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Pifanjr 11 minutes ago [-]
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.
(Reposts are fine after a year or so; links to past threads are just to satisfy extra-curious readers)
xanath0n 1 hours ago [-]
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.
DannyPage 12 hours ago [-]
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.
cortesoft 10 hours ago [-]
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.
jbm 9 hours ago [-]
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.
cortesoft 9 hours ago [-]
I might when they get a bit older. My oldest is 10, which is a bit young I think.
euroderf 2 hours ago [-]
Good point. What WOULD be the minimum age recommendation for Diplomacy ? A kid would have to be ready for blatant manipulation and mendacity.
DonHopkins 1 hours ago [-]
Trump's more than ready for that, and he acts like he's 5.
comrade1234 12 hours ago [-]
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. :)
michaelsbradley 12 hours ago [-]
Did you play Fortress America?
comrade1234 12 hours ago [-]
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.
ropable 3 hours ago [-]
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).
Pifanjr 44 minutes ago [-]
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.
pyrale 11 hours ago [-]
> [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.
bryanrasmussen 2 hours ago [-]
Not sure it's all that backhanded? They didn't say alongside Candyland, Operation, and Tic, Tac, Toe.
alwaysmrno 48 minutes ago [-]
This was a fantastic read. Loved it.
I will never play the game but i loved reading about it.
parasubvert 6 hours ago [-]
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.
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.
pavel_lishin 12 hours ago [-]
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.
spencerflem 11 hours ago [-]
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
2muchcoffeeman 11 hours ago [-]
Finding a good group is hard. Too many board gamers don’t realise that these are _games_.
ViscountPenguin 8 hours ago [-]
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.
2muchcoffeeman 4 minutes ago [-]
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.
Mugshelf 7 hours ago [-]
Ah, the good old days of optimizing turns instead of database queries. Pretty sure a few friendships died over this game.
pimlottc 5 hours ago [-]
Great article, sadly it seems that the footnotes are no longer working
jrjarrett 8 hours ago [-]
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.
BashiBazouk 11 hours ago [-]
Wusses. We played Machiavelli, which was basically Diplomacy with plague and famine phases...
kelt_row 8 hours ago [-]
Remember this one? Felt like it was trying a bit too hard to be 'meta' back then. Definitely a product of its time.
syngrog66 2 hours ago [-]
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.
gspr 2 hours ago [-]
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 ;)
papa-whisky 11 hours ago [-]
RIP Grantland.
xoxxala 12 hours ago [-]
We used to play Diplomacy at work but it caused too many hard feelings and was a distraction.
swaits 7 hours ago [-]
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.
stackghost 11 hours ago [-]
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.
pessimizer 11 hours ago [-]
If you like Diplomacy, try "So Long, Sucker." You can destroy friendships in 1/100th of the time.
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.
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)
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.
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.
It takes a diplomacy player to deliver such a backhanded accolade.
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.
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 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.
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.
But oh man, the things we said to each other would make a Marine drill sergeant blush.
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 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 ;)
Other people, not so much.
https://youtu.be/oNG1DkS_f4g?t=132