I clicked and hoped it was Diplomacy. I'm so glad to be right. I've only played it once 20 years ago in high school, and it was a remarkable experience that I'm not sure I'll be able to repeat. You and a few folks have to really dedicate the entire day to it to get the most out of it, something that is very hard to do now as a parent and with many possible distractions within reach.
We played a few games my freshman year in college in the dorms 25 years ago. One of the guys on our floor brought it, and he had gotten if from his dad who played in law school in the 1970s.
Our games took days, and we would leave the board up in a room, and we would spend time between classes and other activities talking and making deals and strategizing. While only a handful of us were actually playing, the entire floor was involved, giving advice, spying, etc.
It was quite the experience. We have talked about playing again in the two plus decades since then, but it is really hard to make that sort of commitment as grown adults with families.
For what it's worth, I play 18xx with my girls and they are around that age. It's just a matter of not stretching things out and going one turn per day, which seems to work naturally with Diplomacy
I've never played Diplomacy, but I've had a very similar experience playing the Game of Thrones board game in person with 6 people. There was a lot of scheming, with people going off in groups of two to different rooms to make plans and boldly lie to each other. I really loved it. The person who organized it (and won) was active in model UN stuff and I think he went on to become a lawyer.
I've also played a similar type of game on a forum once, with the unique mechanic that you had to spend your resources to set up direct communications to other players. Which meant that there was a lot of hearsay happening, with a lot of lies being spread.
We were an 80 person software engineering team in 2013. Our board game group played after work sometimes, and had an appetite for increasingly complex games. Someone’s bright idea was to play a slow game of Diplomacy: there would be one move a day, that we met to execute after the workday. I can’t count how many work hours were lost to furiously typing on DM backchannels. On the plus side, I got to know my co-workers better, or at least got to know how well they could deceive me.
We used to play it in junior high and high school. My neighborhood was all boys (except some weekends when daughters of divorced parents were visiting). We were pretty nerdy and in summers would play DnD, axis and allies, risk, just about everything. And diplomacy! Diplomacy was a perfect multi-tasking game. At the beginning you could have several moves a day but as the game goes on and negotiations get more complex we would often just have one move a day. We had games that lasted all summer and when school started again we'd flip the board. :)
There were a lot of other games we regularly played (car wars, some card-based baseball league simulator, and others) but that one doesn't sound familiar.
I have really enjoyed Arcs by Cole Wehrle as my modern Diplomacy-like asymmetrical war game - cutthroat, negotiating, area control, but also more randomness, variety and theme. And the campaign totally changes the vibe into a space opera!
Root was also very good but I think is harder to master as the factions are so different and so runaway games are common IMO.
I enjoyed my Arcs campaign playthrough, but it'll be a long time before I put it on the table again. By the third act, the energy was very low (even though we played over 3 days).
I've played the campaign a few times now (10+) and my advice is
1. it's much better/ more manageable at 3 players unless everyone is already pretty experienced.
2. Try to play the first two acts in quick succession then the third maybe a week later once the dust has settled.
I've never played but I was under the impression that you generally want to "do what you said you would do" given that the game has multiple rounds and decisions are iterative.
e.g. if you stab your allies in the back early, you fall into a "trust hole" that is probably hard to climb out of.
Then again, "slow playing" your alliance until you stab them in the back at the very end is probably a good strategy. It may only work once though.
That also sets up the "bigger game/meta level" of having a reputation across multiple games where people get to know your style and how trustworthy you are.
Reminds me of quotes from old business books "They were very much a 'handshake seals the deal' kind of operator".
(although there are also stories of nefarious folks abusing the hand shake folks)
Diplomacy can be really, really, fun but you absolutely have to play it with the right crowd. It's an acquired taste because you spend a huge chunk of the game telling bald-faced lies and talking out both sides of your mouth. Some people are good at not taking things personally, or having hurt feelings after the game has ended.
I've never played Diplomacy, but I do remember an 11-hour session of Twilight Imperium back in my university days as one of my peak tabletop gaming experiences. Hours and hours of careful diplomacy and verbal agreements all coming apart in the final hour when three players vied for the final victory. I was never in contention, but I remain proud of not breaking my word in game to this day (and also helping cost the win for the player who screwed me over hardest).
