Maybe not enough of the "diplomacy" aspect of Diplomacy?

I personally think it has an advantage over straight gunboat, since if anything goes wrong (e.g. one or two players CD in 1901 or some such), there can be open discussion among the remaining players about how to proceed: cancel, pause, draw? On the other hand, I also don't think those advantages hold so much for live games.

public press ruins a good game of gunboat and simplifies a good game of diplomacy

^swag

Gunboat and full press both give some uniqueness to diplomacy.

I think there are many good alternatives to public press, so you would be more inclined to go with the 'unique' modes of diplomacy.

Or play a different game all together.

I think that public press, if played correctly, adds a whole new layer to the diplomacy you have to do. Its essentially gunboat with words - you have to conduct diplomacy without "actually" saying what you're going to do. I personally find the variant very enjoyable.

Because gameID=93086.

captainmeme raises a good point. One wonders if that game has done more damage to public press or to the idea of a diplomacy world cup? I have to admit I rather liked that tournament, with its relatively low demands on those taking part, but that final game has killed off all interest aside from morbid fascination.

I wonder why y2k has so many plus ones for his post above... Perhaps because he is *right*!

What's the point in having public press? If you can't talk privately, then you can't plot against others without them knowing, so you may as well play gunboat only. The only purpose for public press is to taunt the other players for their supposed "mistakes" and then, when you and you gunboat allies have gotten a moderate lead, you can use it to coordinate moves that nobody can stop. Basically, the game may as well start as gunboat then move to full press.

what I like about public press are the jokes

public press has it's charm too,like gunboat but with diplomatic skills,i guess it all depends who are the players.
i didn't like it once but i discovered a different view of the game.
everyone can talk an allie into a movement or a secret strategy but it turns more dificult when all the world knows what you are up to and who is who(or not).
in a way it can be more realistic than the other vertions to the game,think about it:
lets say you are a leader of a real nation in the real world,do you think they don't listen?won't you listen to others?don't you know the agreements and conflicts other leader do?it's a big world and the diplomatic sistem that sorrounds you is slow and sneaky.won't be leaks?
in a way the standart diplomacy is old and not represantative of a democratic nation but a totalitarian ditatorship of one man making all the descitions and making all the moves.

Public press in the "old days" of pbm was pretty interesting. You had one press release per phase and very often those sounded like real press releases. It could be very entertaining. I have tried that approach here and it does not work out so well. Too many posts and too little imagination. Thus my contribution to y2k's haul of "+1"s noted by draug above.

why don't we try it?
we can make a public press limited to one press release for each phase!
what do you think?

That sounds interesting, taos. I'm not looking for a game right now, but I'd follow along to see how it went.

I'd be interested in trying something like that if it were a full-press game and each country wrote a global press release at the end of each phase/year. Some of my favorite games have involved a lot of press both public and private, but most games (at least in my experience) don't really use the public forum all that much. Having a game with as much private press as you want but with one (and only one) required public press release each phase or year could be a really interesting twist.

@murray i don't see the point in only one public press when it's a full press game.
what's the difference?
the chalenge is to make diplomacy with one and only one public press for phase.