Internet Diplomacy

Internet Diplomacy refers to any of a number of online implementations of Diplomacy, a board game in which seven players, each controlling one of the major European powers of the early 20th century, fight for control over Europe.

Instead of communicating face-to-face, as in the board games, or by mail, as in the play-by-mail games, communication and order submission is done over the internet. Typically orders are processed by software, but in the earlier systems a person called a "GameMaster" would process the orders manually.

Background

Internet Diplomacy is popular for many reasons, including avoiding the hassles of playing the game face-to-face, and the lack of availability of local players. Also, a face-to-face game needs up to seven players and can last several hours, which makes it difficult to find enough players with enough free time for a game.

Internet Diplomacy brings together players from anywhere in the world, with deadlines ranging between a few minutes to a few days, and allows players to play multiple games at the same time. The role of "GameMaster", depending on the specific implementation, can be minimized to setup and resolution of rules questions/disputes, or even eliminated entirely.

This makes Internet Diplomacy the preferred choice for many, but it is not without its flaws. Plain text messages aren't as good as face-to-face conversation for back-and-forth discussion or watching for signs of deception. Also playing with relatively anonymous remote players may be less emotionally rewarding than playing with close friends.

History

Play by e-mail

Play-by-e-mail internet Diplomacy followed from Play-by-mail games dating to 1970s fan zines. Similar to standard mail games, players originally sent press directly to one another through e-mail, and sent their orders via e-mail to a pre-designated human "GameMaster".

E-mail judges

As e-mail became more prevalent software "Judges" were developed, which would route e-mails addressed from one player to another, and route submitted orders and results to/from human "GameMaster(s)". As well as routing messages they provided more accountability and security, a place where all the info about the game could be stored and retrieved, and provided a way to keep scores of players from multiple games.

These software "Judges" were eventually extended to include adjudicators, which are pieces of software capable of resolving orders and producing results, thus replacing the human "GameMaster" with software. As the number of adjudicators grew, the [http://web.inter.nl.net/users/L.B.Kruijswijk/ Diplomacy Adjudicator Test Cases] were written so that adjudicators could have a fixed standard to comply to.

Variants to the original map and rules were also added to judges. As it is sometimes difficult to find many people who are familiar with the same variant in a face-to-face environment, and the addition of software expanded the possibilities for variants, many variants are specific to Internet Diplomacy, where players can easily download a map and rule-set.

Ken Lowe Judge

The Ken Lowe Judge system was the first judge system to be created. [ [http://www.diplom.org/Zine/S2002R/Miller/What_is_njudge.html "What is njudge?"] by Millis Miller, "The Diplomatic Pouch", S2002R, retrieved October 4, 2006] The Ken Lowe Judge system allows users to send press to one another and send orders to the processing server through a variety of text commands. Today, many online adjudication systems run in the same, or similar, fashion to the Ken Lowe Judges.

NJudge

Njudge was a rewrite of the Ken Lowe Judge system, with more support added for different variants. This version of the judge software was created by Nathan Wagner, then Judgekeeper (Administrator for a Judge Server) to clean up issues that arose over the years due to the multiple different programmers who had made adjustments the original code. This software program continues to be used on a number of email servers. [ [http://www.diplom.org/openings/openings.html DP:Judge current openings list] ]

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Web/e-mail interfaces

In recent years as the web has become more dynamic Internet Diplomacy has shifted from e-mail to the web. Due to the complexity of adjudicators and judges, the earliest web implementations primarily provided a web interface to the e-mail based Judges.

One of the main advantages of web-based implementations over previous options is that they can display computer-generated graphical maps of the current board on the web-page, instead of requiring the user to update the positions of the game's units on a physical board based on text output.

The DPjudge

In 1995, Manus Hand created the DPjudge, among the first to use a web interface for an email judge. DPJudge allows players to view maps, game history, enter orders and write press to other players through a web interface, however some features, including signing up for a new game, or filling a vacancy in a game in progress, require email usage. The DPjudge is also able to handle numerous variant maps and rules, in addition to the standard map and rules as published by Hasbro.

