Diplomacy at Techwood Con!

[Guest]

Archived from groups: rec.games.diplomacy (More info?)

Any Dippers in the Atlanta area, or who happen to be in the
neighborhood, are invited to Techwood Con January 7-9 2005 for some good
old-fashioned face to face action! Reply here or on the Con's online
forum (link below) so we can gauge the level of interest. (If we have a
lot of people showing up we can have a tournament!)

Since I will be presiding over this corner of the Con, and have never
done so before, I'm also interested in suggestions for how to and how
not to run a FTF game/tournament. Specifically, I'm interested in
suggestions for time management. Should the game "pause" for
adjudication in between seasons, or should adjudication time be part of
the next season's diplomacy period? Limit the game to a certain amount
of time, end the game after 1908, let it go as long as necessary?

Assuming we have enough players for a tournament: Someone recently
mentioned that having game scoring affects the game and therefore the
players should decide who advances to the next round in order to
preserve the mechanics of play. Is there precedent for this? Like,
each player casts one vote (not for himself) for who should advance to
the next round? Sounds like a Carebear invitational to me.

And along that vein, what is most conventional in deciding the outcome
when there is no single winner? Center count? My gut is, either there
is a (singular) winner, or there is a draw between all players not yet
eliminated; if you don't like it, keep playing! I hear the Web judges
consider a draw to be between all players with units on the board - not
the same thing.

Is this commonly followed?
http://www.diplomacy-archive.com/resources/ftf/fred_townsend.htm

--
Will Berry
Director of Operations, Techwood Con gaming convention
http://www.techwoodcon.com/

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: rec.games.diplomacy (More info?)

Will Berry <wberry@wberry.org.x> writes:

I am a big fan of Brandon Clarke (and the Detour98f scoring system
and tournament rules that he helped to create)

http://www.diplom.org/Zine/F1999R/Clarke/runit.html -- Article

http://www.diplom.org/Zine/F1999R/Clarke/rules.html -- Rules

There is no perfection and all structures have strengths and
weaknesses, but if you DON'T know what you want to do, you
can do far worse than follow all that advice to the letter.

Since you're doing an Atlanta, Georgia event, the VERY next weekend
the illustrious Chris Martin will be Tournament Director for a
Convention in Augusta, Georgia, associated with this tournament:
http://www.cfnson.com/siege/

All you Georgia area dippers are going to have a VERY busy January!!!

Jim-Bob

>Any Dippers in the Atlanta area, or who happen to be in the
>neighborhood, are invited to Techwood Con January 7-9 2005 for some good
>old-fashioned face to face action! Reply here or on the Con's online
>forum (link below) so we can gauge the level of interest. (If we have a
>lot of people showing up we can have a tournament!)

>Since I will be presiding over this corner of the Con, and have never
>done so before, I'm also interested in suggestions for how to and how
>not to run a FTF game/tournament. Specifically, I'm interested in
>suggestions for time management. Should the game "pause" for
>adjudication in between seasons, or should adjudication time be part of
>the next season's diplomacy period? Limit the game to a certain amount
>of time, end the game after 1908, let it go as long as necessary?

>Assuming we have enough players for a tournament: Someone recently
>mentioned that having game scoring affects the game and therefore the
>players should decide who advances to the next round in order to
>preserve the mechanics of play. Is there precedent for this? Like,
>each player casts one vote (not for himself) for who should advance to
>the next round? Sounds like a Carebear invitational to me.

>And along that vein, what is most conventional in deciding the outcome
>when there is no single winner? Center count? My gut is, either there
>is a (singular) winner, or there is a draw between all players not yet
>eliminated; if you don't like it, keep playing! I hear the Web judges
>consider a draw to be between all players with units on the board - not
>the same thing.

>Is this commonly followed?
>http://www.diplomacy-archive.com/resources/ftf/fred_townsend.htm

>--
>Will Berry
>Director of Operations, Techwood Con gaming convention
>http://www.techwoodcon.com/

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: rec.games.diplomacy (More info?)

I would so totally be there (being a Tech student and all) but I will
still be on winter break hopefully playing Diplomacy one of those days.

Will Berry wrote:
> Any Dippers in the Atlanta area, or who happen to be in the
> neighborhood, are invited to Techwood Con January 7-9 2005 for some good
> old-fashioned face to face action! Reply here or on the Con's online
> forum (link below) so we can gauge the level of interest. (If we have a
> lot of people showing up we can have a tournament!)
>
> Since I will be presiding over this corner of the Con, and have never
> done so before, I'm also interested in suggestions for how to and how
> not to run a FTF game/tournament. Specifically, I'm interested in
> suggestions for time management. Should the game "pause" for
> adjudication in between seasons, or should adjudication time be part of
> the next season's diplomacy period? Limit the game to a certain amount
> of time, end the game after 1908, let it go as long as necessary?
>
> Assuming we have enough players for a tournament: Someone recently
> mentioned that having game scoring affects the game and therefore the
> players should decide who advances to the next round in order to
> preserve the mechanics of play. Is there precedent for this? Like,
> each player casts one vote (not for himself) for who should advance to
> the next round? Sounds like a Carebear invitational to me.
>
> And along that vein, what is most conventional in deciding the outcome
> when there is no single winner? Center count? My gut is, either there
> is a (singular) winner, or there is a draw between all players not yet
> eliminated; if you don't like it, keep playing! I hear the Web judges
> consider a draw to be between all players with units on the board - not
> the same thing.
>
> Is this commonly followed?
> http://www.diplomacy-archive.com/resources/ftf/fred_townsend.htm
>

