Diplomacy

Kittredge, Eberle, and Olotka are better known for the superb Cosmic Encounter, but Borderlands is almost as good a game -- and though published in the early 80s, is an uncanny precursor of many features of today's popular Eurogames.

Cardinal Boleski (James Ritchie), author of Boleski's Unkonkize Hiztory of Slobbovia (the first history of the realm) wrote me recently, mentioning that he had seen Mo'reen Boleski, the former Czar, not long ago. It occurred to me that, having posted about 1480: The Age of Exploration, I might also post about Slobbovia, an equally dead, and if anything, more bizarre game.

Slobbovia began in 1969 at a lake in Killarney, Manitoba, where a number of teenagers played a "King of the Hill" variant which they called "Emperor of Slobbovia." The game involved campaigning in canoes and fighting battles by splashing each other with paddles. (This is the origin of that distinctive Slobbovian weapon, the pluglunk.)

Supreme Ruler, like Making History or Europa Universalis, is an extraordinarily detailed and complex grand strategic game covering the entire globe, with economic, military, and diplomatic aspects. As long-time readers may know, I'm a sucker for this kind of game.

Unlike the others, Supreme Ruler is set in the modern world -- sort of. It's set in a hypothetical near future, which is canny of BattleGoat but also somewhat disappointing; canny, because if you try to simulate the real world, you're always going to get flack on minute levels of detail (e.g., "I am from the country of Mystflx, but why don't you show the iron mines at Qwertyuiop?"), so it's easier to create a game that is representative, but not an explicit simulation. Disappointing, because playing around with a good version of the real world would be interesting.

Making History reminds me of the games from Paradox, most famously Europa Universalis. That's a bit of a paradox (hem hem), because Paradox has its own (excellent) WWII game, Hearts of Iron -- but HoI is very much a war game, and while military conflict is central to Making History, the war side of the game is much more abstracted, and at a more grand strategic level, and it pays much more attention to economics and diplomacy.

First published in 1959 by Games Research, and continuously in print since then--now in a handsome edition from the Avalon Hill division of the Wizards of the Coast division of Hasbro--Diplomacy is both a superb game worth experiencing today, and a design of considerable historical importance.

Most boardgames published prior to Diplomacy were multiplayer, but in most cases, players interacted with each other in rather minor ways. As illustration, consider Monopoly; there's very little you can do to hurt or assist another player, even though you are playing in the same universe.

Can a Game Make You Cry?

Certainly... At least if its subject is enough to make you cry.

PeaceMaker begins with a cut scene--brief video clips from the history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, beginning in 1948 and ending with the present day.

In any game, the purpose of an initial cut scene is to set the emotional context; for most games, this means bombast and violent triumph. For PeaceMaker, it means--sorrow, and perhaps despair.

Created by a mixed American, Israeli, and Palestinian team, PeaceMaker deals with the Israeli-Palestinian crisis. Playing as either the Israeli Prime Minister or the Palestinian President, you must try to satisfy the urgent needs and demands of your own people, while establishing a degree of trust on the opposite side--and, with (a great deal of) luck, an agreed resolution to the conflict.