The Embassy

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 though...

Diplomacy  can be played in one of two formats: Face-to-Face (FTF) or Remotely. Face-to-Face This is the way the game was designed to play and that isn't surprising given that the Allan B Calhamer was developing Diplomacy in the 1950s.  FTF play is around a table with all the players present.  They don't always stay at the table, though; it's usual that, during the Negotiation phase players will disappear into little nooks and crannies to discuss strategy in secret. House Game There are a number of ways to play FTF games but Calhamer had only one way in mind, really, what you might call a House Game.  This is a group of people playing Dip for fun as a one-off game.  Nothing else, no distractions caused by scoring or outside pressures... well, other than the time taken to complete it. Tournament Play A more competitive way to play arrived when tournaments arrived.  These would be organised, open to players to compete against each other in a ...