Skip to main content

Sorry for the Break

It's been a while since I posted here. That wasn't intentional.

March in the UK has been a 'bad weather' month. Well ,OK, there's really no such thing as bad weather, I know, but the 'Beast from the East' early in the month was certainly harsh, if not bad.

Harsher for me, too.

This wasn't me (I don't have the x-rays), but it could have been. I was hit by a skidding car, which was skidding on the icy road, and my femur was broken. I spent a number of weeks in hospital, having to drop from my game on Playdiplomacy, and not being able to access my blog.

Along with my leg went my phone. Not internet connection, then, for weeks.

So, my break from the game and this blog was something that couldn't really be helped. Painful but physically on the mend. The Diplomacy game, though, goes down as a surrender on my record. *sigh*

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Across the Board

Across the Board is a blog about playing the game Diplomacy online. A representation of the Diplomacy board at the start of the game. The game of Diplomacy is a game of deception. It is based in the pre-WWI era; each of the seven players, representing seven major powers, compete to dominate Europe. It is won when one player owns the majority of the supply centres on the board. Well, that's about as simple an explanation as can be expressed. What I haven't talked about is the skills required: persuasion, manipulation of players, strategy, and honesty and deceit in (approximately) equal measures. It's a highly skilled game with (generally) simple rules. It isn't a war game, although it looks like one and the pieces are military units, armies and fleets. It's a game about diplomacy, about getting your opponents to help you win. Yes, "about getting your opponents to help you win". You read that right. You're facing six other players,...

How to Play Diplomacy (part 2): Origins

Diplomacy  is a complicated game.  Now,  there's  an understatement! However, when learning how to play it, there is one source which can't be ignored: the creator of the game, Allan B Calhamer. http://hybridsrising.com/ In the Diplomacy Archive , there are two articles which deal with how Diplomacy came into being: A Dozen Years of Diplomacy  (1966; First published in Diplomania, issue 12, Aug 1966.) The Invention of Diplomacy  (1974; First published in Games ad Puzzles, issue 21, Jan 1974.) Both articles explain the forces that led to Calhamer creating  Diplomacy and they are, pretty much, repetitive of each other. Although they explain how the game was formed, they also have implications on how Calhamer intended the game to be played. The Influences From A Dozen Years of Diplomacy : At the end of World War II, I came across an article on "post-war planning" which reviewed the European diplomacy of the period 1815-1914 and...

How to Play Diplomacy (part 3): Corrections

Diplomacy  is a complicated game.  Now,  there's  an understatement! However, when learning how to play it, there is one source which can't be ignored: the creator of the game, Allan B Calhamer. http://englishharmony.com/ Calhamer's article Objectives other than Winning (first published in IDA Diplomacy Handbook, 1974) was mainly written to correct the aberrant ideas about scoring systems in Diplomacy. The system he was writing mainly about is known as the 'Strong Second' system, but it also tells us about play when any scoring system is being used. Calhamer's Design Diplomacy was designed to be played as a one-off event. It was designed to be played face-to-face, around a table with all players present at the board. As such, when the Hobby diversified with play-by-mail games, then play-by-email and websites, as well as when it was played as a tournament or league, the game became something different. Setting the game in these scenarios makes ga...