Dipsters.org Forum

First please read the post, "Welcome! Using the Forum".

1. Chris Babcock
   

   I would really like to start seeing the online Diplomacy leading to more face to face games. Right now there's a couple obstacles to this. The biggest are these:

   On play-by-email servers, in which category I include DPjudge and the nJudge wrappers on USAK because neither platform allows you to play without a valid email address, people don't network because there is no social structure set up around the games... yet.

   On play-by-web servers, the social networks exist, but conversion to face to face play is restricted by a misguided notion of privacy that asks people to use names like "HellR@zor" and "swift2plunder" as opposed to real names.

   I'm hoping that efforts like my own on USAK and Alan's here will lead to a new best of breed of Diplomacy communications - a social network for the hobby that uses real names and where privacy is best served by not behaving regrettably. It's not that far off, really.

   I'm hoping that one outcome of this might be the ability to get together some face to face games.

   Chris

   Posted 11 months ago #

2. Eric Hunter
   

   I would say the biggest obstacle is getting 7 people in the same place at the same time for 7+ hours. I have to drive two hours to do it, and I'm lucky enough to be within two hours of Philly/Baltimore/DC.

   Eric.

   Posted 11 months ago #

3. Dorian Love
   

   In South Africa it is nigh on impossible to get seven people together at the same time given the huge distances involved. Tournaments are also timed simultaneously with wargames, and most diplomacy players are also wargamers, so...

   Posted 11 months ago #

4. Chris Babcock
   

   I have had 10-15 people signed up on a Yahoogroup to play in Phoenix for a few years and I have met one other player - twice. I'm also pretty sure that the players registered on USAK as being from Phoenix aren't on that list.

   I'm pretty certain now that Yahoogroups is the last place to organize face to face meetings. I've seen MeetUps work and I have also seen them not work.

   Distances and fuel costs are certainly factors, but I'm also talking about resistance. Edi Birsan busted his hump on the phpDip-based sites this past year trying to get people out to live events where there were players scheduled with very little positive response and some shocking negatives.

   I don't think that getting play by email players into chat rooms and forums is going to change face to face Diplomacy, but I do think it is an important step towards making organizing players into communities that are more likely to open to live and in-person contact than some existing communities.

   On a side note, there are people interested in Diplomacy MeetUps and and 34 interested in War Game MeetUps in Phoenix. Rolling up Dip and WG in a MeetUp would probably be a bad idea, wouldn't it?

   Chris

   Posted 11 months ago #

5. Dave Simpson
   

   I'm finding the same issues in the UK, where the distances involved are not as vast as the US or South Africa, but the same issues of transferring email players into F2F players and the time, travel and financial commitments to go play the game are still serious obstacles.

   I took the step of finding all the players registered on the USAL judge, pulling out everyone with UK address information and inviting them to the UKF2FDIP Yahoo group. The signup hit rate was better than I expected, but even then, it's no sign that the people joining the group will ever commit to anything F2F.

   I'm not sure what the answers are to this, but I have yet to find an internet site where game or tournament organisers can get together to swap ideas and create some kind of best-of-breed solutions to these issues. If such a thing doesn't exist, then where would _that_ be created and would that suffer the same lasck of time problems.

   People are busy and seem to find difficulties finding the time to play F2F, even when they know an organised event is going to take place. It's hard to commit to the amount of time required, but to be honest, it is a lot less overall time than the effort required to win a full press game against decent players as emails there can take a few hours every week. I know I have had other demands on my time when I have sat at the keyboard to fire off some press or submit orders for a bunch of games knowing that I have deadlines to meet and don't want to go late and I am sure most others here would say the same.

   So, admittedly I have no answers to issues and problems, but I would be happy to discuss this further somewhere with like minded people...

   Cheers,

   Dave.

   Posted 6 months ago #

6. Alan Lange
   

   I apologize to the community for not blocking the GET WHOIS on USAL. It has been blocked now.

   Alan
   USAL JK

   Posted 6 months ago #

7. Chris Babcock
   

   There's a fine line to walk between privacy and accessibility and nJudge somehow manages to be wrong in every possible way. The ability to anonymously retrieve the entire user base in a default install is one of the worst.

   Expectations concerning privacy have changed even more than the enabling technologies. USAK is one of few judges, I think, that even has a privacy policy:

   http://usak.asciiking.com/privacy.html

   It's terrible. I know it's terrible. I just don't know what to do about it. Well, I do know what to do, but it involves a nearly complete replacement of much of the hobby infrastructure.

   Chris

   Posted 5 months ago #

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