The popular culture of the United States has become increasingly centered on the concept of peer approval. A mainstay of reality TV is the end-of-the-show vote-off, whether it be the contestants themselves, like Survivor, judges like American Idol, or the public at large as on episodes with caller voting. It is incumbent upon participants to convince others of their worth lest they be sent packing.
Similarly, the internet has become a place rife with "social networks". MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and countless others provide people with the opportunity to find friends, let people know what they are up to, or just market themselves. Other services like del.icio.us, digg, and last.fm have users identifying their favorite web sites and music. The overall goal of this breed of applications is to build and maintain peer approval.
Into this 21st century culture there comes a relative dinosaur. Wizards of the Coast, who now own Avalon Hill (along with almost every other board, role-playing, and card game company) has recently released a 50th anniversary edition of
Diplomacy. In case you're not familiar with the game, here is a brief introduction and justification for why today's generation may enjoy this classic board game.
Being half a century old, Diplomacy has a plethora of editions-- reprints, computerized versions, translations to many languages, and rule variations. The fundamentals, however, remain the same. As the title implies, Diplomacy is a game of negotiations. Whereas other conquest games like Risk or Axis and Allies rely on dice to determine the outcome of maneuvers, in Diplomacy everything is decided by what each player does. The primary imperative then is to convince your peers to do what you want them to do.
The game mechanics are simple. Each player controls a European country. There are land units and sea units. On each turn all the players have a predetermined amount of time to consult with each other and decide and secretly note how to move their pieces. Each unit can either try to move to an adjacent territory, support other units (of any player) trying to move into an adjacent territory, or do nothing. As you might expect, this simple game can become quite intricate as conflicts abound.
To understand how the diplomacy aspect enters in, here is an example. On the simplified map below, imagine A represents Player 1's unit and B represents Player 2's. As Player 1, you would like to take over the unoccupied blue space by moving A there. However, given the proximity of B, this is problematic. If Player 2 also tries to move their unit into the blue space, it would result in a draw, and both units would return home, effectively doing nothing. Perhaps even worse B could move into the yellow territory that A is vacating. You as Player 1 would then be gaining a territory but losing a territory at the same time. The name of the game then is trying to figure out (and ideally help influence) what Player 2 is going to do.
Simplified Diplomacy map
You can imagine if the blue territory were adjacent to another country with, say, two units belonging to Player 3, the negotiations can get quite intense. Do you tell the truth about what you're doing? Do you try to make one good ally or influence everyone? Your reputation ends up being extremely important as everyone judges everything you say and do.
Given the prevalence of peer review in popular culture, a game of Diplomacy should be a great form of entertainment. You can check out the rules at the link above. Then gather six friends and spend a day making allies and enemies trying to control Europe!
