Reveilled

You know, I typed that post up with female pronouns, and then began wondering if Darkside was a woman or not. In the end, I decided to go with the odds and assume she was male (like most forum members). A mistake, apparently. He hasn't. I haven't seen him on today.

Well, with you, Darkside, and Numbers, that would be three more people. Of course, we don't have confirmation from a few people, but it looks like we've got our seven people. Since Darkside has asked for us not to hold open his place, though, I'll still count that space as open until he confirms his intention to play. I'll hold the others closed unless someone expresses their intention not to play. So, one space still open!

My memory of the whole picture is a little fuzzy (I saved my SAN throw), but as I remember the other person in the picture lost her head, along with some of her clothing, and possibly her internal organs. Edit: Scratch that. She does lose her internal organs. I found the picture...

Worse. Do you notice the red spray?

Galactica, which doesn't start in the Uk until Oc-farking-tober. :angry:

I recognise that avatar. Bad memories...

Quite impressive that a player can be knocked out in just one round. If you played diplomacy without the diplomacy "free for all deathmatch" style, then wouldnt the players in the middle get smashed right away? <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Well, there is a set of moves that it has become extremely common for Austria to play called the Southern Hedgehog. Austria moves F Tri-Ven, A Vie-Gal, and A Bud-Ser. This means that if Italy tries the Tyrolian Attack (A Ven-Tyr, A Rom-Ven), A Rom-Ven will fail, and Italy will be unable to support himself into Trieste in fall. Similarly, A Vie-Gal prevents the Russian move A War-Gal, and A Bud-Ser all but guarantees a build in Winter. This in the hope that other areas of the board will distract Austria's attackers, and Austria will have time to recuperate. In truth, though, both Austria and Germany are countries that live and die by their diplomacy, so a no-press Gunboat game will hurt them more than others.

Well, remember that it's a learning experience as much as the first game was, and that presently all our prospective players have never played a game before, aside from Aishur (who is in a dire position in Game 1), so you won't be at a huge disadvantage if you play. Players in the first game still send me rules questions or have to be corrected for misconceptions, so don't worry too much if you start playing without a perfect understanding of the rules.

I reckon that the first variant we play should be this one. Wouldn't it be awesome? :D We might need a few more players, though. "

Darn. Well, maybe when you know, we might have a third game going by then which you could join. Only the rules pdf I linked to in my first post, though the website it is hosted on is here. That site also has a great number of strategy articles, which may help you grasp the rules better.

A PBEM game can last several months, as each game year takes about two and a half weeks to play (a week for each of Spring and Fall, and 3-4 days for Winter), and there are several game years (a game could potentially last forever, though that has never happened before). But on the bright side, a postal game usually takes over a year to complete, so it's not so bad. The players could probably give you a better idea of just how much time the game takes (as you obviously don't spend a whole week negotiating at a computer screen!), as I am generally not privy to their negotiations, and so can't tell you exactly how much negotiation is involved.

Quite simply, really. Everyone starts with a certain number of armies and fleets, and you send the GM move orders in order for them to move. For instance, playing as France, you might order your Fleet in Brest to the Mid Atlantic Ocean, your Army in Paris to Burgundy, and your Army in Marseilles to Spain. (Rather like Chess, the game has its own notation, though it is not necessary to use it. Those orders would be F Bre-MAO, A Par-Bur, A Mar-Spa. They can still be written out in full, though) The game's structure is composed of Years, which are divided into seasons, Spring, Fall and Winter. In Spring, everyone sends in Move orders as in my example. In Fall, the same happens again. Also, at the end of Fall, any Supply Centre (a province that has a coloured circle in it) that has a unit in it becomes the property of the country which controls the unit. For instance, if in Spring France ordered Army Marseilles to Spain, and ordered it to remain there in Fall, there would be a French army in Spain at the end of fall, and so France would own Spain. In winter, adjustments to the number of units are made. Units are built or removed in order that the number of units is equal to the number of Supply Centres owned. In our example, assuming that France captured Spain, and didn't lose control of its starting centres then France would have four centres. Since France starts with three units, France would build one unit in Winter (sending the GM an order like Build Army Paris, or Build A Par) If France moved its fleet in Brest to the Mid Atlantic in Spring and from there to Portugal in Fall, then France would have five centres, and build two units. There are other rules regarding conflict between units and convoys and such, but I'll leave explanation of that to the rules themselves. When someone owns 18 centres, they win. What's important is the Diplomacy aspect of it all. France can't afford to send two of its units into Iberia unless he can be sure he won't be attacked in the first year. Sending his fleet into the Mid Atlantic and then into Portugal isn't a good idea if England is going to order his fleet in London into the English channel and then into Brest, so the player of France has to negotiate furiously either to get England on his side, or to get Germany to attack England and thus keep him occupied. Of course, Germany and England might well be planning an alliance against France, and so how can France be sure that England's promise of an alliance is sincere? The intrigue is what makes the game fun. If you look at our current game's map and compare it with the start, you'll see the horrible consequences Austria suffered for trusting Italy just a little too much.