--
Nick Bendler nbendler@cc.gatech.edu
Sophomore gtg844r@mail.gatech.edu

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: rec.games.diplomacy (More info?)

Nick Bendler wrote:
> I would so totally be there (being a Tech student and all) but I will
> still be on winter break hopefully playing Diplomacy one of those days.

Hey, if home isn't too far away, just relocate the game to the Con! Eh?

--
Will Berry
Director of Operations, Techwood Con gaming convention
http://www.techwoodcon.com/

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: rec.games.diplomacy (More info?)

"Will Berry" <wberry@wberry.org.x> wrote in message
news:1tVkd.5360$IQ.467@bignews6.bellsouth.net...
> Nick Bendler wrote:
> > I would so totally be there (being a Tech student and all) but I will
> > still be on winter break hopefully playing Diplomacy one of those days.
>
> Hey, if home isn't too far away, just relocate the game to the Con! Eh?

Will, I might be able to make it, as I live in Alpharetta, but if there's
any conflict with the Falcons, forget it! They're my one and only!

Maybe you should send an invite to the Southern Gentlemen mailing list.
They're a group centered around a few guys in Buford. I only played with
them once, but some of them might be interested in attending a Con in the
ATL. I don't think any of them had gone to a convention before. The group
email is sgdip@yahoogroups.com.


Grant

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: rec.games.diplomacy (More info?)

Will Berry <wberry@wberry.org.x> wrote in message news:<juCkd.10740$z3.169@bignews5.bellsouth.net>...
> Any Dippers in the Atlanta area, or who happen to be in the
> neighborhood, are invited to Techwood Con January 7-9 2005 for some good
> old-fashioned face to face action! Reply here or on the Con's online
> forum (link below) so we can gauge the level of interest. (If we have a
> lot of people showing up we can have a tournament!)

Will,

I'm local (sort of -- Woodstock) and interested. Any additional info
will be appreciated.

Martin Moore

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: rec.games.diplomacy (More info?)

Martin Moore wrote:
>
> I'm local (sort of -- Woodstock) and interested. Any additional info
> will be appreciated.

Cool! Right now I can only comfortably assume there will be enough
people there for a single game; maybe two with some common players.
That's based on people telling me "yes I am interested", or "yes I'll be
there". Hopefully we can have enough people for a two-round tournament
by January. Work your connections! Even if there is no full
tournament, you are likely to run into other Dippers with whom you can
build communication.

We will have some kind of prize for the winner if it's a single game: a
T-shirt, free pass to next year, something like that. If we have a
tournament we will of course have nicer prizes.

The big decision is what day and time to start the Dip game(s): Friday,
Saturday, or Sunday, what time of day, etc. On impulse I would say
Saturday or Sunday at 2pm, but I'm all ears. You can get on the Con's
forum (no e-mail verification required) and follow-up to the Diplomacy
thread in the board gaming area to weigh in on that.

I would like to be able to use the Dip Timer application to enforce time
limits (I was impressed with it in FTF play earlier this year), but my
laptop runs Linux, so I would need a donor laptop. Worst case we can
use an egg timer or something. I have a spreadsheet that does pretty
well with tracking SC ownership, though of course the 2000 edition of
the game has the handy flag markers as well. I will provide paper
copies of the conference map.

I'm thinking about a hard limit of 20 minutes per season, with the
beginning of each season starting with the adjudication of previous
season's orders. Is that a good idea? In my experience adjudication
time ends up causing a lot of delay due to people lollygagging around in
"dead time". Another minor detail comes to mind that I will consider
the house rules documents about: using a shoebox for orders submission.
How effective is that in everyone's experience?

There's also the issue of tournament rules, should there be sufficient
demand for a tournament. I'm still reading the recommendation from
Jim-Bob and other places and mulling them over; right now I would go
with Jim-Bob's recommendation, but again I am open to suggestions.

I will definitely keep the Con forum updated with details, and I'll also
try and keep rgd current without being spammish about it. Feel free to
e-mail me personally over anything at all. Thanks for your interest,
and I hope to see you at Techwood Con!

--
Will Berry
Director of Operations, Techwood Con gaming convention
http://www.techwoodcon.com/