I joined. Even though I'm 50 something...

Looking forward to this one. Been playing with pups recently and, well, a bit like other things - they tend to go off prematurely... Stabs in the first or second move. No class at all.

I wish I could join but I'm 17. Does age really count?

I'm no pup. There are others though who tend to go to war too quickly and senselessly.

if you wait until saturday i can get my dad to join, he is 60

@ingwe - I'm not sure why you'd assume that people in their forties are any more literate or capable of maintain grammar or syntactical complexity than anybody else. I imagine those so capable have been that way since they were young, and those who prided themselves on not having read a book in a decade at age twenty-five didn't discover the joys of subject-verb agreement and William Faulkner in the meantime.

Of maintaining grammar, rather. I suppose you win the point then, ingwe.

Faulkner! I've nothing against the guy, but isn't Melville strictly better?

Faulkner? Melville? I'd much rather read Dickens, Hemingway, and Arthur Conan-Doyle.

Have you READ Melville? I say this as a fan of both Dickens AND Sir Arthur (an especial fan of the Sherlock Holmes stories and the Tales of Terror and Mystery) - Melville is just a genius. Read him, man; I love the others you mentioned (except Hemingway), but they just don't compare.

i is gud spellar. i wanna play 2! :P

I've read Moby Dick and love it, but have a particular fondness for Dicken's (A Tale of Two Cities is his best work) and Sir Arthur (my personal motto when hunting bugs is "eliminate the impossible and whatever remains, no matter how improbably, must be the truth.")

Another great read is Joseph Conrad. I'm also fond of Lew Wallace's Ben Hur, anything by the William Shakespeare (Hamlet, and Othello are my favorites), Edgar Allan Poe (Cask of Amontillado, The Gold Bug, and of course, Fall of the House of Usher), Jonathan Swift (Gulliver's Travels fo course) and Victor Hugo (Hunchback of Notre Dame... I only wish I could read French so I didn't have to read translations).

* improbably = improbable

*anything by the Bard - William Shakespeare.

Thursday is not starting off well. :-)

Ok, maybe I was being a bit rash with regard to my assumption of linguistic skills being corellated with age. To my mind the art of Diplomacy is to tell someone to go to hell and make sure he enjoys the ride. In my experience with these games the negotiation is terse, one liners, with no plesentries or subtlety. The best way to guess that a stab is on its way is when an "ally" stops communicating at all.
Anyway, all age groups welcomed, as long as they have read Ulysses.

An ally who stops talking when he's about to stab; oy gevalt! I always keep things kosher before the stab.

As far as pleasantries, you've never played with me! But then you don't seem to want to play with me; I'm only twenty-seven.

Just out of interest, has anyone here read any Melville other than the Big White One?

I always thought he'd used up his creative genius in one book.

Looking forward to this boring old farts game by the way. Should be worth a few interesting stories...

I've read Bartleby and Billy Budd in addition to the Whale. Something of a Holmes fanatic; I share my birthday with Conan Doyle. See you in the game, fellow 40 somethings.

Ah...I don't have Ulysses yet. All of Shakespeare though. Do I qualify?

@ingwe - is a translation of Ulusses OK? I don't read Greek, I'm afraid. :-)

*Thursdays suck - Ulusses = Ulysses

Joyce weren't no Greek

Have you seen the Soprano's episode about Billy Budd? Very funny, very good twist in the tale.

And I look forward to seeing some of you in the game... It is up and running.

I'm 38, I'm published, and I live in a building built before the Spring 1901 turn.

I feel discriminated against. LOL

I'm a newbie to the game, and the lack of diplomacy in webDiplomacy is something that surprised me too (although there are a few exceptions). I assumed it was just the two games I've joined, but is the lack of conversation common on this site?

It all depends on who you play with. Some of us are very talkative...

Hell, I'm 61!! Anyone older yet...??

@Rutherford Hayes "is the lack of conversation common on this site?"

It is only common in newbie games. The first game I played on phdpiplomacy (facebook) was like a gunboat game. I was Germany. Not one person answered my spring diplomacy messages (and I messaged everyone). Then in the next year the only message I received was from England and just a terse demand that I play a particular move. Followed by abuse after I didn't play it. Admittedly he warmed up after that, but the lack of communication took me back. I put it down to "this must be how it is played on the internet". But this is not the case. I have not played a huge number of games, but in most of them the players have been talkative. In some games very much so.

If you click on a players profile you can determine how talkative a player is. Profile contain stats including how many games played and how many messages. Divide the latter by the former and you can gauge how communicative a player is (a rough idea at least). For example, Edi Birsan (former world champion plays here sometimes) typically sends over 300 messages per game. Quite a few players here send even more messages.