I can’t remember who, when, where or why but somebody once asked me whether internet Diplomacy was very different to the face-to-face game. Which is a good question… Well, OK, no it isn’t. If you’ve played both to some degree you’ll know there are big differences. The better question is whether the differences require one’s approach to playing be adapted. Opening Strategy I suppose the question is how one approaches a game whatever the medium. Are you one of those players who enters a game with a fixed idea of what you’re going to do? You see you’ve drawn England so you’re going to Churchill. Damn, I’m Austria; oh well, hedgehog it is. In other words, you know your opening moves and, whatever happens, you’re going to use them. You’ll negotiate with players but it won’t change your orders in 1901. Perhaps you have a similar strategy but will adapt it based on how you think the negotiations are progressing. You have the idea of what you aim to do but you are flexible. Germany is an idiot? OK then I’ll have to work with France: how does that change my ideas? Or you could be more flexible yet. In fact, you go into the game prepared to pick a strategy depending upon how the negotiations progress. You don’t have a preconceived plan so when you have a feeling for the best way forward you’ll go with what feels right. In one respect, whatever philosophy you take into a game, it could be used in any medium. And this isn’t just true for the Opening Strategy. You could, for instance, play around a certain plan of action and base your play and negotiations on this, bullying and coaxing your way through a game. Whether the game is FtF, PBEM, Judge or web-based… that doesn’t really make much difference. Rules Often the rules on the net vary slightly from the rules that are published. On the poor sites, this is because the system is buggy. I know of one site where there is a bug in one game they offer and, when it is reported, the reply comes back: “Yes we know about it. Why not fix it yourself?” Not the kind of thing you want to hear when you’re trying to play a game on the web! More likely, however, is a rule change which is based on practicality: communications during retreats and adjustment phases. It’s difficult to prevent this, although a website could — and maybe should — code the system to ensure that messages can’t be sent at this time or offer games where this is the case. Certainly, the purists would think so. However, as we’ll discuss later, the time scales in games make this difficult to maintain. The fundamental truth is that, when people are playing in different time zones, often with tight deadlines, removing the option of communicating during these phases can limit the options players have. Again, though, the net has no reason not to apply the standard rules otherwise. Of course, there are the paradoxes and how these are dealt with depends upon how the judge used is programmed (or, in the cases of human GMs, how the GM deals with them). NMRs/Surrenders Now we’re getting into the major differences… and this one has gained websites, especially, a very bad name. Perhaps less so with PBEM sites, but certainly on websites — the big ones, at least — failure to enter moves and surrendering from games is a big issue. To some extent there is very little that can be done about this due to the nature of the sites and the medium itself. Websites will have people join who don’t really know the game. They may even search for an internet game and stumble across Diplomacy without having heard of it before (if you can believe that!). They register, joining games, perhaps expecting something like Risk or Axis and Allies or some other poor, distant relation. After all, there’s a map and there are armies and fleets and you can move them around and stuff. Oh, hang on. I couldn’t move my army in Warsaw to Berlin. Pfft. And why are people asking me to chat to them? What is this crap? And then there are the deadlines (still coming to them below). On Playdiplomacy.com the briefest deadline, outside of ‘Live’ games, is 12 hours a phase. From an FtF point of view, a long time. And — apparently — from the point of view of people who play to this deadline, a long time even if they haven’t played the game much before. We’re always being asked to provide shorter ones. However, the truth is that 12 hours can be too short. Let’s face it, at some point, you’re going to have to sleep! And, naturally, real life can jump into the way and a deadline be unavoidably missed. Of course, people not entering orders and dropping from games isn’t a peculiarity of Diplomacy on the web — it afflicts every internet game. It is just that easy to drop out. It doesn’t matter what steps the sites take to prevent it, it is going to happen. In a game like Diplomacy, played by the people who play it, it becomes a real problem. But, perhaps, it is an exaggerated one. It isn’t true, for instance, that one can’t play Diplomacy on the websites without having the game affected by unreliable play of this nature. Just find where