Here is one idea as to how we could implement a dark-press game on webDiplomacy.

Create a new account whose password is sent to each player. (If an organiser knows who the players are, then this organiser could set up the account and send the password by PM. If the game is really anonymous, then any player could set up the account and post the password by Global press without stating who they were. But any PM or in-game press besides this one giving out the password would be cheating.)

This account does not actually play any games (that would be multi-accounting!), it only posts to a forum thread for the dark-press game. No other account is allowed to post the forum thread; kibbitzers should be chased off (especially if we don't know who the players are), and players who post to the thread under their own names are cheating. Any player could sabotage the thread (temporarily) by changing this account's password (which would also be cheating), but then any of the players could create a new press-only account to replace it, so hopefully nobody will be such an asshole as to try that.

The biggest drawback, I think, is that the players would have to keep logging out of their real accounts and into the press account, and not mix them up; no big deal if you try to play in the press account, since it won't work and you can change, but you have to be very careful not to post to the thread with your real account, or you'll be condemned as a cheater. So it's inconvenient, and a little dangerous.

Any other ideas?

Wow, a game for colorblind people! Being colorblind makes it all but impossible to differentiate between text color in global press. (I've never played a global press game for just this reason).

it seems easier to modify the comms system to support this variant... but you could have everyone email a single gmail account with their messages (other than that play anon, gunboat) however you can setup filters in gmail (say based on subject line) to forward the messages to the email address of the intended target.

I'm pretty sure this would be easier (but you'd have to check gmail to see if the filter rules let you forward without saying who the original message came from)

I don't see how to get Gmail to remove the From address on an email (although I haven't tried so thoroughly that I think it's impossible).

But there's a related idea: Set up an account on a complete separate messaging system and have everybody use that. Gmail would be too powerful; people can delete messages, change the filters, etc. But there may be a forum on some other site that we could use.

Why not just make one Gunboat Anon Game, which is the actual game.
And one game (like only 5 ), which is public press and anon.
And in the public press game everybody posts for the real game(gunboat anon game).

*you can canel the public press game after the other game has ended, make it 10 days phases so it doesnt end
**of course both games would be password protectet and the same 7 players have to be in both games

You are not allowed to have two accounts.

No, not even for this.

you dont need two accounts for my idea ;)

Sendler, in your idea, the problem would be that although people would not know which player was which country, every post a given player made in the public press game would be in their country's colour. That is, my second post would be the same colour as my first post. Therefore it would not function in the same way as the 'dark' press described by Toby.

yes your right :/

you're

yes you're right, so they say

>You are not allowed to have two accounts.

That's an interesting conundrum. Who exactly would have two accounts? Would the mods want to ban everybody who played this game? Or only those who actually used the forum-only account to post to the forum?

Surely there's nothing illegal about simply joining a game and then receiving a password through PM. (In fact, we could just post the password on the forum and hope that nobody with trollish tendencies reads the thead.) So this puts players in the strange position that they can be banned for making a forum post.

Or perhaps it's only the person who actually creates the account who is guilty of multi-accounting. (After all, it's not against the rules to sit for another account.) But tt should be possible to do this in such a way that the mods can't tell who did it; multi-accounting can be detected in the long run, but a single act of creation (and then 7 PMs) from a never again used IP can't easily be traced.

But I don't really want to try to get around the mods like this. Really, I can't imagine why you would object to a forum-only account for this purpose. Is it because it interferes with automatic methods to detect multi-accounting? But two people using the same computer would cause the same problems, and that's allowed. Why do you object to this?