The 2018 Tournament through Time
Dear Play-by-Forum players of PlayDiplomacy,
Next year, I plan to GM a campaign of five variants here on the PlayDip forums, and I'm calling it the Tournament Through Time. Ten small teams of players, called Dynasties, will compete for ~11 months across variants spanning over 230 years of history.
And there will be prizes of some kind.
What is a Dynasty?
Think of a Dynasty like a team of athletes in Track & Field. There are multiple events and teams of different sizes. Some teams field the same athletes for several events, while others delegate. A Dynasty will be similar. Your Dynasty will have some number of players that will stay connected throughout the tournament. Each Dynasty will compete in four of the five games, and it's up to your Dynasty to determine who plays what. Your Dynasty should also be able to provide substitutes and replacements should they be required.
There will be ten Dynasties total, and there may be a pool of free-agent alternates to help with replacements in a pinch. Your Dynasty will compete for glory across the series of variants.
What Variants will be Played?
The following variants will be on the docket. Some of these variants will receive rules or map updates between now and when they're played, but a current version of the rules & map is linked for each variant to give an idea.
Ambition & Empire
- 10 Dynasties playing 10 powers
- Set in 1763, just after the Seven Years' War. This variant introduced the Diplomacy Points (DP) system for voting on neutral units' orders.
- Approximate Start Date: January 1, 2018
- Recent Rules
- Created by Baron VonPowell & Jeff Kase, with collaboration from W. Alex Ronke for version 6.0
- Max length for tournament: 7 game-years
1812 Overture
- 6 Dynasties playing 2 powers each
- Set in 1811, in the Napoleonic era, just before the start of the War of 1812 in North America and the Patriotic War of 1812 in Europe
- Approximate Start Date: March 19, 2018
- Example Rules thread from the most recent PbF session
- Created by W. Alex Ronke
- Max length for tournament: 9 game-years
1900
- 7 Dynasties playing 7 powers
- Set in 1900, this popular variant captures the spirit of classic Dip, but with some tweaks to the map and rules to provide it with more historicity
- Approximate Start Date: May 3, 2018
- Example Rules
- Created by Baron VonPowell
- Max length for tournament: 9 game-years
1936
- 7 Dynasties playing 7 powers (and 2 factions)
- Set in 1936, just before the second World War and at the outset of the Spanish Civil War. Two of the powers (Italy & the Soviet Union) control one Spanish faction each in that conflict. This is a DP-based variant.
- Approximate Start Date: June 28, 2018
- Example Rules
- Created by Charles Feaux de la Croix
- Max length for tournament: 9 game-years
Распад (Dissolution)
- 10 Dynasties playing 10 powers
- Set in 1992, just after the dissolution of the Soviet Union. This is a DP-based variant that also features permanent neutral units, Wing units, and a system of tracking foreign relations between your power and the neutral Nuclear powers.
- Approximate Start Date: October 4, 2018
- Example Rules thread from the first playtest
- Created by W. Alex Ronke
- Max length for tournament: 6-8 game-years, depending on schedule
Scoring System and Turn Limits
Each variant will be played and scored using a rank-based system inspired by the Carnage & European face-to-face tournament structures. Solo winners will get a huge amount of points to reflect a "real" win. Draws will be DIAS, and players will receive points based on their rank and SC's at game end. Full points details to come later.
Rank-based systems aren't typical to variant games, but they work very well with games that have a maximum number of turns. This will be the case for the Tournament Through Time, as each variant will be terminated in a draw after the 7th or 8th game-year between 6-9 game years, depending on the variant (and assuming it didn't end in a draw or solo prior). This will prevent any one variant from running overlong, and it will limit the amount of concurrent overlap between variants. It should also provide some fascinating meta-game strategy for Dynasties as they move from era to era.
Slack Communication and Other Miscellany
There's a lot to like about the simplicity of phpbb forums (like this one). However, one of the things that phpbb forums do poorly is person-to-person private messaging. It's workable, but it's not mobile-friendly, and it lacks many of the features found even in a typical email client.
To that end, I will also create and moderate a Slack "team" to facilitate inter-player communication. If you've never used Slack, I recommend having a look. It's fantastic for being able to communicate with multiple accounts across vastly dissimilar teams and being able to maintain separate identities in each team. Your personal anonymity will be preserved from other players should you choose to preserve it; all I'll need is an email address to add you to the roster (that only I will see). Other players should only be able to see your PlayDip forum handle, your Dynasty, and the powers you are currently playing in tournament games.
Orders submission will still use the Forum private messaging system, and I'll still use the forum to host adjudication posts and major announcements. This will still be a series of Play-by-Forum games.
I will also be inviting several players from the Play-by-Email (PBEM) group that I regularly GM for to join us (some of whom already play on this forum).
What Next?
This is not the official recruitment post for the tournament (Edit: but this is!), but I'd be happy to hear from you if you have interest in playing in it. I plan to begin a more formal process of recruitment and can assist with matching players to Dynasties, especially for those players that think they'll only be able to commit to 1-2 of the variants.
I'm happy to answer questions about the tournament, and I hope that you will consider pencilling it in for your 2018 forum game participation.
Update 08 Aug 2017: Per some understandable player concerns, I have adjusted the schedule estimates to allow for a little more game-time. The middle games will now run with a max of 9 game-years instead of 8.