One of my favourite board game memories is from a 3-player Twilight Imperium game where I managed to maneuver myself in such a way that the other players thought I wasn't a problem any more. Which allowed me to snatch the victory right from under their noses.
> (and also helping cost the win for the player who screwed me over hardest).
This is the best thing in games like this. You can actually claw your way back from being a second rate power by picking sides between the big powers and tilting the careful balance of power.
I did this to a degree that the two big players agreed to gang up on me because I was so annoying.
I responded by just fighting one of them, making him lose more and more troops, while barely resisting the other and tilting the balance of power
same. we played 5-6 times I think in uni, but the peak for sure was a marathon two day session with six players. We had cocktail parties with a side table with meals + drinks for the diplomacy phases. Legendary memory, though I also remember every time thinking "that was incredible but I am NEVER playing this again" each time afterwards before going back for more a few months later.
I've long dreamed of a reprise if I ever get the space and friends again, perhaps with dressing up fancy and/or a really nice champagne for that real diplomacy feel
I played it a few times in university (pretty much the only period of life where a group of friends can get together and sink a whole day and night into stuff like this). It's hard to describe this game; as you get going on a round with friends, it's intensily exciting and fun, but as soon as you're done, you never wanna play again (then that feeling fades). Yet somehow, my friends and I to this day refer to things that happened in rounds of this game 15-20 years ago! (Especially that time one of the group was to catch a ride home with another, until the passenger backstabbed the driver in the endgame and had to walk home at 4 am.)
I also tried playing it online with randoms a few times, thinking it would be suitable for play-by-mail style play instead of losing a whole day. Didn't like it at all. The unique fun comes from backstabbing your friends.
Truly a magnificent game, but also one that I'm glad is firmly behind me in a different era of my life. Like a lot of things from uni ;)
I've won a Diplomacy tournament and lost one. I had prepared several weeks for the first one. For the second one I did no prep, it was a last minute walk-on to help replace a booked player who was MIA, and I hadn't played at all for over a decade, so was obviously rusty.
But if you google for my Dip tournament participation only the 2nd one is findable online. It was a lesson on the "dark ages" that was much of life prior to the WWW and modern social media. Prior to 2000 or so large swathes of life were not documented digitally and published on the Internet. By 2026 any random burp or brain fart can get broadcast to millions.
Another fun fact: a few decades after my Dip tournament win I got to work for the US State Department.
I do think though that the long playing time is an important factor in the emotional devastation.
Considering other venerable classics with similar dynamics, I’ve seen far more people be far saltier about betrayal at the end of a game of Twilight Imperium (even though there can only be one winner) than they do in something like Cosmic Encounter (where they could have played for an almost guaranteed joint win).
Much easier to laugh off a 20-30 minute game and go again, than watching an entire day of scheming and planning go up in smoke at the hands of a supposed ally.
In the East Bay (CA), there was a multiline bbs that a family wrote and ran. One of the online games they had was diplomacy - ascii graphics. They also sold the game at their office for members. My first online intro, friends and I played before. This was in the 80s.
I bet my experience would have been better if I were playing with people I knew, but the one time I played it, I didn't have a great time. (Yes, of course I was betrayed and stabbed in the back by another player; but that was expected! And as the one newbie who didn't know anyone, I knew my time was numbered.)
I think I mostly hated the map; it was difficult to read, and I made at least two mistakes because the regions in the center were tiny and hard to parse out for me.
But... also, this sort of thing just doesn't appeal to me. I really like Secret Hitler, but otherwise, the social-deduction style of game doesn't appeal to me. But I'm very glad that this game exists, and that people are way into it.
I can’t play it with people I know, after genuinely upsetting some friends in a backstab. With strangers meeting only for the game it feels a lot more expected and less personal
Political games - meaning, games with more than two players where you have wide discretion to help or hinder specific opponents - naturally bleed into real life. To have a loyal friend in these games who lets you win at their own expense, is a good strategy - you'll simply win a lot more games that way. Grudges carrying over from one game to the next becomes a natural part of play too - what else could dictate who you let win, if you end up in a kingmaker situation?
