I agree that this was an excellent teaser.

GO INTO THE GAUNTLET!

This is not a thread with details about the tournament, that will come in mid-December when we launch the new tournament page, but I will tell you that this is going to be a very different tournament. Each game will have different terms, different rules, different challenges. For those that might be asking if Diplomacy can get any weirder this tournament will give you the answer.

Everyone is welcome to join (aside from those that quit my last tournament, you have to wait until the next one after this) and I encourage any of those with serious interest to post here so I can start to get an idea of who we'll have.

I'm shooting for a start date of Feb. 1st, which is quite a ways off, so this is NOT an official sign up thread. I don't want people signing up to reserve a slot when they don't even know if they'll be able to play in it in February. I just want to gauge interest for an unorthodox tournament.

I'd been toying with some of these ideas ever since the Donation Invitation fell through but only really got excited about it after that third cup of tea. It's going to be crazy, definitely a tournament people are going to want to talk about.

I'll have to see the details to know for sure, but I'm interested right now and will probably end up joining if I fit the criteria.

My only concern is that a few of the things I want to try may be TOO experimental and/or slightly imbalanced. Which is why this won't be an elimination tournament. Each bit of the gauntlet will have a maximum number of points available to it and depending on your performance, you'll receive a portion of those points.

To give you just a few of the ideas I've been tossing around with some friends:
- A public press game where you're limited to the amount of words and/or responses you can send.
- A gunboat (or not) game that ends in 1902 where you receive points based on how well your given "challenge opening" was performed.
- Other secret type challenges where we say: "Own A, B, and C centres by 190X" for full points.
- A bard's tale game where every other line of your press must rhyme.
- A greed game where you're entire goal is to own a centre from as many different countries as you possibly can at one time.

At first glance a lot of these (I have about 30 ideas and growing) might seem too imbalanced. But I've got about a page of notes for a lot of them on how to make them work and my plan is to hash out as many as I can and put them to a survey of all the participants (this will be the official sign up) and then pick the top X scenarios people said they would like to participate in.

A bit of silly, a bit of impossible, and very experimental, but definitely fun and not hard on your time or attention span. I've got a lot of ideas on how to make participating in a tournament even easier than the gunboat one, so stay tuned and let me know if something like this is something you could get behind.

Hello, I have never participated in a diplomacy tournament, but this sounds interesting to me.

Like I said, there's no criteria for joining other than a time commitment and I want as many as that will join. But if you regularly play diplomacy and can check your email more than once a week, you won't find much diffference between my tournaments and just playing a couple games on your own.

My only warning is that if you join one of my tournaments and then bail, particularly if you don't give me any type of notice, you won't participate in the next tournament. So any of those that disappeared on me in the SGT will have to wait until the one after this one. (There were only three and I don't think any of them care, but I wanted to mention it)

Anyway, just keep it in mind. And if you come up with any interesting ideas, PM them to me. And as always, if anyone is thinking of running a tournament (tiny or gigantic, friendly or cutthroat) or just has questions, send me a pm or an email to webdipmod and I can help get you started.

The only thing that slightly concerns me is how those kind of games will effect win/draw percentages (perhaps they could be removed from records by mods?) and the same with GR (perhaps cancel the games after the results are recorded, for the ones that end in 190X for owning so many centers) Those are just my first impressions, but it does sounds like fun on a whole!

I'm in, but it'll have to be at least 36 hours per turn. I just don't have the time to always get orders in if it's less.

They'll be at least 36 hours. And I agree with your concern jmo. All the ones that can be cancelled will be, and the ones that do need a winner/draw will have to be calm enough to allow for counting. Something like the limited public press isn't too wild to go through the loops of having it struck from the record (if that's even possible), but I'll try to limit those types as much as I can and/or seed those games by GR.

I'm in assuming the time is 24+ per turn, which you say it is. But I reserve the right to unjoin if it sounds less desirable once the details are revealed.

Well I'll just have to make sure I don't disappoint!

Why don't you add one game where we roll dice and determine the winner by the colour of their hair?

I have no intention of making the tournament THAT silly. Most of the challenges are going to be actual scenarios that players would have to face in a competitive game.

Hell yeah. Now this is what I'm talking about, perhaps this might be better suited for games on VDip as we won't have our GRs in jeopardy, and there are already systems in place such as stopping a game after 1902

Indeed. and there are so many more maps you could use there Geofram for even more fun things!

I only plan on using the Classic map. Stopping games after 1902 isn't a problem here, so its just those few games that might affect GR and they will be very close to regular games with seeding close to GR anyway.

The gunboat tournament will have had a greater chance to mess with GR than this one will.

Aren't games finished before Autumn 1903 excluded from GR? Or am I confusing it with something else?

Yes, they are excluded. So its only the games that would complete to the end that people might have issues with, but like I said, they're really not an issue.

GR and Tournaments are always going to clash, I'm minimising it in this one much more than other tournaments do, but there are still going to be people that care more about GR than actually playing the game and I can't help them.

Seems interesting :-) I will definitely join if time per phase is sufficient (at least 24h/phase).