you come across someone who is an idiot  who thinks it's acceptable to harass players off-site then using your email address could be a mistake. Sometimes it's realising that the name you chose really does you no favours.  I come across this every day at work.  I deal with younger people who don't necessarily think much about what ...

I suppose this could be placed withing the metagaming section because it often takes the form of bringing something from outside the game into the game, but it isn't necessarily restricted to that. Let's start with what bullying is when it comes to Diplomacy or any other game.  What we're not talking about is bullying as part of the game.  In other words, some players can be quite... forceful... in their negotiations.  This isn't what we're talking about. Cyber-bullying is about threatening people with things outside the game to get things done in the game or, in some cases I've seen simple threats of violence. The most likely threat is when a player will threaten another with persistent attacks when they come across each other in games.  This is metagaming , really: it's no different to planning to work together in future games. However I've seen threats of violence.  It's sometimes linked to people from the same school.  But I've see...

I received a text from Mrs THC part way through my morning at work.  It said that she'd been sent home from work because she was feeling crap, was aching, and her throat hurt. OK.  There it is.  Almost bound to happen at some point. I was feeling OK but I sent back a reply that I'd see my boss.  I knew what it meant: 14 days of self-isolation.  My boss had to look it up. As it happens, it's probably as much that her work is being cautious.  She doesn't have a persistent cough (and she also has a cough because she smokes like a chimney, to use a  cliché ), she doesn't have a fever, and she really doesn't have the common symptoms. But me?  I started feeling like my throat was hurting as soon as I got the message, and I got a headache. So, is it going to be 14 days of isolation?  It probably should be but I'm finding it hard, right now, to expect that.  Maybe a week to be on the safer side.  If Mrs THC doesn't come out wit...

Metagaming is when anything from outside a game affects what happens in the game.  This can be difficult to isolate in Diplomacy because human nature is to learn from mistakes (for most of us, anyway).  So what qualifies as metagaming, and why is it wrong? Bribery In his book The Game of Diplomacy ,  Richard Sharp recounts a number of cases of bribery, some of them more jokey than anything else, but bribery (or blackmail) still.  In those days of a smaller, less anonymous Dip hobby, it was - perhaps - easier to use these shady tactics.  The underlying philosophy seems to have been that if " the rulebook doesn’t mention the subject " anything goes. Teamplay The online game can't really include teamplay.  If two or more players enter a game as a team, agreeing to help each other against all-comers, this isn't a fair game.  It is, of course, easy to work with someone you know, and as a one-off it is probably acceptable, assuming there has been ...