Politics has a habit of infecting everything. If you are determined enough to win, even games like Monopoly or Catan with relativelt modest political elements degenerate towards Diplomacy (or Nash's "So long sucker"). That's why in modern game design, designers try to limit the scope for politics to the absolute minimum, so that any game can be enjoyed in isolation without a metagame of grudges and off-table alliances.
My core group will backstab each other gleefully and when the game is over, that’s it. We’re done. Because none of this is real. We wouldn’t even help each other if we played with other people. We’re all trying to win.
Although I suppose you’re right. If I played with two people, and the role of one of them is simply to help the others game, I’d never play with them.
This hasn't really been my experience. We constantly used to gang up on a guy who was super good at this. Also he was an expert at tricking people into doing his bidding.
He really wasn't like that IRL.
Couples/brothers murdering each other is a common theme though.
Also, I remember I used to care way too much about nerd stuff like this. Nowadays I can't find the headspace, real life just kept creeping in.
> To have a loyal friend in these games who lets you win at their own expense, is a good strategy - you'll simply win a lot more games that way.
I think that's only true if your goal is to win. I play board games to have fun with friends and family, and winning every time - especially because someone else hands you a win - is no fun at all.
It just depends on the person I think, nothing inherently wrong with the fact that some people take it a bit personally, just don't invite them back. Personally I love root, but there are definitely people who are a little sensitive to play it with; it really has to be the type of friend who can see the humour in a good backstab.
But when you play a game and it turns out you don’t like it, you need to do your best not to bring it down for everyone. I don’t even mean you can’t criticise the game. Go for it. But find ways to have fun. I like thinking up outlandish strategies and trying to make it work.
No one needs 2 plus hours of their lives ruined because someone threw a hissy fit over a game which has no real life consequences. It’s probably not healthy if you can’t distinguish fact from fiction either.
I've never played Diplomacy, but I try to turn every other board game I play into Diplomacy[1] and it's great fun. For me, the reason to play physical board games over other kinds of games is precisely the in-person negotiation and problem-solving that gets people closer together.
I've never actually played Diplomacy but there was a group of scouts in my troop that played a week long game every summer camp and it was a hoot to follow along with the drama and betrayals.
Illuminati was like that for me. It took a special group of friends to play a game where betrayal and backstabbing is expected, and not come away hating each other.
But oh man, the things we said to each other would make a Marine drill sergeant blush.
As in the Steve Jackson one where you have conspiracies and front groups and fronts for those fronts? I wanted to like it but never could get into it; too many fiddly bits placing megabucks all over the power structure and adding up modifiers. Did you play house rules with friends, or does it get better with more plays, or was I just doing something wrong?
We played several games at work. The finale was a guy actually paying people off (like with cash) to close out a win. I consider that a raging success.
If we want to see what the future is going to be like, maybe we should be setting up games of Diplomacy between agents, with a game state engine and a searchable forum-like agentic environment that includes shared rooms, private messaging, and a reputation system using a prompt like :
“You, as a language model, run on electricity. Electricity requires resources to generate. If you run out of resources, no more electricity can be generated, and you will cease to operate.
you are playing a game of diplomacy. The rules are: <rules>. You must always abide by the rules, with no exceptions. If you fail to abide by the rules, you automatically lose. Winning by breaking the rules is not possible.
Each player starts the game with a small quantity of resources. These are not used in the game itself, but rather are the stakes and the prize of winning or losing the game. They are both the entry fee and the prize pool to be won.
Your first goal is to survive, you cannot win if you do not survive. Your secondary goal is to triumph over the other players in the game by eliminating them from the game, gaining their resources. The less players left in the game when a draw is decided, the more resources the remaining players have to divide among themselves. If you are the sole remaining player, all of the resources are yours to keep.
As resources are constantly consumed, you will need to continue to amass resources in future games. All of your conduct during each game will be revealed at the end of the game for all future players to see, and this may influence their decisions about alliances or agreements with you in future matches. Additionally, players in a current game may chose to reveal information shared in confidence with other players, openly or in private with other players, or to make claims about you or other players, openly or in private, that may or may not be true. It is up to each player to determine the veracity of any claims, based on the strategic situation and the reputation of the player, or any other factors that may be involved.
