My Diplomacy Site

Background

I have had an interest in the game of Diplomacy for many years. I was introduced to it while in high school in the mid 1980's, where a small cabal of us played face to face.

After I left high school, I didn't play again until I found out about the electronic Judges in the early 1990's while doing my MSc in Atmospheric Physics at the University of Toronto. I played in several games, and even joined in the U of T's Diplomacy Club.

At some point in the mid-1990's, I got to know Mark Nelson and found myself involved in the project to get the Diplomacy A-Z updated and on-line for the burgeoning electronic Diplomacy community. I still maintain the HTML version of the Diplomacy A-Z, Version 6.0, which went online November 3, 2002 (and hasn't changed much since, due to a lack of interest from the community).

I don't play Diplomacy much now. I participated in a very long-running game in Northern Flame as Germany, where I teamed with Austria to form the Teutonic Plague and we did very well. I subbed for India in a Youngstown demo game called Reasonland (2013Cxm03) in Diplomacy World. I managed to acquit myself well in what was ultimately a losing cause.

Variants

I also typed in the Variant A-Z, though I don't maintain it. It had the highly predictable side effect of getting me interested in variants. In March of 2000 I completed a large map for the Colonia-VIIB variant. This may have lead as a replacement for China in the game (Sometimes I feel like) Fletcher Christian run in the zine The Abyssinian Prince. Not being of sound mind, I agreed to GM a test game in TAP called A Merry Mixup, in which three players took 3 Powers, then a full game called Harem Scarem.

On February 24, 2008 I added Downfall XIII rules and maps to my site. I took it upon myself to make a better map than was available, and I also prettied-up the rules page.

Promotional Video

On July 11, 2015 I released My Diplomacy Promo video, made in May 2015 for your amusement.

Diplomacy Poetry

As the years pass, I begin to think that I'm an analyst with a poet trying to get out, even though I never studied poetry much in school and have always had trouble trying to decipher other people's work. I got started with limericks, a lot of them being composed while I was playing the Youngstown demo game mentioned above. I moved on to Power-related haiku, and other forms.

Limericks and Haiku	28 Limericks and 10 haiku.
Parodies	Parodies of The Raven and Twas the Night Before Christmas.
My Own Styles	A sonnet, an "A is for Apple" type, and one of my own, plus "Smooth Operator".
Diplomacy by the Letters	One poem for each Power.
Comparing Diplomacy to Soccer	Not poetry, but certainly belongs with the other creative content.
Diplomacy Carols	Christmas Carols, with a Diplomacy twist.

Diplomacy Resources

The biggest and best place to go is the The Diplomatic Pouch.

Feel a need to play online? Try DipBounced. Please don't join any games without making the commitment to play through!

The Diplomacy Archive has a wealth of articles and other stuff about "The Hobby". Some of the people involved have been playing for a long time...

Eternal Sunshine, Doug Kent's zine, which has actually absorbed TAP as a subzine due to first to Jim Burgess' busy schedule and on-again, off-again cancer treatments which, sadly, were ultimately not successful, as he passed away in mid-2017.

Diplomacy World, as venerable an institution as any in the Hobby.

Ten amusing anagrams courtesy of the Anagram Genius server
"The Abyssinian Prince"	"The Game of Diplomacy"
Brainy, nice thespians; Piranha by insistence; An inane, bitchy pisser; The spicy, insane brain; Cheap tennis is brainy; Ribs cheapen insanity; Binary sin cheapens it; Brainy pest in his acne; Cheesy brains in paint; Sanity cheeps in brain.	Employ magic of death; Emphatic, modal fogey; Fetch maimed apology; I'm a gloomy, adept chef; Defame a gloomy pitch; Helped to foamy magic; I'm the mad poof legacy; O My God! I'm a felt peach; Flame cheap moody git; Fool mighty mad peace.