The Embassy

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...

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 ...