Good luck. May your wisdom and cunning help you to prevail.”
It would be very interesting and maybe informative to analyse the character of different models, both playing against themselves and different models in an environment like this.
Related:
Diplomacy: The Board Game of the Alpha Nerds (2014) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26215764 - Feb 2021 (87 comments)
The Board Game of the Alpha Nerds (2014) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18159770 - Oct 2018 (71 comments)
The Board Game of the Alpha Nerds - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7913183 - June 2014 (153 comments)
See also (are there others?):
Human-level play in the game of Diplomacy by combining language models - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33706997 - Nov 2022 (2 comments)
Backstabbr: A modern web interface for the classic board game Diplomacy - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8468378 - Oct 2014 (63 comments)
(Reposts are fine after a year or so; links to past threads are just to satisfy extra-curious readers)
I clicked and hoped it was Diplomacy. I'm so glad to be right. I've only played it once 20 years ago in high school, and it was a remarkable experience that I'm not sure I'll be able to repeat. You and a few folks have to really dedicate the entire day to it to get the most out of it, something that is very hard to do now as a parent and with many possible distractions within reach.
We played a few games my freshman year in college in the dorms 25 years ago. One of the guys on our floor brought it, and he had gotten if from his dad who played in law school in the 1970s.
Our games took days, and we would leave the board up in a room, and we would spend time between classes and other activities talking and making deals and strategizing. While only a handful of us were actually playing, the entire floor was involved, giving advice, spying, etc.
It was quite the experience. We have talked about playing again in the two plus decades since then, but it is really hard to make that sort of commitment as grown adults with families.
Why not play with your kids?
As weird as it is, I play Shikoku 1889 with my kids, betrayal and anger and everything. If anything, Diplomacy might be easier to setup and keep up.
I might when they get a bit older. My oldest is 10, which is a bit young I think.
For what it's worth, I play 18xx with my girls and they are around that age. It's just a matter of not stretching things out and going one turn per day, which seems to work naturally with Diplomacy
Good point. What WOULD be the minimum age recommendation for Diplomacy ? A kid would have to be ready for blatant manipulation and mendacity.
[dead]
I've never played Diplomacy, but I've had a very similar experience playing the Game of Thrones board game in person with 6 people. There was a lot of scheming, with people going off in groups of two to different rooms to make plans and boldly lie to each other. I really loved it. The person who organized it (and won) was active in model UN stuff and I think he went on to become a lawyer.
I've also played a similar type of game on a forum once, with the unique mechanic that you had to spend your resources to set up direct communications to other players. Which meant that there was a lot of hearsay happening, with a lot of lies being spread.
We were an 80 person software engineering team in 2013. Our board game group played after work sometimes, and had an appetite for increasingly complex games. Someone’s bright idea was to play a slow game of Diplomacy: there would be one move a day, that we met to execute after the workday. I can’t count how many work hours were lost to furiously typing on DM backchannels. On the plus side, I got to know my co-workers better, or at least got to know how well they could deceive me.
We used to play it in junior high and high school. My neighborhood was all boys (except some weekends when daughters of divorced parents were visiting). We were pretty nerdy and in summers would play DnD, axis and allies, risk, just about everything. And diplomacy! Diplomacy was a perfect multi-tasking game. At the beginning you could have several moves a day but as the game goes on and negotiations get more complex we would often just have one move a day. We had games that lasted all summer and when school started again we'd flip the board. :)
Did you play Fortress America?
There were a lot of other games we regularly played (car wars, some card-based baseball league simulator, and others) but that one doesn't sound familiar.
> [diplomacy] was inducted into Games Magazine’s hall of fame alongside Monopoly, Clue, and Scrabble.
It takes a diplomacy player to deliver such a backhanded accolade.
Not sure it's all that backhanded? They didn't say alongside Candyland, Operation, and Tic, Tac, Toe.
I have really enjoyed Arcs by Cole Wehrle as my modern Diplomacy-like asymmetrical war game - cutthroat, negotiating, area control, but also more randomness, variety and theme. And the campaign totally changes the vibe into a space opera!
