I have classified the 178 postings in this period into the following groups. You may easily look at the summary of each topic by clicking on the subject below:
David Kovar's original suggestion was to finance a stand-alone Judge which did not piggyback its internet access from either a commercial or university account. The main advantages in having such a machine would be to provide:
Pitt Crandlemire was quick to enlarge upon David's original ideas and suggested that a fee structure be introduced as a de facto standard for Judges, including machines which piggyback their feeds. In two posts, Pitt wrote, "I'm sure that twenty dollars is a picayune amount for just about everybody. I'm certain there are some exceptions to this but I think that they'll be few and far between. I find it hard to believe that anyone can't afford twenty dollars a year." Pitt's ideas generated more feedback than David's original suggestion.
Michael A. Bachelor and Rob Paar pointed out that the introduction of fees would increase record keeping and several postees (notable Marc Potter) suggested that charging fees would result in legal complications which would might be too much of a problem to be practical: would it be legal to collect money, and would a nonprofit corporation have to be setup? Marc Potter commented, "I don't like penalizing those players who can't (or won't) afford to send money" and Tim from Penn State University pointed out that twenty dollars is a considerable amount of money in some countries. I make the observation that using the internet would become considerable less friendly if there was a fee for every utility.
Most posters preferred to raise money through voluntary, rather than compulsory, means. Tyler Maschino, in a posting dated 10th March, wrote:
Fintan Costello noted that "[the] initial money for the purchase of the machine would be easy enough to raise, however the monthly comm bill would be more difficult to raise consistently. Charging fees for games would be too much of a hassle to be practicable."
Pitt commented that "JK's richly deserve compensation for their efforts. We cannot continue to count on them (them being the current JK's or some hypothetical replacements) being willing to continue to do this to the extent or degree that we've become accustomed."
Larry Richardson responded, "The reason I am a JK, and the reason why I work on the Judge code is because I really enjoy doing it. I seriously don't want any money." Several posters pointed out that the amount of money raised would not be enough to compensate Judge Keepers for the amount of time they invest running their Judge, even if the legal issues could be overcome.
Rob Paar suggested that Avalon Hill be approached with the idea that they might be willing to subsidise a Judge. The idea that AH should be encouraged to play a more active role in the internet hobby was not popular; Avalon Hill have already shut down email diplomacy over one network because it was not run the way they wanted it run.
After the smoke had cleared David agreed to accept donations towards funding a stand-alone machine. In Europe donations can be sent to:
Michael Zwahlen, Marinsburggstr.33,
9016 St. Gallen, SWITZERLAND
Michael entered the internet
hobby recently, but is already a major poster to r.g.d.
and is actively
involved in several discussions: supernova or future BNF?
Finally,
Adrian Appleyard suggested that "LOTS of players would pay for a reliable
judge. I'm sure a PBeM Dip fee would be paid for by heaps of players."
This raises the issue of whether Adrian can be portrayed as the
ideal example of a responsible postal diplomacy publisher and leads neatly
onto our next topic.
There were three questions on the number of users on EFF. David Kovar's
response, dated 12th March, ran as follows:
"There are currently 1170 unique email addresses in USEF's dip.master
file, which is the file that describes all of the active or recently
completed games on the Judge. There are over 3500 registered players on
the Judge. I'd guess that 300 of those are duplicate, bogus, or
otherwise invalid."
A survey of EFF users in 1994 is reproduced for The Diplomatic Pouch,
available by
clicking here. There were
five miscellaneous questions on the Judge, four on the use of fake press
and one on the syntax for the proxy order.
Michael Zwahlan is setting up an e-mail tournament and in one of
his postings he commented on the rating system that he intends to use:
"I know that honoring a survivor with 1 point
means that it is worth more to survive than a 4-way draw (0.75 pts).
A 4-way draw is unnecessary in my opinion as there is still space for
negotiations till they get a 3:1 situation and another one is
killed. If none of the players wants to take that risk they will
have to take less points. This means: I don't want to reward cowards."
I was surprised that none of the rating boffins took the bait...
Jamie Dreier deserves an honourable mention for Debunker of the Month,
whilst Ethan Spring gets the award for Best Composition of the Month, quoted
below from his post of 14th March:
Comments on Colonia again concentrated on its excessive price and
playability. Jurrien de long wrote:
"I saw it at a convention some time ago but it is very expensive
($75 and up in the Netherlands).
Is it much better than the original dip?"