the reliable players are! On most websites, there’s a forum. Members of the forum, the core of the site’s community, are much more likely to be reliable. Look for a game advertised on the forum and you’ll likely to find a good game. Playdip operate two classes of players — diplomats and ambassadors. Ambassadors are the players who have a more reliable record; they can create ambassador-only games. So yes, unavoidably, unbalanced games are a part of play on the web but there are ways to minimise the risk of experiencing one such. Scoring Systems The bane of the purists and soloists, scoring systems produce a variant by their very inclusion. Of course, they’re not limited to internet Dip — they’ve been used in zines and at tournaments from the start. In fact, a scoring — or ratings or points — system on a site could be better for a game of Dip than are most tournament systems. This will be cold comfort for the players who believe that nothing should affect a game and that applying scoring to a game affects it unavoidably. Of course, it does. It introduces the meta-game. If one is playing to increase one’s rating, then one’s approach to the game will change. I’ve also read that scoring systems discourage ‘correct’ play in that they encourage players to settle for a draw much more readily. Indeed, it may do this, although this depends on the system used. A good scoring system will minimise this latter factor. It won’t be based on supply centre count but will focus on game result. A good scoring system will be modified to allow for some form of solo ‘bonus’, encouraging players to aim for the solo. The meta-game can’t be avoided, although it assumes that players automatically play to improve their rating. Many don’t (and many more claim they don’t!). For those that do, there may indeed be an element of risk-avoidance in their play. However, again, if the scoring system is a good one this will lead to players who don’t take the risks finding that there are limits to how well they can do. Generally, scoring systems are accepted in tournaments; after all, you need to find a winner at the end of it. The Diplomacy World Cup may be almost unique in being a tournament which doesn’t utilise a scoring system, relying on progression based on solos. However, in an FtF tournament, there are limits to how long games can last, meaning end game dates and scoring based on the much increased likelihood of draws. In my view, even in FtF tournaments, scoring based on SCs is less acceptable. They’ve become the primary determiner — almost whatever system is used — because games rarely end in a solo. SC-based scoring is a very different variant to classic Dip, however. It encourages a very different kind of game. But, again, it is widely accepted that tournament Dip is a clear variant. The key, as I’ve tried to stress, is that a scoring system used on a site should be based on game outcome rather than SC-count and should encourage as ‘normal’ a game as possible. And, of course, a good site will give players the opportunity to play in games that aren’t scored if they choose. Cheating Yes, another ‘bad name’ aspect of internet play. There’s nothing more frustrating than playing in a game where cheating, in one form or another, goes on. It is easy to cheat at internet Dip. It’s easy to create a second email account — even a temporary one — and register to a site, allowing one to use more than one account in a game. It is also common to find players who don’t really understand what is wrong with always allying with their mates and eliminating all other opposition. After all, isn’t Dip about alliances? And then there’s the more traditional form of meta-gaming, linking multiple games so that one game is explicitly linked with another. On the big websites, cheating is an issue. However, the big sites have active moderators who work to eliminate (ideally) cheating and certainly to act when cheating occurs. In fact, what I’ve found is that the occurrence of cheating is exaggerated. The proportion of games affected by cheating — and on Playdip we have a long list of activities we view as cheating — is a small minority of games played on the site. It’s exaggerated because it is reported and because players tend to see cheating based on limited evidence when, with deeper investigation, no cheating is taking place. Deadlines (at last) It is possible to play games with the published deadlines. Playdip provides for this with its ‘Live’ games. In general, however, deadlines have to be longer. As previously mentioned, players come from different time zones. This means that, unless one can organise a game in which every player is on the site at the same time, communicating with other players requires longer deadlines. This, in itself, provides one more huge difference between FtF Dip and the internet version of the game: communicating. Communicating In any game of Diplomacy, communication is the key. The medium in which it is played doesn’t matter. In an FtF game, though, there is little time to communicate with