So i'm in this situation where it's come to light beyond a shadow of a doubt that i'm allied with the same person in two different anonymous games. While i don't want to let one game influence another i know it's pretty clear that how i treat him in one game is of course going to influence his trust of me in the other. I'm close to the point where it would normally make sense to stab him in one game but I've got a really great thing going in the other that him trusting me is pivotal for and I hate the idea of risking what could be a potential solo.

What would you do in this situation?

(FYI - not being played here)

Geez, let me post the question first. ;)

Is this person a friend? Do you know him in real life? Does he know you are the same player in both games?

Don't know him at all and neither of us know each others real identity, but yes he knows i'm the same guy. By sheer coincidence i got lazy and reused my opening line in another game to my immediate neighbour thinking hey, what would the chances be? Apparently chances weren't that bad. He found it funny and allied with me anyways since it made sense regardless, but now i'm in an awkward predicament.

I don't see that as metagaming any more than recognizing someone's distinctive press style is in an anonymous game - it happens. If it becomes clear that your strategy is dictated by your past relationship with them as opposed to the current game, though, that could change in an instant.

Regardless, you're discussing an ongoing game in this thread, and considering there can't be that many people that can relate to your situation at this very moment, it's more than possible that your "ally" is going to read everything you say here and know exactly what's coming. As such, I advise you not discuss this any further here.

Missed the "not being played here" did we?

Whoops-a-daisy, Bo has gone off on one !!

My advice is too lull him into a false sense of security then destroy him

Apparently he did. ;)

Hate the notion of letting any kind of cross game influences effect my game play, but human nature is what it is. I have no doubt it's not an "against the rules" kind of deal, just wanted people's input into both whether it's in the spirit of the game and even more so...how do you navigate something like that strategically? It's starting to handcuff me a bit in one of the games. Do you do what you have to do and ram down his throat he need to ignore that, it's a different game? I think we all realize that's unrealistic and not human nature. So...then what?

Oh no, bo made a mistake, ahhhhh......

In that case, unless the rules on said site are identical to ours, I don't know if it's within the rules. I guess I'll just say that if you stab in one game and that player tries to take it out on you in the other, he's a dick and you should check if he's allowed to do that.

Or do you balance it so that any necessary stabs happen at the same time in both games?

I don't think you should base either game around the other in any way.

Tell him you can't trust him anymore because he has been saying bad things about you behind your back with an ex-girlfriend who knows your dirty little secrets .... I cannot guarantee it will work but that is what I would do ..... then destroy him

Idealistic to say. If you were playing a game with somebody who rithlessy stabbed you in every game you've ever encountered them, you are telling me you wouldn't let that influence your approach to that player? You wouldn't be attracted to a player you've encountered to never tell a lie or stab? It's a bit unrealistic to expect players to ignore knowledge they possess.

Good plan Nigee, I'll do it!

Gunboat is mostly my thing, but I have had the privilege of playing with some great press players on this site. I've found that good players are capable of working with you in one game while fighting you in another, great players do both in the same game.

If I knew who a player was, I'd certainly base some of my game off of their tendencies, but you said that you don't know who the player actually is, which means you can't really do any background check of sorts, and you only have one other game as a sample. Just because you haven't yet been stabbed in that game doesn't mean he won't do it. You really don't know enough about him to play that way, you just have to play each game out.

I mostly play gunboats which prevents me being subjectively ruthless but to win you have to kill, kill & kill again .... rip that loser to shreds, torture him, maim him

Never understood the appeal of gunboat games, but that's a topic for another thread.

If I go purposely look for metagaming in someone's game history, I'm going to find it, especially if you have been on the site for a while. Hell, if an uninitiated player decided to investigate me, they'd probably see possible metagaming with at least a dozen gunboaters just because of the sheer number of games I've played with the same handful of people.

There's a line between "against the rules" meta-gaming and "human nature" meta-gaming that i think people sometimes mix up. The latter is pretty unavoidable and not much point in trying to pretend it's not going to happen. Better to just adapt your play strategy realizing it's going to occur, if people know who you are they're going to take into consideration anything they already know about you.

You play the player, not the board, so to speak. In this scenario, if you know you have that allying with him in both games will help you with the win, then do it. This is a game of winning at any cost.

People take meta-gaming to a degree that it shouldn't go. What I mean by that is that there are those out there that feel that using people's posted information on a forum or info about how they have played previous games is considered poor form meta-gaming. Personally, I see issues like these (and the one you're talking about) as finding a way to play the player in a way that best suits you.

Here's another example: if I'm playing an anonymous game and I know the players in the game but not who's who, and someone in the game sends me a message while I'm on (indicating they're on also), I have no problem going through the list of people in the game and checking to see who's on to be able to identify which player it is I'm talking to. I can then go through their profile and look at their play style. Sure, it's bringing outside information into a game, and yes it can influence the way I play, but it's by no means doing something beyond the framework of the way the game is designed.


When I look at whether or not something is "legal", I compare it to things people do in FtF games. People have listened into other people's conversations before, placed extra units on the board that don't belong (flying dutchman), ask other players about someone they've never played before, people pay attention to how well a player is doing in a tournament to determine whether or not they should ally with the guy. I've even heard stories of how one player took a set of orders from the box so that when orders were read, that opponent didn't have any official orders and all of his units were reduced to "holds".

The only thing I won't really ever do is (a) ally with someone simply by virtue of them being a friend and (b) use multiple accounts to play multiple countries. Anything outside of that is fair game.

Completely agree. I do have to say that while i fully endorse that any information that's available that helps players learn about each other is fair game, I also do think that maybe this site could probably do away with it's "online" indicator feature to at least give a little shred of anonymity in those types of games.

That's true. I do like it, though, even when I'm not playing in anon games. It's nice to see which mod is online when I need one, or if I need to contact players, I can see who's on and who will contact me in the next few minutes.

I also like the time stamps in non anon games.

It depends a lot on the specific culture and expectations that are present on that other diplomacy site.

Meta-gaming and anonymity are tricky issues to address. It's easy to spot the extreme cases, but where the exact line is drawn probably varies significantly between different gaming communities.

For example, on Bounced, they seem to draw a much more restrictive line on maintaining anonymity and avoiding meta-gaming.
http://www.dipbounced.com/help/anonymous.html

On the other hand, some other websites might be more lax than what we're used to on WebDip.

Asking WebDippers about what is appropriate on a different site might not make much sense.

Well like i said, i feel pretty comfortable there's no rule breaking going on. My question was really more about how best to juggle it from a strategic view point knowing it would be hard to not let any betrayal from one game colour his trust for me in the other.

It's quite simple really. If the time is right to stab in one of the games then stab. If you allow fear of what may happen in another game stop you from playing freely you have little chance of winning either.

I've been in situations like this when participating in tournaments with multiple games going on simultaneously. So long as you do your opponent the service of explaining what prompted you to stab, and maybe outlining what's deterring you from stabbing in the other game, a reasonable foe will accept your rationality and simply take greater care to avoid giving you logical stab opportunities in the game that you're still allies.