JUST PASSING THROUGH
Freaky Fungus Returns
Toby Harris (Toby@responsiva.biz) has restarted his email magazine with issue 29 and 30. He has two games open with hand moderation. It is a fun zine with articles on the face to face scene and echo's of some old articles as well as comments on the hobby scene in Europe.
Downunder Issue
The Diplomacy Association of Australia and New Zealand (DAANZ) has come out with an issue 2 of 2006 which includes a golden oldie article by our illustrious game designer: Allan B. Calhamer on goals other than winning in Diplomacy written 32 years ago for the Diplomacy Player Guide published by the International Diplomacy Association (IDA) a precursor of the current Diplomatic Corps (www.DiplomaticCorps.org) global player organization. It is interesting to look at the article that was written before the entire concept of metagaming for tournaments face to face or otherwise came about. It is also one of the timeless pieces on different approaches to the game which has made this such a fascinating hobby for so long. To get a copy write to Sean Colman Sean@seropec.com.au.
Rankings and Ratings in Les Glorieux
The web site 18centres.com has the most complete and detailed data base of face to face tournament results ever assembled in the hobby. The accomplishment by Laurent Joly is a fantastic plus to the hobby which has always attracted a degree of self examination in a competitive background. Now Laurent is able to take different ideas of compilation of the data of multiple events to create different versions of ranking systems. Again a ranking system takes the results of tournament's individual rankings and then combines them to a master ranking. For Example: if you were to take the 1st place person add 38 points plus the number of players and the 2nd place player add 14 and the number of players and then the third person and 4 points plus the number of players, then compare those results you would get a ranking that has Yann Clouet at the top. However, in our hobby there is no single concept of what achievement is. This opens up the field to all sorts of methodologies for measurement of achievement ((or bragging rights)). In the past there had only been The Diplomatic Pouch Tournament Ranking (DPTR) as a world wide ranking system...and it is well received... now that system and others can be easily compiled if they are attractive to Laurent who has to do the work. Look for an update of the DPTR soon and consider making up an article on what are the aspects of a ranking system that are interesting.
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