At our Diplomacy club at school, we have entered our 5th game.

The game masters have decided it would be fun to mix it up with a list of random events. Somewhere along the lines of the varient Chaos Italy.

The player who turns their orders in first would pick a letter a-z which correlates to a random event that will negetively affect something somewhere on the board. I have found thus far that events like...

Mt. Vesuvius Explodes, all pieces in Italy destroyed

Rioting in Berlin, destroy any piece of Berlin

and the list goes on and on...

What are your thoughts on weather these events make the gameplay more fun and interesting or just unfair.

If you believe it is unfair, what do you think are some ways we could balance this creative idea out a bit.

You want to balance it? Get rid of it. Or have a game master random event:

A. Leave for a turn.
B. leave for a day.
C. A random player switches with the game masters.

Or something like that.

my Euro history teacher would have "disaster" cards that he would randomly draw after each autumn move before unit placing. some times you had a riot in a random ocean territory or a rebelion in a random sc's therefore locking that sc til the next autumn phase and keeping any unit on that sc from moving/supporting/being attacked. also there were good cards that created new sc's on any of the other territories(except ocean territories).

it sucked when your unit got locked but if felt so good when you were england and a whales or yorkshire became a new sc

that would be cool, but I don't think its fair, since the players don't get a choice. Perhaps if the game masters revealed the list, and the players get to create some of their own, equal to or more than those created by the game masters. That way, the players have some way to control what happens to them.

bump

when a thread is at the top of the page, bumping is pointess and can be called spam. There's no point for that bump.

now's its more at the top of the page!

I don't see the point in bumping threads here at all, unless they're going to fall right off the bottom and contain something important.
Random events seem like an interesting idea, but personally I don't think I'd like them, because the best bit of diplomacy for me is the clear logic behind it.

Random events are kind of against the spirit of diplomacy, but at the same time... it could be fun... more realistic.

puppies,
all of the cards that were used were evenly created to affect a country in both good and bad ways the same it just depended which cards happened to be draw during a game

*to be drawn

bump - ha ha

Wow zapyx. Wow puppies. That's all I have to say.

I think a better way would be to have one person choose what event happens. That way, it can be incorporated into the diplomatic aspect of the game.

Each random even could occur the following turn. For example, the citizens of rome are growing restless. Or that scientists forecast wildfires in bohemia.

puppies,
there is this little problem called picking favorites

No, what I mean is that for instance, One round, you pick one player randomly. Russia. He now gets to see the list of events, and can choose one, whether it helps him bckstab, or help his allies. For instance, he chooses, Balkans go to war . All pieces on Albania, Serbia, Rumania go into CD for one turn.

This could either help his ally, either turkey or austria, or hinder them both so italy can come in and attack all of them with you.

See what I mean?

1. I wish I had a diplomacy club at my school :(

2. Random events sounds like Life blended with Diplomacy. It sounds kind of stupid...

I had an idea based on burningpuppies' last post.

What if each player had "agents" or "operatives" or something who could choose effects of a preset nature to activate, say, twice per game?

That would be cool!

kinda but thats basically what i said...
each card has a random country and a random event near that country that is either helpful or obstructive

No, see, the problem is that's RANDOM.

My idea makes it non-random, which means there's actually some semblance of fairness. Balancing the events would be difficult, though.

Since when is randomness unfair?
It's the only REAL way to get unbiased results. Luck doesn't choose to like/dislike someone.

If you want to make it a little more fair, I'd say have 1 positive card and one negative card for each country/region.