Please don’t give people excuses to spend time playing games.
India was played by my friend A, who I sometimes have philosophical discussions with and who I knew to be an arch-conservative religion-and-family-values type. I decided to try something which, as far as I know, no one’s ever tried in a Diplomacy game before. “Do you swear in the name of God and your sacred honor that you won’t attack me?” I asked … In the future, I will seek out A for alliances more often, since I have extra reason to believe he won’t betray me; this will put A in an unusually strong position.
This and some other stuff you’re saying sounds to me like a violation of game ethics. Surely the assumption behind most games is that each player will play to win the current game, rather than to preserve their honor, even if such honor helps them win future games or achieve other out-of-game goals. (TDT changes things, but doesn’t apply that much to humans.) Unresolved issues like this as well as ambiguity in scoring make Diplomacy seem less appealing.
Please don’t give people excuses to spend time playing games.
This and some other stuff you’re saying sounds to me like a violation of game ethics. Surely the assumption behind most games is that each player will play to win the current game, rather than to preserve their honor, even if such honor helps them win future games or achieve other out-of-game goals. (TDT changes things, but doesn’t apply that much to humans.) Unresolved issues like this as well as ambiguity in scoring make Diplomacy seem less appealing.