Diplomaticcorp

Organized in September 2000, [http://www.diplomaticcorp.com Diplomaticcorp] is a Diplomacy community that offers standard and variant Play-By-Email and Live games. Approximately 100 variants are documented and playable. Also home to the [http://www.dipwiki.com DipWiki] , the first online community-content-driven strategy and variant library. All games are run by a human GM (game master), no automated systems. Besides having colorful graphics, maps, a large database and player stats, there's also a wide-ranging forum for games and related topics of interest.

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Web based

The most recent Diplomacy via web implementations were created for the web from scratch. This gives the advantage of allowing more complex features to be added (e.g. rule variants), but requires that complex adjudicator code be rewritten.

DipBounced

[http://www.dipbounced.com/ DipBounced] , created by Christian Shelton, has an interface that relies upon a variety of frames, allowing players to switch between internalized press information, maps, orders and game rules. DipBounced press and orders are stored in a database structure.

phpDiplomacy

[http://phpdiplomacy.net/ phpDiplomacy] was started in December 2004 [ [http://sourceforge.net/forum/forum.php?forum_id=428241 "phpDiplomacy - Starting off"] ] as an attempt to make Diplomacy more accessible to people who haven't played Diplomacy before as a board game. Orders are entered by choosing valid options from drop-down lists [ [http://phpdiplomacy.net/doc/0.8-screenshot.png"phpDiplomacy order interface screenshot"] ] , instead of being entered in with text, and a points system is used to let players find people of their own skill level to play with. [ [http://phpdiplomacy.net/doc/0.8-screenshot.png"phpDiplomacy points document"] ]

Since it's open source [ [http://sourceforge.net/projects/phpdiplomacy/ "phpDiplomacy SourceForge page"] ] it can be used to help create new web-diplomacy sites more easily, such as [http://apps.facebook.com/phpdiplomacy/ Facebook Diplomacy] , [http://apps.facebook.com/strategery/ Strategery] , and [http://www.playdiplomacy.com/ PLAYdiplomacy] [ [http://playdiplomacy.com/about.php PLAYdiplomacy about page] ] .

tabbeurfou

Started in September 2005, [http://www.stabbeurfou.org stabbeurfou] Is the only bilingual English/French game running site. It has full features to play standard Diplomacy and has focused on additional features for hosting tournaments that are not available elsewhere. Its simple interface makes it accessible for beginner players, while also offering various tools for orders translations, map building etc. The web site has full email notification of new messages as well as game adjudications and a warning email to advise you that a deadline is 24 hours away.

The adjudicator follows very strictly all rules from original rulebook, only deviating to guarantee adjudication correctness in absolutley all cases (convoy isssues) and references the DATC protocol.

It is hosting The Diplomacy World Cup also called the Diplomacy National World Cup, in which about 15 different nations are involved.

Orders are entered in text form so that players used to the site a ready to play face to face diplomacy correctly. Elaborate syntax checking helps the player to correct typos.

It is also the sole platform to provide an Artificial Intelligence that will tirelessly issue decent orders for Civil Disorder powers (only in gunboat games).

PLAYdiplomacy

[http://www.playdiplomacy.com PLAYdiplomacy.com] , started in December 2007, was the first to offer a fully developed interactive point-and-click interface. Upon clicking on a unit the available options are displayed on the screen, eliminating the need to enter the correct order syntax.

Other distinguishing features of PLAYdiplomacy include the option to play speed games (with turns every 5 minutes) and a range of optional rule variants.

With regards to how the game is played on the website, PLAYdiplomacy attempts to adhere to the original rules of the boardgame as closely as possible. For example: only solo victories are allowed unless all other surviving players agree to a draw.

Intellectual Property

The Diplomacy game is in copyright in most of the world, and in addition, Hasbro holds a trademark in the name. None of the implementations in this article hold a license from Hasbro or from Allan Calhamer. Since Scrabulous has been removed from Facebook, there is a concern that Hasbro may pursue other unlicensed Facebook implementations of their games.

References