Belated Diplo-Blogging

So I play this game called Diplomacy. It's one of those things where the people who play it understand, and the people who don't look at me like I'm talking loudly to myself on the bus. But I don't care, because it's a great game. It's a strategy game, a game of territorial acquisition, but more importantly it's a game of negotiation. That's what makes it interesting, and that's what makes it intense. A game can last 4 or 5 hours (or more), and the whole time (if you're any good) you're talking to everybody you possibly can as much as you possibly can. (Four hours of "these aren't the droids you're looking for" can take a real toll.) All of the tactical savvy and strategic brilliance in the world avail nothing if you can't persuade people to do what you want them to do; you can't just go it alone and force the rest of the board to go along.

There may be a lesson there applicable to international relations. I'm not saying one way or the other.

Anyway, last weekend (as I mentioned in passing) I helped organize a Diplomacy tournament in Oakland. Here are some pictures. Because, y'know, what's a blog for if not to indulge in this sort of thing?

We had three rounds of three tables per round, with seven players per table. Not as many as we were shooting for, but a respectable showing. Adam Silverman (below, red hair) and the legendary Edi Birsan (above, in the wizard hat--Google him sometime) ran the show, and did a tremendous job of it. The games ran on time, everybody had a good time, and there was a whole lot of lying and backstabbing.

(Actually, the lying and backstabbing are more the popular conception of the game than the reality. There's a theoretical optimal ratio of truth to falsehood in the game--lie too much and you alienate potential allies, lie too little and you can't take advantage of all your opportunities--and the consensus (after several rounds at the brewpub across the street) was that it's somewhere in the vicinity of 80-90% honest. But of course there are always people for whom lying is the point of the game, and the best thing to do is to eviscerate them.)

Diplomacy players are an odd breed. You'll have noticed by now that we're all terminal geeks; that's not the odd part. The odd part is best expressed in something Diplomacy players will often say about each other: I'll trust him with the keys to my car and my home, but I wouldn't trust him to stay out of Belgium. Squirrely behavior on the board is (generally) offset by absolute trustworthiness in the real world. There is a real community here, which is just another thing I love about the game.

Anyway, thanks to Edi and Adam for running a great event. The few of you out there who play Diplomacy will, as I said, understand; for the rest of you, just think of the geekiest thing you do that you really enjoy doing, and pretend that it's what I've been babbling about all along.