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A number of years ago, Elizabeth Kubler Ross published a paper that described the process of dying as a five step plan. Before shuffling off to our final rest we should expect to travel through phases of denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. The notion became quite popular among list-making, category-loving humans and was even popularized in the movie “All That Jazz”. In addition to Diplomacy, amateur filmmaking is one of my hobbies. While I was shooting footage of a Diplomacy game at a recent tournament, I got a voyeuristic view of Diplomacy from a non-players perspective which led me to some interesting conclusions. People invest a great deal of emotion in their positions. As a result, getting stabbed and eliminated elicits a very individual and personal response from the victim. As they head to their symbolic deaths, they go through a process that is surprisingly similar to the real thing. The first stage is DENIAL. The player may deny the obvious, insisting that everything is going as it should, or he may hold firm to the belief that his partner would not, could not, dare not stab him. This sort of behavior is typical for an alliance player who is unable to make the adjustment from ally to rival or from an aggressive player who has his eyes on the prize to the exclusion of all else. What may be patently obvious to everyone else on the board will be nothing more than a remote rumor to the victim. When it does happen, our poor fellow will quickly slide into stage two, which is ANGER. The most common forms of this are either threats to throw the game in retribution or declarations of suicide charges and promises of savage reprisals. Unless the stab was poorly executed, these threats will either be impotent or will be met with murmurs of sympathy from other players who will be seeking to use the victim as a temporary weapon before they carve him up themselves. Our victim will now be severely wounded and the gravity of the situation will have finally sunk in. He will seek to stave off the inevitable through BARGAINING. Anything and everything will be put on the table. Offers to play the puppet to the first taker will be circulated. More often than not, the other players will decline to enter into a pact as they will either have plans to eliminate the player themselves or they will find that the player is now too unstable to be truly useful. Alone, outmaneuvered, and isolated, the player will now slide into DEPRESSION. The player will cease negotiating and will simply sit and stare at the board wondering how such a thing could have happened. At this point, several of the other players will be maneuvering with each other to take a winning position on the board and quite possibly will seek a little favor from our dying friend. Their pleas will be met with sullen replies and disinterest unless they can find a way to take this person to the next and final level. There are two points where the player might enter ACCEPTANCE. If this point is reached prior to elimination, the player will show a philosophical attitude toward his fate and will be willing to explore ways in which to use his final unit or two. More often than not they are used to reward the person who pissed them off the least. Many times, however, a player will not achieve this final level until after he has been eliminated. This is why other players who wish to use the nearly deceased to their advantage must seek to hasten this transition. Once the final blow has fallen and the player has been released from having to pretend anything matters, he will take up his “Good Loser” persona and thank the other players for a good game before he dashes off to find an open round of “Settlers” or “Titan”. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: The outcome of many a Diplomacy game is not as dependant on the stellar play by any of the larger powers so much as it is on how the minor powers react to and are treated during their trip from contender to also ran. The successful Diplomat must keep abreast of which stage of elimination a falling player is in and use this knowledge to his advantage. Perhaps the most difficult part in recognizing and reacting to the stages is that they follow no set timetable: One player may fly through denial and anger and reach bargaining very quickly while others may occupy two stages simultaneously. As in all things having to do with Diplomacy, it's much more an art than it is a process. The successful Diplomat must be an excellent judge of character, have the courage to bear having personal enemies, and have enough charisma to convince stabbing victims that it’s really nothing more than a minor flesh wound. If you can get them to stay at the table and die with a smile on their face, you will win more games than you will lose.
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Ray Setzer (mczet@cat23.com) |
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