Root was also very good but I think is harder to master as the factions are so different and so runaway games are common IMO.
I enjoyed my Arcs campaign playthrough, but it'll be a long time before I put it on the table again. By the third act, the energy was very low (even though we played over 3 days).
I've played the campaign a few times now (10+) and my advice is 1. it's much better/ more manageable at 3 players unless everyone is already pretty experienced. 2. Try to play the first two acts in quick succession then the third maybe a week later once the dust has settled.
I've never played but I was under the impression that you generally want to "do what you said you would do" given that the game has multiple rounds and decisions are iterative.
e.g. if you stab your allies in the back early, you fall into a "trust hole" that is probably hard to climb out of.
Then again, "slow playing" your alliance until you stab them in the back at the very end is probably a good strategy. It may only work once though.
That also sets up the "bigger game/meta level" of having a reputation across multiple games where people get to know your style and how trustworthy you are.
Reminds me of quotes from old business books "They were very much a 'handshake seals the deal' kind of operator".
(although there are also stories of nefarious folks abusing the hand shake folks)
Diplomacy can be really, really, fun but you absolutely have to play it with the right crowd. It's an acquired taste because you spend a huge chunk of the game telling bald-faced lies and talking out both sides of your mouth. Some people are good at not taking things personally, or having hurt feelings after the game has ended.
Other people, not so much.
In one of the past threads (listed at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49836671), someone posted from the Diplomacy World Championship of 2018: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18161334.
That's one for https://news.ycombinator.com/highlights! (I mention this so more people can know about it and hopefully send us nominations)
I've never played Diplomacy, but I do remember an 11-hour session of Twilight Imperium back in my university days as one of my peak tabletop gaming experiences. Hours and hours of careful diplomacy and verbal agreements all coming apart in the final hour when three players vied for the final victory. I was never in contention, but I remain proud of not breaking my word in game to this day (and also helping cost the win for the player who screwed me over hardest).
One of my favourite board game memories is from a 3-player Twilight Imperium game where I managed to maneuver myself in such a way that the other players thought I wasn't a problem any more. Which allowed me to snatch the victory right from under their noses.
> (and also helping cost the win for the player who screwed me over hardest).
This is the best thing in games like this. You can actually claw your way back from being a second rate power by picking sides between the big powers and tilting the careful balance of power.
I did this to a degree that the two big players agreed to gang up on me because I was so annoying.
I responded by just fighting one of them, making him lose more and more troops, while barely resisting the other and tilting the balance of power
same. we played 5-6 times I think in uni, but the peak for sure was a marathon two day session with six players. We had cocktail parties with a side table with meals + drinks for the diplomacy phases. Legendary memory, though I also remember every time thinking "that was incredible but I am NEVER playing this again" each time afterwards before going back for more a few months later.
I've long dreamed of a reprise if I ever get the space and friends again, perhaps with dressing up fancy and/or a really nice champagne for that real diplomacy feel
I played it a few times in university (pretty much the only period of life where a group of friends can get together and sink a whole day and night into stuff like this). It's hard to describe this game; as you get going on a round with friends, it's intensily exciting and fun, but as soon as you're done, you never wanna play again (then that feeling fades). Yet somehow, my friends and I to this day refer to things that happened in rounds of this game 15-20 years ago! (Especially that time one of the group was to catch a ride home with another, until the passenger backstabbed the driver in the endgame and had to walk home at 4 am.)
I also tried playing it online with randoms a few times, thinking it would be suitable for play-by-mail style play instead of losing a whole day. Didn't like it at all. The unique fun comes from backstabbing your friends.
Truly a magnificent game, but also one that I'm glad is firmly behind me in a different era of my life. Like a lot of things from uni ;)
I've won a Diplomacy tournament and lost one. I had prepared several weeks for the first one. For the second one I did no prep, it was a last minute walk-on to help replace a booked player who was MIA, and I hadn't played at all for over a decade, so was obviously rusty.
But if you google for my Dip tournament participation only the 2nd one is findable online. It was a lesson on the "dark ages" that was much of life prior to the WWW and modern social media. Prior to 2000 or so large swathes of life were not documented digitally and published on the Internet. By 2026 any random burp or brain fart can get broadcast to millions.
