After that, you can send diplomatic messages through snail mail, and post your orders via the web.

Are 10 days enough?

This would have also been better as a gunboat to ensure no one posts on this site.

shouldn't you make this a no in game messaging game to prevent cheating?

My point exactly. I might be interested in giving it a try if some good players were going to play.

oh sorry, I didn't see your post

You might want to see if one of the mods could extend the phase length a few more days, I'm not sure that 10 days would be enough time.

Excellent call:
http://webdiplomacy.net/board.php?gameID=65923
is the new game url. It is anonymous and without in game messaging. That would mean that the only way players would be able to establish outside communications would be to mail their email address.

If any person receives a message containing that, they can photocopy it and send it to others to let them know about the cheater.

As far as the time limit, 10 is the max that can be set. From what I have seen on the older news groups, 2-3 weeks was typical, but that was also factoring in sending and receiving messages from the GM, so this should work fine.

Postal mail is actually pretty quick and will arrive in the next day if you time it just right. Even with 2-3 day turn around, you can get 3 messages back-and-forth before the deadline.

unfortunatly I live in Canada so will be unable to join :(

at the moment i think the upper time limit is 10 days.

however i think kestas could be convinced to alter that, it should be fairly simple.

also a mod can alter for no ingame messaging.

Yep, it takes 4-6 days to mail a letter to canada, so I don't think that will work.

I think 14 days would be ideal. If I get the 7 players, I'll see if he can make the adjustment. It seems like it should be just a change of a cell in the db.

I could be convinced to reset the phase every 10 days so that you have 20day phases.

I edited the form that creates the game and attempted to just use a bigger value than 10 days, but it threw me an error. So much for my hackery.

Isn't it possible to just change the value in the database that specifies turn length.

If people want to join the game the password is

postal

Just send me your mailing address and your country when the game starts.

It would be quite reasonable for Kestas to modify the database to set your phase length greater than 10days. I can't think of anywhere in the code that would check this artificial upper bound (after game creation).

Good luck all.

Thanks. Now we just need 5 more players :)

Just out of interest.... what's the point of this?

Postal mail? Why not just use the telegraph? Am I missing something? Why would anyone want to send a letter when you can use the internet?

Because its a different game. Instead of many short messages, it forces fewer long detailed messages. It would create a different dynamic to how you communicate to the other players.

To support U.S. Postal Service?

+1 Pepijn. Little do we know, RobKohr is a mailman worried about losing his job. This is all just to increase business.

Just for the fun of it. I think it makes the game more feel more "authentic." The delays in delivery, the fact that it is actual hand written notes, all lead to an extra bit of flair that doesn't exist in email.

This actually used to be the only way people played diplomacy other than F2F.

Tom: that is pretty funny. The irony is that I work as a web developer for Intel.

Just need 4 more players....

Board is almost full. Remember, if you joined, be sure to email me your mailing address and your nation when the game starts.

People can't/won't play through games on line but they are going to sit down with their quill pens and mail letters to everyone?

I wish it was including the rest of the world.

Coming to think about it, would anybody be interested for such a game, world-wide, with extremely long phases? (3-4 weeks)

If you organize it I might be down. Try to do a little research regarding international mail prices first though. That might be a deciding factor for a number of folks.

I am thinking it might be interesting to use the code for webdiplomacy and set up a webserver devoted to postal games. I suspect that the market would be pretty small though.

I would gladly play online with anyone playing by mail. Probably get people willing to see a game through.

Heh, or build in a delay in webdiplomacy to simulate postal games :)

Scanned letters instead of simple text too?

Baskineli, I'd be down for a world wide postal only game. The prospect of receiving a diplomatic letter from, say, Albania is too good to pass up.

That would be pretty awesome.

Bump: Need 2 more players