Monday, July 09, 2007

Skeptiplomacy: Trying to Re-Rail This Train

Well, it's been a while, and there have been considerable delays and setbacks all over the place, including baldywilson vanishing off the face of the Earth. (I hope he's okay.) Anyway, last time I checked, Brendan had completed a physical map and was having trouble translating it into useful digital media. I'll try my hand at creating a map of my own in the mean time, and if Brendan gets his in, I'll save mine for the next game, if there is one.

Bourgeois Rage (man, it takes me a lot of tries to spell that) is trying his hand at coding and hosting it, and will probably have far more success than I would have. The topic was only brought back up today, so I'm risking jumping the gun.

Anyway, since it's been a long time, I feel I should reintroduce the whole concept:

Diplomacy is a board game that doesn't rely on dice, cards, or any large amount of luck. In the standard game, 7 players take on the role of countries in a battle to control Europe and then some in the early 1900's. All moves are simultaneous, and combat features no randomness. The key skill in the game is your ability to get other players to help you conquer, right up until you backstab 'em. Here's a tutorial.

Brendan's map is designed for 14 players, though I may design one for fewer, depending on how many people I can grab for this game through the disillusionment from the rough and rocky start. The theme for this game is kind of a giant weird mix of various elements in a kind of Jules Verne/steampunk setting featuring a floating continent. Instead of fleets of ships, you'll more likely have fleets of dirigibles, balloons, and biplanes. I'm not going to be too picky about how you describe the military actions of your forces in your propaganda posts. It's all going to be a big, crazy mashup. I was thankfully introduced to Girl Genius recently, and I think some concept borrowing from that would be cool.

Anyway here's where I'll be keeping the list of players. If you signed up before, please reconfirm. For map purposes, it'd be nice to include some names for regions under your control as well as the cities that would function as supply centers. Each nation will start with 6 territories and 3 supply centers. Other stuff that'd be cool: Images for your nation's flag, as well as your army and fleet symbols. A national color would probably come in handy for visual reference as well.

Players:

1. Bronze Dog (Bronze)
2. Bob
3. Bourgeois Rage
4. Brendan
5. Infophile (Black & White)
6. Akusai (Purple & Gold)
7. JackalMage
8. Joshua (Electric Blue)
9. Reverend BigDumbChimp
10. GreedyAlgorithm
11. xiangtao
12. Nes
13.
14.

Feel free to ask questions.

UPDATE: Joshua has been kind enough to provide us with a forum of our own.

17 comments:

Infophile said...

I'll sign up again, but just because hot-air balloons designed to look like spherical cows is just too perfect to pass up.

Clint Bourgeois said...

uh oh, the pressure's on now.

Bronze Dog said...

You bet it is. You don't want to just disappear, too, right?

Oh, and pick colors. Bronze for me, of course. I'll try working on some images for my units and flag tonight.

Couple of regions for me:
Cania (Supply center: Sirius)
Darlig Ulv Stranden (coastal region)

Unknown said...

Bonus fun. Not only did my computer crap out on me, and force me to try to fix up the map while learning Linux, I lost all the work when I decided to wipe the compu ter completely. I still have the original and the scan, though neither actually has the apportionment completed. I'll send you the scan tonight, and if you want me to clean it up to make it legible, I'll be happy to.

Bronze Dog said...

Go ahead and send me a scan. I can do a little cleanup of my own, since I've got Photoshop and such.

Don said...

Put me back up. I call purple and gold. If for some reason I have to bow out, I'll give ample warning.

TabAtkins said...

I'm definitely in. I'll decide on the other issues later.

Joshua said...

You know what? I'm gonna join in. Huzzah! (I must admit, the steampunk setting got me. I can't resist.)

I don't recall from last time, but is there going to be some kind of open forum for in-character communication?

Anyway, for now I'll be going with neon (electric!) blue as a colour.

Country name: Terra Fulminis
Ruler: Duke Tesla III
Territories: Columba (Supply Center: Urbs Bryantium)
Colorado (Supply Center: Urbs Fontium)
Rupes Custodis (Supply Center: Urbs Turris)
Tres Triplex
Resonatium
Mercurium

It had better be damned obvious where I'm going with this. ;)

Bronze Dog said...

Game negotiations will be done through whatever means you have available.

In character, I was thinking the bloggers could put up appropriate posts (I, for instance will be going on at length about my inevitable victory to maintain troop morale), or comment in Skeptiplomacy-relevant posts elsewhere. If you know how to set up a forum, go ahead.

Joshua said...

Dreamhost does one-click installs, e.g. for phpBB. ;)

So now there's a Skeptiplomacy forum.

Joshua said...

I guess I should add that I'm generally too lazy to create new themes, but if anybody wants to donate one I'll happily install it.

The forum might be more useful for setup stuff, I'm thinking. You've got a good point about bloggers just making propaganda posts in their own blogs. That'd be way more fun. ;)

Rev. BigDumbChimp said...

Waves hand

Infophile said...

Colors: Black and White

I'm still bouncing around a few ideas for country name and theme; I'll post it all when I've decided.

Bronze Dog said...

Joshua: I can has admin prvlijes? kthx bai

Joshua said...

I believe you should be all set, Dog.

xiangtao said...

You took long enough that I am definitely back in the game

Anonymous said...

Oooh, count me in again.

Hmm... With a steampunk setting, there's two obvious choices for me to draw, um, "inspiration" for location names from, FF6 or Arcanum. I'll have to go with the latter. Here's a huge map (warning: contains spoilers) if that helps at all.

Colors: Light Brown and gold. Flag would just be a light brown background with gold stripes running corner to corner (think of the Jamaican flag, but light brown instead of black and green.

I don't know how many supply centers or regions are required, so I'll list them in my order of preference. Feel free to drop out supply centers from regions lower on the list, but keep the regions if possible.

Regions:
Unified Kingdon (SC: Tarant)
Arland (SC: Caladon)
Glimmering Forest (SC: Quintarra)
Cumbria (SC: Dernholm)
Morbihan Plains (SC: Kree)
Vendigroth Wastes
Grey Mountains (could split in two: (North) and (South))
Stonewall Range (as above, but (East) and (West))
Stillwater
Roseborough
Ashbury
Thanatos (as an island, if possible)
Cattan (as above)

Aside from the split mountain ranges being next to each other (makes no sense for Stonewall (East) to be 3 regions away from Stonewall (West)), I don't really care about placement.