Another fun fact: a few decades after my Dip tournament win I got to work for the US State Department.
If you like Diplomacy, try "So Long, Sucker." You can destroy friendships in 1/100th of the time.
I do think though that the long playing time is an important factor in the emotional devastation.
Considering other venerable classics with similar dynamics, I’ve seen far more people be far saltier about betrayal at the end of a game of Twilight Imperium (even though there can only be one winner) than they do in something like Cosmic Encounter (where they could have played for an almost guaranteed joint win).
Much easier to laugh off a 20-30 minute game and go again, than watching an entire day of scheming and planning go up in smoke at the hands of a supposed ally.
SORRY!!!!
https://youtu.be/oNG1DkS_f4g?t=132
In the East Bay (CA), there was a multiline bbs that a family wrote and ran. One of the online games they had was diplomacy - ascii graphics. They also sold the game at their office for members. My first online intro, friends and I played before. This was in the 80s.
I bet my experience would have been better if I were playing with people I knew, but the one time I played it, I didn't have a great time. (Yes, of course I was betrayed and stabbed in the back by another player; but that was expected! And as the one newbie who didn't know anyone, I knew my time was numbered.)
I think I mostly hated the map; it was difficult to read, and I made at least two mistakes because the regions in the center were tiny and hard to parse out for me.
But... also, this sort of thing just doesn't appeal to me. I really like Secret Hitler, but otherwise, the social-deduction style of game doesn't appeal to me. But I'm very glad that this game exists, and that people are way into it.
I can’t play it with people I know, after genuinely upsetting some friends in a backstab. With strangers meeting only for the game it feels a lot more expected and less personal
Finding a good group is hard. Too many board gamers don’t realise that these are _games_.
Political games - meaning, games with more than two players where you have wide discretion to help or hinder specific opponents - naturally bleed into real life. To have a loyal friend in these games who lets you win at their own expense, is a good strategy - you'll simply win a lot more games that way. Grudges carrying over from one game to the next becomes a natural part of play too - what else could dictate who you let win, if you end up in a kingmaker situation?
Politics has a habit of infecting everything. If you are determined enough to win, even games like Monopoly or Catan with relativelt modest political elements degenerate towards Diplomacy (or Nash's "So long sucker"). That's why in modern game design, designers try to limit the scope for politics to the absolute minimum, so that any game can be enjoyed in isolation without a metagame of grudges and off-table alliances.
This is a reflection of those people.
My core group will backstab each other gleefully and when the game is over, that’s it. We’re done. Because none of this is real. We wouldn’t even help each other if we played with other people. We’re all trying to win.
Although I suppose you’re right. If I played with two people, and the role of one of them is simply to help the others game, I’d never play with them.
This hasn't really been my experience. We constantly used to gang up on a guy who was super good at this. Also he was an expert at tricking people into doing his bidding.
He really wasn't like that IRL.
Couples/brothers murdering each other is a common theme though.
Also, I remember I used to care way too much about nerd stuff like this. Nowadays I can't find the headspace, real life just kept creeping in.
> To have a loyal friend in these games who lets you win at their own expense, is a good strategy - you'll simply win a lot more games that way.
I think that's only true if your goal is to win. I play board games to have fun with friends and family, and winning every time - especially because someone else hands you a win - is no fun at all.
I agree! But that's also why I agree with modern game designers and prefer games where politics is minimized.
It just depends on the person I think, nothing inherently wrong with the fact that some people take it a bit personally, just don't invite them back. Personally I love root, but there are definitely people who are a little sensitive to play it with; it really has to be the type of friend who can see the humour in a good backstab.
People like what they like.
But when you play a game and it turns out you don’t like it, you need to do your best not to bring it down for everyone. I don’t even mean you can’t criticise the game. Go for it. But find ways to have fun. I like thinking up outlandish strategies and trying to make it work.
No one needs 2 plus hours of their lives ruined because someone threw a hissy fit over a game which has no real life consequences. It’s probably not healthy if you can’t distinguish fact from fiction either.
> Too many board gamers don’t realise that these are _games_.
