The Board Game of the Alpha Nerds (2014)

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.

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. :)

Related:

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)

In one of the past threads (listed at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49836671), someone posted from the Diplomacy World Championship of 2018: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18161334.

That's one for https://news.ycombinator.com/highlights! (I mention this so more people can know about it and hopefully send us nominations)

> [diplomacy] was inducted into Games Magazine’s hall of fame alongside Monopoly, Clue, and Scrabble.

It takes a diplomacy player to deliver such a bzckhanded accolade.

We used to play Diplomacy at work but it caused too many hard feelings and was a distraction.

Wusses. We played Machiavelli, which was basically Diplomacy with plague and famine phases...

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.

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.

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.

RIP Grantland.

If you like Diplomacy, try "So Long, Sucker." You can destroy friendships in 1/100th of the time.