everyone. The initial turn gives a player 30 minutes to chat; all others provide 15 minutes. In that time a player may be able to chat to every other player (in Spring 1901) but in no real detail. Which means that she’ll need to concentrate on communicating with her neighbours. Certainly, from Fall 1901 onwards, the neighbours or allies will be the people with whom she mainly negotiates. It’s a rare player indeed who can manage to communicate with the majority of the board with any detail. Internet Diplomacy doesn’t have these constraints. I’ve mentioned previously that communicating with people from different time zones around the world can be tricky and requires some variations in the rules. However, when deadlines can be from 12 hours to a week, this can be as easy or as difficult to overcome as one needs. Internet Dip, then, is a variant mainly in this respect: Communications have very little limits. A player has the time and the opportunity to communicate with every other player in the game in every turn of the game. Of course, this may not be utilised but the option is there. I wouldn’t go so far as to claim that internet Dip is a game for more effective communicators than FtF Dip. Certainly, the opportunity to take advantage of the deadlines to communicate highly effectively isn’t taken up by players. But the better and more experienced players of internet Dip will be prolific and effective communicators. ‘Prolific’ and ‘effective’ don’t always go together, of course. A dedicated FtF player would certainly have a different definition of effective communication, linked more closely to ‘efficient’ than ‘prolific’. But in a variant where communication options are so open, there are opportunities to plan in more detail, to negotiate in more detail and to communicate more often. In other words, there are more opportunities to build relationships — genuine or otherwise! This, perhaps more than any other difference, would be a shock for an FtF player encountering an experienced internet player (and, of course, I’m applying a very general definition of these) on the net. Whereas an FtF player might concentrate upon communicating with neighbours and allies, an internet player (worth his salt) will regularly communicate with every player in the game, to some degree or other. The most marked difference is in the early stages of the game. On the web we encourage players to open communication with every other player. However, a player on Playdip who was experienced in FtF games wondered why this was: When you start a game, you know what you’re going to do, so do it. Talk to the people you must talk to. Don’t waste time saying more than ‘Hi’ to Turkey when you’re playing England. The point is, there is the opportunity to encompass the whole board with your communications from the very start. In a game based on building relationships, not taking that opportunity can be a major mistake. If someone else in the game is putting an effort into wide-ranging communications and you’re not, when the game progresses beyond the early and early middle stages, you’re at a disadvantage. Summary There are, therefore, some significant differences between FtF Diplomacy and internet Diplomacy. There are some minor ones. Of course, I haven’t looked at how the game remains the same whatever the medium! Assuming a good judge, assuming a decent player and assuming reliable players, the game is not usually greatly different. What is perhaps the most significant difference is in the way players communicate in the game and the approach to the game, which are probably related. Certainly, in a game with deadlines that allow increased communication, one is more likely to see players with a more flexible approach to strategy, including opening strategy, simply because there are more options based on which potential ally might prove to be the better choice. Will you get a better game playing FtF than internet Dip? To some extent, that depends upon your definition of ‘better’. You’ll certainly get a game which is based only on the rules of Dip rather than the internet variant. On the basis that people at an FtF game are more likely to be reliable purely because of their physical presence this is going to be a game with fewer NMRs and surrenders. And, in a stand-alone game, cheating is less likely… although tournaments have less of an advantage. This doesn’t mean that you won’t find a high quality game on the internet, however. There’s no doubt that there are more less quality games on the net but there are ways to find high quality games, too. If you’re on a website, find out how that site organises games between reliable, communicative, competitive players. It may not seem possible if you simply join openly advertised games but spending some time searching these players and games out is very worthwhile. Rick Leeds (playdip.com.notice@gmail.com) If you wish to e-mail feedback on this article to the author, and clicking on the envelope above does not work for you, feel free to use the "Dear DP..." mail interface.