From: irilyth@fenris.claremont.edu (Josh Smith)
Subject: Re: Dedication points
Originator: irilyth@fenris
Organization: Evil Geniuses For A Better Tomorrow
Date: Tue, 29 Dec 1992 22:05:44 GMT

Joel Furr (jfurr@nyx.cs.du.edu) writes:

> Who is the BNC?  Does he work for Avalon-Hill?  Does Avalon-Hill exercise 
> any control over games played electronically using the Diplomacy name
> other than permitting the maps to be sent out but not the rules?

No clue who the BNC is, or even if it's a single person or a group of people
or what. I saw the name in the Gamer's Guide to Diplomacy, which mentioned
it as a cataloguer of postal games.

> Chapter One, Chapter Two, aaaaugh.  I'm lost in jargon again.

Heh heh heh. I only recently figured all this out myself, and I've fallen
victim to the belief that if I understand something, everyone must
understand it... I'll explain more below.

> What *is* a Diplomacy 'zine as opposed to a magazine about Diplomacy?

Ok. Back in the heyday of postal Diplomacy, various people ran various
Diplomacy zines (and I'm sure there are still postal zines running today,
though I don't know of any offhand). The expression "zine" is related to the
science fiction fan-zine thing; I'm not overly familiar with either, but I
can fake it if I try. (grin) I think that Dip zines typically chronicled a
few ongoing postal games, possibly games which were being moderated by the
zine's editor (but not necessarily, I don't think), and maybe also included
informative or editorial articles from time to time. I don't really know for
sure, but the reporting of results (for every turn, not just end-of-game
reports) and the announcement of forming games was definitely a primary
purpose.

So, you might define zine (in the context of Diplomacy) as "a publication
containing results for (probably something like) 1 - 5 games, and serving as
a contact point for players to find new games." A given game would probably
only be published in one zine; many postal games were not published in any
zine, of course.

So, The Electronic Protocol was originally, I believe, an electronic version
of a postal Diplomacy zine. The increasing popularity of the Washington
Judge complicated things somewhat, since it spawned a host of games whose
results weren't being published in EP, but which used EP's house rules and
being assigned EP numbers. That's probably the source of the split between
EP-the-zine and EP-the-"organization". The Judge made it possible for a game
to be "public" without the need for a zine: anyone could send mail to the
Judge and get a history of a game on the Judge, folks looking for games
could send mail to the Judge, and so on.

Now, about this "Chapter" thing. I wondered for the longest time if it
referred to chapters in a book, or a regional chapter of an organization, or
what. It appears to be the former. Publishing/editing a zine is a lot of
work, and so Eric Klien, the original publisher of EP, decided to split EP
into chapters. Each chapter had a "guest editor", who would be responsible
for assembling and mailing out reports for a few e-mail games. You can
imagine a postal zine doing this too: all you're doing is dividing a zine
that is threatening to get too large for any one person to handle into
multiple sections, calling them "chapters", and calling the people
responsible for each chapter "guest editors".

This making sense so far? Well, EP's Chapter Two was apparently dedicated
(at some point) to chronicling games played on the Judge. I don't know how
much this was actually done, since as I mentioned, this seems kind of
useless when anyone can get a list of the status of a game on the Judge just
by sending the Judge mail. Probably because of that fact, EPC2 began to
drift away from publishing game results, and more towards publishing
articles about Diplomacy: status reports on the various Judges, contests
about Diplomacy trivia, commentary on Diplomacy openings, and so on.
Meanwhile, as the Judge(s) began to dominate the e-mail hobby, the other
chapters of EP slowly died out, leaving only EPC1 as a real Diplomacy zine--
and I don't think I've seen an issue of EPC1 in a while either, so it's not
clear whether it's still really alive and kicking or not.

That's pretty much where we are today, and hopefully explaines what I mean
when I say that EPC2's present incarnation is more of a magazine than a
zine: it contains articles about Diplomacy rather than lists of Diplomacy
results.

> How often is EP published?

The separate chapters of EP are published separately; EPC2 will hopefully
come out on a biweekly basis, but I may have to go to triweekly or monthly
depending on my schedule (and how much material I have to publish at any
given time).

> I'd sure appreciate anyone who has a copy archived sending it to me...

Nick Fitzpatrick is purportedly going to be uploading his back-issue
archives to my site shortly, and I plan to make them available for anonymous
ftp when he does. I'm presently planning to set up an ftp archive here on
fenris, since the main one at the moment is in Germany, and connection times
are often really miserable... I'll post an announcement when the archive is
all set up.

> So "EP Chapter Two" doesn't ever really appear as the second part of a
> two-part post containing "EP Chapter One"?  I think part of my confusion
> stems from the use of "EP" to mean
> 
> 1) a loosely organized governing body that assigns reference numbers and 
>    keeps a hall of fame

That's what it's come to mean since the demise of EP as a zine publishing
turn results.

> 2) a magazine with two parts, one of which no longer gets published

It was actually once a zine with as many as eight parts, six of which are
definitely defunct, and one of which may be.

> 3) a set of house rules used by Judge games

As I mentioned, most zines have house rules governing the games they
publish; EP's were extended to cover the various Judges.

So, a few more definitions.

EP : The Electronic Protocol, once an electronic Diplomacy zine; now mostly
     (entirely?) defunct in that regard.

EP house rules : A set of house rules governing e-mail Diplomacy play. They
		 were originally only used by games published in the pages
		 of EP itself, but are now used by any games played on the
		 Washington and EFF Judges (and presumably the Durban and
		 Australia Judges as well, though I don't know or sure).

EP number : A reference number assigned to game played using EP house rules.
	    They were originally only assigned to games published in the
	    pages of EP itself, but are now assigned to any games played
            using EP house rules (if the moderator asks for one; you don't
            have to have an EP number if you don't want one).

Making more sense? Keep asking questions if you still have 'em!
-- 
Josh Smith, User Support Coordinator  ::  irilyth@fenris.claremont.edu
Harvey Mudd College, Claremont CA     ::  consult(std-disclaimer.pl).
"It takes a big man to cry, but it takes a bigger man to laugh at that man."
Newsgroups: rec.games.diplomacy