My uncle introduced me to it (along with many other great games like Axis & Allies and Civilization) when I was a kid. I've been playing so long I don't even remember how old I was when I first started playing. I do remember that in my first game I was France.

A friend introduced me to this online version a short while ago and now I have an outlet for my flowery vocabulary and pure evil.

I found it in my history teacher's classroom and my friends and I tried playing it on a "free day."

My brother introduced me to it while I was in high school. My first game I played Turkey.

I was introduced to it during a summer camp a while back. I was England in my first game, and I remember my first instinct saying that England and France could not get along lol.

I was bored and searched wikipedia for strategy games, Diplomacy was listed and I found it here free to play

My friend had the board game. I liked the idea, but hated the writing, formality, and time it took.
I looked it up, found playdiplomacy.com, found this site, and love it even more!

I found my father's copy in our basement when I was in HS. I read the rules and thought it was the worst game ever. Then in college, a friend from a gaming community told me about a great website for this great game. I followed the link, and, what do you know, it was phpdiplomacy.net. My first game was Austria and I NMR'd on the first turn. One of only two in my campaign here.

Since then, I've tried to get friends to play ftf, but even though I know a lot of board game lovers, I can never find 6 people who are serious about playing.

Intro to Political Science 101, the professor brought it in and set us to play in groups. Then we borrowed it.

Friend of mine has on old copy, brought me over to play with his dad. I'll never forget that first game as Germany.

Freshman year at uni some friends were looking for players; my first game was a four-player where I was G/T. I lost pretty quickly with G but my T went on to become part of the 3-way draw. Oddly enough, it was not my usual board game crowd-- as far as I know they didn't play other games besides Dip.

My highschool had a club called the "Historical and Fantasy Gaming Society" which we called "War Games." They did everything from D + D to Diplomacy to all sorts of other board games. My friends learnt there and continued to play via e-mail during and after high school. Eventually we found this site so our games wouldn't need someone to sit out and GM.

Some friends of mine invited to a game of stab and deception.
I immediately liked the game but we never got to play again since it was really hard to gather up all 7 people.
Then I found this site and decided to become the best Greek player in the world.
I think I am now.
I'm also the founder of the Greek Diplomacy Community (http://diplomatsgr.blogspot.com)

I went to a boardgame club that was doing a pick-up Diplomacy night as a freshman in college. I was Russia, and Germany, who "taught" me, neglected to mention the issue of the two StP coasts until orders were resolved and I was practically dead in 1901. Fifteen years later my wife gave me a copy for Christmas. I lamely played by myself a few times to figure out the rules. (It was impossible to gather six people. I did get games of both Britannia and Twilight Imperium off the ground, which I consider a heroic feat among youngish professionals.) I read all of the neat articles on the Hasbro site when they rereleased Diplomacy a few years ago. Over the summer my brother-in-law introduced me to this site, which is a lot of fun.

I was an Avalon Hill board gamer from way back when. I always saw it, but never had a group to play it. Then at work, one of the older guys brought a bunch of us gamers together for our first game of "Advanced Risk". SpellOfWheels was one of those guys. All before a website like this could be imagined...

Nice thread by the way, Bez. A nostalgic, gentle antidote to the sometimes bizarre discussions of politics and philosophy.

My Global History teacher in high school GMed games for students. His Military History class (which was a full year of playing historical board games, amazing!!) played a ftf game while he would post maps for other students to play on a bulletin board outside of his classroom. Orders would be due every day or every other day depending on how skilled the players were. I played some games on the dip2000 website before eventually finding this site.

My older brother was introduced to it in a board game club he was in. He brought it home to read the rules and showed it to me and my other brother. I didn't play then, but really liked the idea of no chance and everyone's turns happening at the same time.

Then as an adult, I found some folks at my work that played by email with each other and so I joined in and played my first few games. Then many years of not playing before finding this website.

I was at woodstock and this dude brought it out in between sets, been hooked ever since.

When I was in high school, I used to buy pot from my buddy Tim's older brother. He was an avid diplomacy player, decided I wasn't an idiot, and invited me to play once.

When the Apostle Paul was done preaching, he often played Diplomacy. That's when I started.

id love to have those kind of teachers.
the first time i played diplo ftf with my friend, i put in a an order rong, and he wouldnt let me change it so i was pretty pissed. but no spelling mistakes on the internet!

"I was at woodstock and this dude brought it out in between sets, been hooked ever since."

LOL Best so far!

Was at the local comic book store while in university and saw it and was tired of Axis and Allies so I picked it up.My friends loved it as it eliminated the randomize of dice rolling.
On a side note my brother was in town the other night and we out with his friends who happen to own the comic store.Never knew he was there friend they met in Toronto while going to University small world.And the one brother remembered me going to his store all the time but I haven't been there in 5 or 6 years.

I had a very nerdy friend (played D&D, warhammer etc during lunch breaks) and he introduced the idea to us, then we agreed to try it and he brought his board in.
Tried to play over a few lunchtimes, but there were only really two of us really interested, and as a result the other two didn't come back, and then were replaced, then turned up and basically it just became a mess.

I found this place when I was looking for a copy of the map because I wanted to write up the game of Diplomacy into a php-based website. Having found it, I introduced them and we played a game out on here.

I first saw it played F2F at a GenCon in the '80's. I signed up while I was there for PBM [PB<snail>M] - 2 weeks per turn. You had to put absolute orders in for moves and optional orders for builds/retreats [If France owns Mar then build a fleet in Rom else build an army in Ven]. The optional orders had to be *very* clear and unambiguous.

The GM stamped every envelope he sent out with the outline image of a guy being stabbed in the back, just so we know what we were getting into.

Went to my cousins house this past June and he showed me the app on Face Book and i Joined it, played first game as Austria, Set up a 4 on 1 alliance against my cousin(Russia), and went on to win the game. played ever since. :) favorite game ever.

My son was a D&D gamemaster, played other games, went to Dip tournaments, met Edi Berson, etc. About 2 years ago he introduced me to PBEM via the judges and I started playing, met Draugnar there and he introduced me to this site.

Some friends introduced me to it (face to face games) at university back in the late 80's. Have only played it intermittently since, until joining this site earlier this year.

When I was in the army, a guy brought it and we played it on a Friday night. I remember that I was France. It was back in 2000 or so. I tried since then to gather a group of players, to no success.

Interesting enough, the second time I played Diplomacy was only on this site, 10 years later.

I had always been interested in some sort of board-based war game, and had had a run-in with risk, but didn't like it due to the use of dice and somewhat elaborate set up with the cards and all.
Then, one day, I was searching wikipedia for something with the word "diplomacy" in it (I don't remember what it was), and I came across the article for Diplomacy. Its complete base on strategy alone was very exciting. Shortly thereafter, I found out that some friends had a set, I played it with them, and loved it.
Knowing that I could never get 7 people together for a ftf game, I went back to that wikipedia article and looked at the links to dip websites. The one I happened to click on lead here, and so I joined.