You cannot play a public game with players that you know outside of the site. In doing so, you create an unfair environment for other players by giving yourself the opportunity to form alliances for reasons outside the game. This includes playing public games with family, friends, relatives, coworkers, or even joining a game with any player of a previous game with a predetermined intent to ally with or attack certain players.

Because Diplomacy is a social game, we always encourage playing with friends. However, you should always do so in a private, password-protected game and make sure that every player knows about any real life connections before the game begins.

i think it is best if you play a non-anonymous full or public press game. that way, everybody knows who knows each other. however, you still absolutely need to make this a password-protected game and let all the players know that you know each other, otherwise it would be considered metagaming. and, by all means, don't join random games together.

There are a couple things you could do. 1) JamesYanik frequently has games where some of the participants know others, they are usually advertised through forum. 2) You could do a private game and ask for extras through the forum (note that this might not work) or 3) You could go full disclosure and just tell everyone you know each other.

As for anon games, you can't do full disclosure in anon, since it gives more information to the other of you than it does to the other players, but since I can probably already recognize several players on the site from press alone, you two could probably know anyway.

Gunboat is great, but don't limit yourselves. As long as you don't communicate outside the game, and don't ally based on knowing each other, I don't think anyone will mind.

Stab him.

Note that Hellenic Riot is actually quoting the site rules (from http://webdiplomacy.net/rules.php).

Playing with friends outside of a private game is expressly forbidden.

You should immediately introduce him to the finer elements of the forum.

But if I started an anon players game and he joined it, I wouldn't know which country he was anyway. Why faff about making it password protected and then struggle to find players to fill it when he could just join an anon game? I don't understand the purpose of having to make it private and pw protect it.

Even if you two have the best intentions and keep it ethical, there is a *perception* that something might be fishy, even if it isn't. Best to try one of the options listed above.

Interesting. When did that rule change occur?

I swear this site has the biggest babies that play diplomacy. Instead of being excited about the possibility of getting a new player hooked to the game everyone just whines about playing with people who know each other.

Check,

Make a thread saying your starting a game to introduce a friend to Diplomacy. I'm sure you'll get takers. I would play if I wasn't currently in so many games. And be sure to have him introduce himself to the forum.

Exactly right. No one wants to waste their time in a game with cheaters.

I don't think Check_mate and his buddy would do such a thing. They're being honest about it up front.

But you can't ignore the fact that many games have been compromised in the past due to poor behavior on the part of others. It's also important that new players have a good first experience and *not* get into a game with someone who wants to multi or extreme meta.

Not about whining but about having ethical players on the site so that the actual game playing doesn't devolve into a cesspool like the forum.

I'll gladly play, Check. I have friends and relatives on site and we do password-protected games. We've never had an issue getting people.

Though I will say this: Make sure you tell everyone via global who knows who. We had an issue last game where someone joined and got mad that they were losing so they contacted the mods about us knowing each other. (even though to get the password he had to read the forum post stating that there players who knew each other IRL)

Steps:
1. Post on forums for PW protected game with friends
2. Get nice people to join and play along
3. One might be a moderator
4. Who will go on Global threatening "No monkey business"
5. People will press each other with "???"
6. Mod will die first, and his last press will be "grglegrglegrgle"
7. Everyone points and laughs

If I ever had a mod put "grglegrglegrgle" in global as his last words, I'd lose my mind.

How about "ghuggleghuggleghuggle?"

That should be your new trademark.

Only if you're narcissistic

That's my best quality!