Went to the game shop Wednesday night, with the full intention of buying a copy of Diplomacy and getting all good and caught up. I’m thinking it’s going to essentially be a paper and pencil game, since everyone plays it online and such. I tell the clerk what I’m looking for, and he takes me over to the Avalon Hill section, and pulls out a huge box. I glance at the pricetag, and see: $46.
$46?!? Are you kidding me? I’m used to playing Kill Dr. Lucky ($6), Chrononauts ($9) and Deadwood ($4). $46?!? I could get the new Knights of the Old Republic for that! But there’s a reason I’m not playing Knights right now - it’s the holidays, and I’m short on cash.
So dejected, I walk back to my car and drive home. The next morning I e-mail Shibb, who has just sent me a wonderful recap of rules, suggestions and advice. Explaining the situation, he suggests giving eBay a look-see. I’m a bit skeptical of the shipping time involved with eBay, knowing for sure something couldn’t get to me in time for the first round of moves. In a final plea, I sent out an e-mail at work to see if anyone had a copy sitting in their basement waiting to be used.
I then checked out the maps at the Dip Pouch, and lo and behold, full color printable maps and rules! So I run them off, give them a read, and head to Target to get supplies to make my own game. A 12"x12" piece of corkboard, a full-color map, colored thumbtacks and a Sharpie to identify fleets later, I’m all set!
'Course, first thing this morning, one of my bosses appears in hand with a nearly mint, fully intact, 1976 Avalon Diplomacy game, all for me!
I too, am appaled at Hasbro’s price tag. I got my old fashioned copy off of ebay about 2 years ago and it was quite inexpensive and an easy transaction.
See, good things do happen to good people… he says while playing nice nice now but setting up for a stab later.
I didn’t understand that you didn’t know that the map (in dozens of versions) and the rules are available online.
There are versions of the map that include interactive unit markers, so you can move the units around. And usually the GM will post a map with unit locations on their website (if they have a website) after every move.
No real need to own a copy of the game itself, any more than you need a chessboard to play chess online. In my mind, Diplomacy was made for the age of the Internet, internet games make more sense than face to face games.
RTFirefly, I think we can all agree to refrain from negotiations until you are back, and have a new round of country assignments then (although if people submit the same preferences we should get the same results).
Not necessarily. I hear that Weirddave had his baby puke on a chart to see who got assigned which colors.
Munch, good to hear you found a set, but I think what I was really saying pretty much echoed Lemur. You may be the most overprepared newbie ever to play Diplomacy. Too bad you’re playing Turkey! I kid, I kid!
Thanks to the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act (CTEA) in 1998, copyright extends for 70 years after the death of the author or 95 years for corporations.
There have been several versions of Diplomacy. The 1976 rules are slightly different from the most recent version. But the differences are generally related to odd situations that really don’t happen that often. ( I thought that I had seen a discussion of the changes somewhere, but I can’t find it now. )
For anyone interested, I run my games on my website here. If that’s not enough information to follow the games, I dunno what is.
If everyone agrees to wait to negotiate, I’m fine with waiting until after Jan 1. It would have to be on everyone’s honor, of course, and RT would have to be fine with that.
