The Postal Hobby

It feels somewhat strange to read that sentence:

I ... went to university and Dip faded from my life. 

I wasn't the most involved of people at Uni.  To some extent that was because the societies at Sheffield University in the early-80s weren't very interesting.  There wasn't a Diplomacy Society... not even a board game society.  And this was pre-internet effectively.

In fact, it wasn't until the early-90s that I really got back into Diplomacy.  At that point, I was in the early stages of my career (or what I thought would be my career) in teaching, had my own place with a loft bedroom-come-study where I did my work.

One Christmas I wandered into a toy store and was perusing the board games.  I spotted a copy of Diplomacy - a different box but, from the illustrations on the back, the same board and pieces.  And it included a flyer about the postal hobby.

Wait.  What?  Postal play???  If wtf had existed then, I'd have thought WTF!?!?!  I mean... Diplomacy played by post???

Now, I was used to what were loosely called computers by then.  I mean, "loosely called" in comparison to today's.  While I had been studying to become a teacher I'd used an Apple Macintosh.  When I'd finished the course, I'd had to pass it on to the school at which I'd done my training.  So I'd bought myself what I could afford to replace it - a bog-standard wordprocessor.  So, you know, my often illegible handwriting wouldn't need translating.

Despite the fact that I still had my original game, I bought a second game.  And I read the flyer.  And I sent off for the first copy of my first Dip zine.

At that point the zine wasn't named.  It was aimed specifically at Dip newbies (OK, newbies didn't exist back then, either).  It was published by Danny Collman.

I didn't know much about Danny then.  In fairness, I don't know much about him now.  But he's my hero.

One of the first thing he wanted us from-the-start contributors to do was name his zine.  I went for the name Proteus because, over the few issues the format kept changing.  I wasn't successful, though, and the zine became known as Springboard.

Danny opened my horizons.  I got involved in my first PBM game, and the excitement of playing against 6 other players, and of writing and receiving letters from them, especially waiting for them to come through the post, was thrilling.

Zines hosted games.  Danny's games were quite forgiving.  You sent him your orders, your press, and the zine game back with the posted results.  The only thing I found frustrating about this format in publishing was the predictive nature of what you might want to do as far as retreats and adjustments went.

The other frustrating thing about postal play, of course, was that it was common for letters to pass in the post.  I'd send a letter to another player, and receive a letter from him a couple of days later... which had no reference to what I'd sent because he had written at the same time I had!

But, well, so what?  I'm playing 7-player Diplomacy, ffs!  (This post is quickly filling with anachronisms.)

Part of Danny's reason for producing Springboard was that it introduced new players to the Hobby, specifically in the UK.  There was information on and about conventions in the UK, the EDC and WDC.  There were articles from eastablished Dippyists.  There were adverts for other zines.

After a while I jumped into it.  I subscribed to Dolchstoß, published by Richard Sharp.  I subscribed to Stephen Agar's Spring Offensive.  I think I subscribed to subscribed to another one but I can't remember which - sorry.

But, you know, life gets in the way.  I became more established in my profession, was promoted... and time disappeared.  And Diplomacy again faded away...