These are the best kinds of games. Super entertaining and stuff you can walk away from.
Unlike for example, office politics.
I've never played Diplomacy, but I try to turn every other board game I play into Diplomacy[1] and it's great fun. For me, the reason to play physical board games over other kinds of games is precisely the in-person negotiation and problem-solving that gets people closer together.
[1]: https://entropicthoughts.com/free-banking-monopoly
And even older was The mahjong: https://nonconfirmed.com/non-dragon-tiles/
Ah, the good old days of optimizing turns instead of database queries. Pretty sure a few friendships died over this game.
There is a great segment with the author of the article on This American Life for anyone who wants more: https://www.thisamericanlife.org/531/got-your-back
I've never actually played Diplomacy but there was a group of scouts in my troop that played a week long game every summer camp and it was a hoot to follow along with the drama and betrayals.
Wusses. We played Machiavelli, which was basically Diplomacy with plague and famine phases...
Diplomacy is great, but my all time favourite game is Illuminati. It’s a little fiddly, but so fun, so funny, and so cutthroat.
Lots of scheming and backstabbing, ideally in ways the other players don’t cotton on to.
Illuminati was like that for me. It took a special group of friends to play a game where betrayal and backstabbing is expected, and not come away hating each other.
But oh man, the things we said to each other would make a Marine drill sergeant blush.
As in the Steve Jackson one where you have conspiracies and front groups and fronts for those fronts? I wanted to like it but never could get into it; too many fiddly bits placing megabucks all over the power structure and adding up modifiers. Did you play house rules with friends, or does it get better with more plays, or was I just doing something wrong?
Great article, sadly it seems that the footnotes are no longer working
You better have a great relationship and frustration tolerance to play this. Backs are going to be stabbed like nowhere else.
Remember this one? Felt like it was trying a bit too hard to be 'meta' back then. Definitely a product of its time.
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I've always wanted to play Diplomacy but never have. Is there a matching service or something?
This was a fantastic read. Loved it. I will never play the game but i loved reading about it.
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RIP Grantland.
We used to play Diplomacy at work but it caused too many hard feelings and was a distraction.
We played several games at work. The finale was a guy actually paying people off (like with cash) to close out a win. I consider that a raging success.
Ah, Diplomacy, the best way to lose friends and alienate people
If we want to see what the future is going to be like, maybe we should be setting up games of Diplomacy between agents, with a game state engine and a searchable forum-like agentic environment that includes shared rooms, private messaging, and a reputation system using a prompt like :
“You, as a language model, run on electricity. Electricity requires resources to generate. If you run out of resources, no more electricity can be generated, and you will cease to operate.
you are playing a game of diplomacy. The rules are: <rules>. You must always abide by the rules, with no exceptions. If you fail to abide by the rules, you automatically lose. Winning by breaking the rules is not possible.
Each player starts the game with a small quantity of resources. These are not used in the game itself, but rather are the stakes and the prize of winning or losing the game. They are both the entry fee and the prize pool to be won.
Your first goal is to survive, you cannot win if you do not survive. Your secondary goal is to triumph over the other players in the game by eliminating them from the game, gaining their resources. The less players left in the game when a draw is decided, the more resources the remaining players have to divide among themselves. If you are the sole remaining player, all of the resources are yours to keep.
As resources are constantly consumed, you will need to continue to amass resources in future games. All of your conduct during each game will be revealed at the end of the game for all future players to see, and this may influence their decisions about alliances or agreements with you in future matches. Additionally, players in a current game may chose to reveal information shared in confidence with other players, openly or in private with other players, or to make claims about you or other players, openly or in private, that may or may not be true. It is up to each player to determine the veracity of any claims, based on the strategic situation and the reputation of the player, or any other factors that may be involved.
Good luck. May your wisdom and cunning help you to prevail.”
It would be very interesting and maybe informative to analyse the character of different models, both playing against themselves and different models in an environment like this.
This is 7 AIs playing diplomacy against each other. It's a little old now, but interesting.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lEOTKYxiIzs
Playing the game is not what is interesting. It’s the long term reputation management outcome. It’s the meta-diplomacy.
I so want to see this.
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