From: Michael.Norrish@comp.vuw.ac.nz (Michael Norrish)
Subject: Re: Historical Variant?
Organization: Dept. of Computer Science, Victoria Uni. of Wellington, NZ.
	<1993Jan5.204844.12434@mnemosyne.cs.du.edu>
Date: Wed, 6 Jan 1993 21:15:45 GMT

>>>>> On Tue, 5 Jan 93 20:48:44 GMT, jfurr@nyx.cs.du.edu (Joel Furr)
>>>>> said:

Joel> In article <DIPL-L%93010512131700@MITVMA.BITNET>
Joel> BLT@OSUCC.BITNET writes:

>Dear fellow list members,
>
>    Are there any variants out there that attempt to make Diplomacy
>more historically accurate. Diplomacy is an excellent, well-balanced,
>fun game that recreates well the diplomatic negotiations of the time,
>but it's somewhat lacking as a historical simulator. There are two
>areas for improvement that I see:

Joel> Diplomacy as it exists gives each person more or less the same
Joel> odds of winning, since everyone starts out equal except for
Joel> Russia, who has more fronts to defend.  Making it "historically
Joel> accurate" would mean making France, England, and Germany more
Joel> powerful and Austria, Italy, and Turkey less so.  Diplomacy is
Joel> *not* a World War One simulation game.  It's a game that happens
Joel> to use the map of Europe for its gameboard and draws flavor from
Joel> doing so but that's where it ends.  Diplomacy changed to
Joel> represent the strengths of the powers of the time would no
Joel> longer be Diplomacy.

Well that's true tautologically, but it might still be interesting
don't you think? Look at the Britain variant, (a game of which, senlac,
is waiting for just one more player on the Washington judge, plug plug
:-). This starts out with an unbalanced situation but (presumably) the
other players can take this into account when they plot and scheme.
The 'perfect' diplomacy game never progresses remember, the pack
quickly moves to counteract any large lurches the game may make.
(Seven gamers trying to balance themselves on the head of a pin, I can
just see it :-)

>2) Separate the diplomatic struggle for control over small countries
>   and colonies from the military struggle. It was mainly a non-
>   military struggle from 1901 until WWI began in 1914. Some
>   provision would have to be made for the off-map colonies that were
>   negotiated over (e.g. France and Germany over Morocco, France and
>   England over Egypt, England and Russia over Persia). Maybe there
>   should be non- military units that can establish control over
>   minor countries and colonies while that military units wait for
>   war to break out. Or maybe the game shouldn't even try to simulate
>   the military part and should end when war breaks out.

Joel> The Youngstown variant brings in Asia: India, Japan, and China.
Joel> Even so, this doesn't make it a colonial powers struggle.

I think the game Pax Britannica tries to attempt this. I haven't
played it, but it is of about the right period and as I've heard, it
finishes when everything escalates into global war. I imagine it
doesn't have rules that are as nice as Diplomacy's though. So does
anyone want to port PB's nice features, (colonial stuff etc), to a Dip
variant?

That, I think would be the real win. I'd like a historical game
that was simple to play, that looked as if it might almost be a
simulation of the period but which wasn't so honour-bound to the
period that players had little choice but to recreate history exactly.
Is it possible to come up with such a game?

Incidentally, there is an economic variant called Perestroika about
that purports to slow the game down a bit. Its basic idea is that with
as much to gain from trade, people aren't necessarily as keen to go to
war. Is there a variants' bank online yet? I'm sure it'd be a useful
resource. 

Joel> I guess what it keeps coming down to is this: Diplomacy uses a map of the
Joel> real world for a gameboard and draws flavor from it, but is NOT a
Joel> recreation of any historical period or events as they happened in the real
Joel> world.  Making it more "accurate" would sacrifice the diceless, "pure"
Joel> strategy aspect that makes Diplomacy such a popular, timeless
Joel> game.

Is a game necessarily less pure, just because it's accurate? Is it
really impossible to use an abstract ruleset to 'recreate' historical,
(i.e. not ahistorical), situations?

Thanks to both previous posters, Joel and <someone at dipl-l>, for
bringing up this discussion as it's a topic I've wanted to thrash
about a bit for a long time.

Michael.



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