I still think we should use the standard map, especially since we'll have new players. once we've had a game or two, we can look at playing variants, or at least, I can look at playing or GMing variants. You 'vets' could still set up a variant game of your own.

Well, so far Obsidan Forums' first ever Diplomacy game has been a resounding success, with much fun being had by all involved. Some interest has been expressed by those who missed out on our game in starting a second. At present, we have four possible players (myself, Nartwak, thepixiesrock, and Aishur-Rim-Nisheshu), and need at least three more, depending on if siad people are interested. If necessary, we should be able to pick up the extra players from our current game, but I'd like to give anybody who has an interest but hasn't played an opportunity to get involved. To anyone unfamiliar with the game of Diplomacy, it is a game played on a map of Europe in 1901, with players acting as one of the seven great powers of Europe at the time. Through strategy, planning, and above all diplomacy, players must attempt to gain control of the majority of Europe through wars, alliances, and betrayals. There are a lot of rules (The link goes to a pdf file, which can temporarily hang certain browsers while it downloads, so beware), but once you get the hang of them, they are actually quite intuitive and fairly easy to remember. Here is the starting map. Stars are armies, Anchors fleets, and coloured circles supply centre provinces. And to give you an idea of how the game can play out, here is the map of our current game, after three turns. The colour of England has changed ever so slightly, but the legend is the same. SOme provinces have changed hands, some doing well as a result of their diplomacy, some not doing so well. Finally, here is the thread for our current game, though the game doesn't properly start until post 64, and only public press is shown on the thread, as all negotiations are confidential and done through Email. So, anyone interested?

To be honest, I'd rather we just did it the conventional way, with a single non-player GM, and since we'd have some new players if we started a second game (and possibly even a new GM, if Meta GMs it), I think it would make better sense to have a second standard game. Plus, that Americas variant does strike me as particularly well balanced. Assuming Mets is GMing, we'd have four players off the bat: Aishur, Pixies, Nartwak and I. That means we'd have to get three more players, picking them up either from this game or others on the forum. Since some people might end up in two games, I hereby christen this game OBS1. In general postal and PBEM Diplomacy, all games have a serial number because many people are involved in several games at once. The Serial Number is placed in the header of every correspondence so that players can identify the game they are dealing with. Should we start a second game, all correspondence will have to have those headers, particularly to the GM(s). I'll start a new thread for this.

Read the first post! Deadline for S02: Monday, 18th July, 12:00 UTC <{POST_SNAPBACK}> I am not going back through nineteen pages of banter on the off-chance that you might have mentioned the timetable past the first year. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Dude, I mention that I've updated the first post every time I adjudicate! PS You're welcome

Eris doesn't much like it when we pray to her, so she'd likely get very literal with my prayer. Were I to pray for your safety, she'd probably make you lose all your nails to keep your hands safe, but that wouldn't be so great since you're trying to build something. Instead, I'll just wish you luck.

Read the first post! Deadline for S02: Monday, 18th July, 12:00 UTC

Oooh, now I see. There's a separate thing called Google Accounts, which signs you up for every Google service, including Gmail. So, invites are not necessary after all, it seems.

I don't see how you do that on the main page, and from their FAQ: How do you sign up?

No. One for my non important internet stuff aka kirottu account. One for more important stuff with my real name. One for all the school stuff. And one for all the pr0n stuff. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Why not just have one for it all? I use my Gmail account for everything. If I'm emailing real life friends (as opposed to all you internet-ready supercomputers pretending to be real people), I just sign my real name at the bottom, otherwise I just use my screenname. Anything school related back when I was there just got emailed into one account too.

Oh yeah, and the reason that some forums have a policy against Gmail invites was that a while back you only used to get 5 invites instead of 50, so getting a Gmail account was the Internet equivalent of winning a Ferrari. Which meant that everyone wanted them, and would heavily spam forums in an attempt to get them. Take FARK, for instance. During the frenzy, people would go into every single thread and make a post asking for a Gmail invite, and people looking to make themselves popular would claim they had a few invites which would promptly derail the entire thread into a slum of hundred Gmailless beggars. Little to no discussion could be done because of all the spam, and FARK began to look very unfavourably on anyone offering or asking for an invite. It's far less of a problem now (invites are easy to get), but the stigma remains on many forums.

As I understand it, it just looks for certain words, and generates ads based on that. As Ender said, Google swears it is entirely automated and that your messages aren't read by people. For instance, if you were discussing a transfer of money from one account to another, the software would scan, pick up on the words 'transfer' and 'money', and show small text adverts for Credit Cards. I also don't have 50 invites that you can't get by messaging me. "

Umm...actual ancients, yes. There was one condemned to live on a particular planet and to protect all the planet's inhabitants from the Wraith. She was masquerading as a high-priestess, and blasts a fair number of Wraith ships during the episode. I believe this is the episode of which Steve speaks. Also, there were quite a lot of ancients in the episode near the end of the first series where what's-her-name was on Atlantis back at the time the Wraith were about to defeat the Ancients, who were still living on Atlantis. What I want to see more of is the Furlings. Umm...on second thoughts, maybe not. I don't want some spin-off called Stargate YiffG-1.