By Popular Demand. A word game! Anyone may join at any time.
Hardbop Downfall. Game Name: Moria. Need seven. Have five: Vincent Springer, Tim Lurz, Phil Reynolds, Kevin Wilson, Bill Scharf.
Regular Diplomacy. Need seven. Have Wayne Gossman, Fred Weidemeyer.
Not a game opening, per se. I will add game openings for any Diplomacy variant (including the straight game) that any two of you request. (See list of suggested games on page 3.) I'll start the first variant game (not Regular) to gather a full roster of playerrs. I will keep the remaining openings until a second game fills (this one could be regular), but the second game will not start until one of the currently running Diplomacy games (including the Fog-of-War) finishes.
The more observant of you will no doubt notice some changes in the Diplomacy game maps.
Please take a look at the map for Wynoochee River, on page 11. I've been reading the
manual for the graphics program I use to do the maps, and have added a bit more color.
What do you think? Admittedly, the French colors on the web page need some help.
Should I do them all that way, or go back to the plain white background?
Flying Dutchmen. In the context of Diplomacy, they would be units
surreptitiously put on
the board to give a player a material advantage. I broach the subject because of a few
mis-orders this time around. The rule book is quite clear about ambiguous orders. They are
not
to be followed. So if, for instance, someone writes "F Nor - Nor" the order is ambiguous (in
the extreme), invalid, and not to be followed. That's easy enough for wet-ware, but how to
tell a computer adjudication program what to do with it? My solution is the "Flying
Dutchman". Now, I can add a spurious unit to show the invalid order(s) in the game reports
but it won't get carried forward to the next turn. At least, that's the intention. If you notice
any extraneous units in the Dip games, please let me know.
Several variants have been suggested: Final Conflict III, Conquest of the New World, 1499,
Woolworth IIA, Colonia, 1492, and two Middle Earth Variants. Rules for the latter four may
be found on the Variant Bank web site; links to those rules are on the o-t-s home page. If
anyone can provide rules to the other four variants, I'd consider them.
Othervise, not
I suggested a different variant in the hopes something different or with fewer players would
fill sooner. Unless (enough) other players give an enthusiastic response to some of these
other games, fewer players would be better than more. If nine players wanted to jump at
Colonia, I'd have only one problem running it: we'd need to get the map loaded into my
database. I already have the powers and year sequence set up because of the Miller Number
Custodian work. There are two tables that need to be built: Spaces and legal Moves. The
Spaces should be easy enough to load from a hacked up copy of the rules. I'd want some
help from the players for the Moves. That consists of a record for every starting
space/destination space combination.
For example: The regular Dip board has 82 space records and 436 Move records; Hardbop
has 111 Spaces & 563 Moves. We'd need something on the order of 5 times the 260
Colonia spaces, or about 1300 moves. 130 I'd be willing to do, if the nine players would all
do the same.
I'll need the same help for any other variant we want to run. 1492 is out as I'd have to
create a board and enter all the legal moves. It ain't gonna happen folks!
Enjoy the zine!
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