Internet Diplomacy
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Internet Diplomacy refers to any of a number of online implementations of Diplomacy, a board game in which seven players, each controlling one of the major European powers of the early 20th century, fight for control over Europe.
Instead of communicating face-to-face, as in the board games, or by mail, as in the play-by-mail games, communication and order submission is done over the internet. Typically orders are processed by software, but in the earlier systems a person called a GameMaster would process the orders manually.
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[edit] Background
Internet Diplomacy is popular for many reasons, including avoiding the hassles of playing the game face-to-face, and the lack of availability of local players. The face-to-face game commonly lasts several hours and since seven players are needed, it is often hard to find enough players with enough free time for a game.
Internet Diplomacy can bring together players from anywhere in the world, with deadlines varying between a few minutes to a week, and allows players to play multiple games at the same time. The role of GameMaster, depending on the specific implementation, can be minimized to setup and resolution of rules questions/disputes, or even eliminated entirely.
This makes Internet Diplomacy the preferred choice for many, but it is not without it's flaws. Plain text messages aren't as good as face-to-face conversation for back-and-forth discussion or watching for signs of deception. Also playing with relatively anonymous remote players may be less emotionally rewarding than playing with close friends.
[edit] Play by e-mail
Play-by-e-mail internet Diplomacy followed from Play-by-mail games dating to 1970s fan zines. Similar to standard mail games, players originally sent press directly to one another through e-mail, and sent their orders via e-mail to a pre-designated human GameMaster.
[edit] E-mail judges
As e-mail became more prevalent software Judges were developed, which would route e-mails addressed from one player to another, and route submitted orders and results to/from human GameMaster(s). As well as routing messages they provided more accountability and security, a place where all the info about the game could be stored and retrieved, and provided a way to keep scores of players from multiple games.
These software Judges were eventually extended to include adjudicators, which are pieces of software capable of resolving orders and producing results, thus replacing the human GameMaster with software. As the number of adjudicators grew, the Diplomacy Adjudicator Test Cases were written so that adjudicators could have a fixed standard to comply to.
Variants to the original map and rules were also added to judges. As it is sometimes difficult to find many people who are familiar with the same variant in a face-to-face environment, and the addition of software expanded the possibilities for variants, many variants have typically been specific to Internet Diplomacy.
[edit] Ken Lowe Judge
The Ken Lowe Judge system was the first judge system to be created.[1]. The Ken Lowe Judge system allows users to send press to one another and send orders to the processing server. This is achieved through a variety of text commands. Today, many separate adjudication systems run in the same, or similar, fashion to the Ken Lowe Judges.
[edit] NJudge
Njudge was a rewrite of the Ken Lowe Judge system, with more support added for different variants. This version of the judge software was created by Nathan Wagner, then Judgekeeper (Administrator for a Judge Server) to clean up issues that arose over the years due to the multiple different programmers who had made adjustments the original code. This software program continues to be used on a number of email servers, and continues to be developed.
[edit] Web/e-mail interfaces
In recent years as the web has become more dynamic Internet Diplomacy has shifted from e-mail to the web. Due to the complexity of adjudicators and judges, the earliest web implementations primarily provided a web interface to the e-mail based Judges.
One of the main advantages of web-based implementations over previous options is that they can display computer-generated graphical maps of the current board on the web-page, instead of requiring the user to update the positions of the game's units on a physical board based on text output.
[edit] The DPjudge
In 1995, Manus Hand created the DPjudge, among the first to use a web interface for an email judge. DPJudge allows players to view maps, game history, enter orders and write press to other players through a web interface, however some features, including signing up for a new game, or filling a vacancy in a game in progress, require email usage. The DPjudge is also able to handle numerous variant maps and rules, in addition to the standard map and rules as published by Hasbro.
[edit] Diplomaticcorp
Organized in September 2000, Diplomaticcorp is a Diplomacy community that offers standard and variant Play-By-Email and Live games. Approximately 100 variants are documented and playable. Also home to the DipWiki, the first online community-content-driven strategy and variant library. All games are run by a human GM (game master), no automated systems. Besides having colorful graphics, maps, a large database and player stats, there's also a wide-ranging forum for games and related topics of interest.
[edit] Web based
The most recent Diplomacy via web implementations were created for the web from scratch. This gives the advantage of allowing more complex feauters to be added (e.g. allowing point-and-click orders), but requires that complex adjudicator code be rewritten.
[edit] DipBounced
DipBounced, created by Christian Shelton, has an interface that relies upon a variety of frames, allowing players to switch between internalized press information, maps, orders and game rules. DipBounced press and orders are stored in a database structure.
[edit] phpDiplomacy
Started in December 2004[2], phpDiplomacy is an attempt to make Diplomacy more accessible to people who haven't played Diplomacy before as a board game. Orders are entered by choosing valid options from drop-down lists, instead of being entered in with text, and a points system is used to let players find people of their own skill level to play with.
Since it's open source it can be used to help create new web-diplomacy sites more easily, such as Facebook Diplomacy.
[edit] Stabbeurfou
Started in September 2005, stabbeurfou was first built in French, then translated to be bilingual English/French. It has full features to play standard Diplomacy but is aimed at hosting tournaments. Its simple interface makes it accessible for beginner players, while also offering various tools for orders translations, map building etc. It is hosting an attempt to implement a world cup in Diplomacy, the Diplomacy National World Cup.
[edit] PLAYdiplomacy
Started in December 2007, based on phpDiplomacy[3], PLAYdiplomacy.com is a web-diplomacy site which offers a point-and-click interface for order submission, and hosts a range of variants for more experienced players.
[edit] References
- ^ "What is njudge?" by Millis Miller, The Diplomatic Pouch, S2002R, retrieved October 4, 2006
- ^ "phpDiplomacy - Starting off"
- ^ PLAYdiplomacy about page