Edward Kenworth responded as follows:
"I don't rate it much. It's even less balanced than the original
Diplomacy was -- to the point that France is unplayable. I like the
increased number of supply centres but feel that they could have made a
much better job of it. And at GBP45 it's severely over-priced."
Finally. Gone But Not Forgotten! Eric Klien recently posted to
sci.research.careers!
Compiled by:
Mark Nelson
If you wish to e-mail feedback on this article to the author, and clicking
on the mail address above does not work for you, feel free to use the "Dear
DP..." mail interface, which is located
here....
Judge Questions
There were 16 question on the `up/down' nature of Judges:
and a general post by Andy
Schwarz. Andy wondered if there was an "easy" way to let players know that
a Judge had gone down or come back up (propagation through usenet is too slow
for r.g.d. to be used for this purpose). This was
discussed elsewhere.
Miscellaneous
The twenty miscellaneous questions covered a wide area, mostly with
one posting to each topic: there were 5 posts looking for FTF players,
3 on WWW dip resources (lookout for the Leeds University Dip Page,
real soon now!) and two on updating the FAQ.
Openings
There were 27 postings loosely collected together under the openings
label (is it time for the creation of
rec.games.diplomacy.openings?).
There were ten posting on newbie games,
where to find them and who wanted them, 13 postings advertising new games,
two on all-Australian games, one for a roleplay game in which
diplomacy should be in the style of the period and one for a human-moderated
game. I must mention that Bill McNair and
Michael Zwahlen provided full details on their openings. Too many
GMs post "opening in new diplomacy game on EFF: game name new" without
providing the full listing of flag settings, which many players need to see
before they can commit to a new game. This criticism also applies to
standby positions.
RuleQuestions
There were sixteen postings on the Diplomacy rules (does anyone want to
create the newsgroup
rec.games.diplomacy.rtfm?). Most of these seemed to be
on whether a unit
that is dislodged can protect itself by cutting one of the support of the
attacking unit. Jamie Dreier should be given a gold medal and
Jonathan Haas a silver for taking time to
answer these questions. Jamie tends to answer by providing examples, whereas
Jonathan quotes the relevant portions of the rulebook. This led Gordon Riley to
ponder if rules can be legally quoted to answer questions or if they should
be merely referenced.
Stalemate Lines
Two postings on Stalemate lines. The simple answer is use anonymous
ftp and download Mark Nelson's "STALEMATES: AtoY" package from
Standby Positions
The five standby
positions were all variant games: Aberration (2), Youngstown (2) and
Gunboat.
TacticalPuzzles
Tactical Puzzles were big this month, with 16 postings. Unfortunately,
most of the puzzles were badly worded; either the puzzle was plain wrong, or
the composer forgot to include vital information, such as the current season.
The remaining puzzles often used unwanted convoys or obscure interpretations
of the rules governing convoying armies and support that they cut (or don't).
"This is a little tougher than the other one. You are Italy. It is
Spring 1901. All units (of all countries) start in their normal positions.
You know the following about other countries' orders: zilch. Task:
find a set of orders (for all appropriate phases) that will result in
an Italian Victory by 1911."
Variants
Variant postings split into three groups: four postings on obtaining
non-postscript format maps, two on Colonial Diplomacy, and one on two-player
variants.
Contributors
Who contributed to the discussion? Eight-nine individuals posted to
rec.games.diplomacy, of which 36 made two or more posts
during the period under consideration:
2 Posts: Michael Adams, Michael A. Bachelor, Josh2 Bos, Eric Coffey,
Fintan Costello, Rory Flynn, Arne Grimstrup, Richard Irving,
Jurrien de Jong, Jerry McGoveran, Albert Macias, Doug Moore,
Rob Paar, Gordon Riley, Bill Shatzer, Alexander K. Woo.
3 Posts: Jonathan Haas, Dan Kindsvater, Keven A. Roust,
Andy Schwarz, Joy E. Wiens, Tim (Penn State University).
4 Posts: Stephen Grant, Manus Hand, Mark Nelson, Bruce Regittko,
Ethan Sprang, Pitt Crandlemire.
5 Posts: Jorge manuel Agra, David Kovar, Marc Potter, Brad Stuart.
6 Posts: Bill McNair, Sean Starkey.
9 Posts: Michael Zwahlen.
10 Posts: Jamie Dreier.
So for the second time in succession Jamie Drier is Top o'the Pile.
University of Leeds, UK
(fuemin@sun.leeds.ac.uk)