The Embassy

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 ...