Well, things are going well for my family. I played a game of Settlers of Catan with AA and one of our mutual genetic contributors. It was a surprisingly close game, with me squeezing out a victory. We got into a longest road war, with me largely dropping out: Built settlements and cities to increase my resources, and only built roads towards that end. Had a 3:1 port since the start, and managed to completely monopolize a clay and farmland hex towards the end. Caught them by surprise when I started trading in all that clay for other resources. Won the game without the longest road or the largest army. Dad started out slow, but once he got his wool production and wool 2:1 port going, he started catching up pretty quickly. One annoyance was that we were all rolling a fair number of 7s, thus activating the robber over and over. The gambler's fallacy was strong with AA, so he insisted that we pack up and head to Vegas. Sanity was restored quickly enough.Since the game's still new enough for us, we spent some time commenting on some of the game mechanics we enjoyed. Then I brought up the idea of starting a big play-by-email game of Diplomacy among skeptical/atheist bloggers. I haven't played Diplomacy before, but the game concept struck me as interesting when I read about it. No dice rolls, just tactical second-guessing, or something like that. Plus, there is, of course, all the massive backstabbing we could do amongst each other.
I don't have any of the supplies myself, but it should be easy enough to get ahold of a rule book and a scan of the game map. Probably need to get someone to moderate and post round-by-round updates or something. I was thinking we'd do one or two rounds a week. Something else that might be interesting to do: Make a new board that doesn't correspond with Earth. Could be a map of some alien planet, fantasy world, or whatever: Mostly I'm thinking along those lines because it might throw off some of the veterans who know where to work the default board, and as a first time player, I'd like something of a fighting chance.
Of course, during the course of the game, I'll be trying out my hand at propaganda to inform the masses of my inevitable victory.
7 comments:
Count me in.
That sounds like fun! I've never played Diplomacy either, but I've got a set lying around here somewhere.
Holy crap. Is it possible to get up in some of this without being a blogger? I fit the bill otherwise!
Does it count if I've been thinking about becoming a blogger?
I don't see a problem. So far, it's just the four of us and the concept.
One thing I'm thinking of doing is making my own version of an online game I once saw: Pretty much just a bunch of linked nodes, identical units, and other heavy abstractions. Imagine I could find a programmer who wouldn't have a lot of trouble working on it.
Would it be possible to just do this with something as simple as a pbwiki? It even allows for cheating!
Just a thought, of course, but the link-based nature of wikis might work well with an abstracted game board. Each area is a page with links to the areas they touch, and info on what is in that area (how many units, etc.). Each round's movement orders would be a separate page as well.
I'm pretty out of date with the little programming knowledge of mine.
Difficulty I foresee with having commands being put on one page is that other players might be able to peek. Definitely need some sort of moderator who carries out the effects of the turns.
I'll probably make a new post that clarifies my vision further, either tonight or tomorrow.
Ah, from the wiki article I got the impression that everyone knows each other's orders.
In that case, something simple like emailing everything to a "GM" email address would work.
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