Tuesday, May 14, 2013

Deaths: Diplomacy: The Background of a Game

ALLAN B. CALHAMER (1931-2013)

Of all the games ever made, this one has probably caused more friendships to fall apart than any other.  I played it exactly once and was ready to physically attack some former friends that I felt had stabbed me in the back, which is the premise for the board game Diplomacy.

I just can't behave like that, even in a game.  I went down fast as Austria-Hungary (if I recall).  Then sulked the rest of the evening.

The origins of the game date back to when Allan B. Calhamer was a boy and discovered an old geography book in the attic of his La Grange Park home and found the old, pre-WW I, country borders in Europe.  "That was the seed of the game," he later recalled.

The final inspiration came when he was at Harvard in a class on 19th-century Europe. and he read his professor's book "The Origins of the World War."

"That brought everything together.  I thought, 'What a board game that would make.'"

Never Again,  Never Again, Says I.  --DaCoot

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