Back in the day of PBM, there was the leisure time for gentlemen and ladies to assume the persona of some sort of warlord and couch words appropriately. A kindly, violent age.

More directly to the point, I think that warlord suits the theme of the game more than just war (usually just between two nations) or business (takeovers). Gang warfare wears the clothes of Diplomacy well, too. Diplomacy New York!

What do you mean by "warlord" in this context?

"Warlord" is somewhat ambiguous, but, regardless, probably not the right word.

There is a big difference between a warlord that marches his armies across a continent, and one that pushes playing pieces across a tabletop.

Any "war game" must necessarily trivialize war, for the simple reason that a realistic war simulation wouldn't be much fun. Playing a truly realistic war game should lead to night terrors and stress disorders; fellow players would be able to identify each other by their thousand yard stares (paraphrasing from David Wong's brilliant Cracked.com article satirizing realism in war games).

I think the game of Diplomacy is not even about tactical maneuver (much less "war"), rather it is about communication, persuasion, and the management of relationships. The simplified, highly-abstracted actions that happen on the board are only meant to promote the intrigue that occurs off of it.

While I agree with yebellz's analysis of Diplomacy, I think the point is, roughly speaking:

Chess = War e.g. strategy & different pieces knocking each other off
Poker = Business e.g. bluffing & reading other people.
Diplomacy = ? e.g. strategy leading to diplomacy and tactics.

If not warlord, then what? Late medieval Italian city-states?

@yebellz

Thank you for your response. Are you then saying that a better description for Diplomacy would be "Intrigue Simulator?"

Should, for example, George Soros be a better mascot for our game then Genghis Khan?

I always thought Diplomacy was about getting the most +1s, I don't know what you guys are talking about.

Ok, if you want a more concise analogy, I would just say...

The game of Diplomacy is the game of manipulation.

Diplomacy = Manipulation
(in your analogy format)

I still think the analogies of saying that Chess = War, and Poker = Business are extremely tenuous.

In a game of chess, you start with an almost perfectly symmetric situation (except for one side moving first), the initial conditions are perfectly known, every action has fully understood consequences, the current situation is always perfectly known, there is no uncertainty or randomness introduced by the caprice of nature, potential actions and counter-actions can be endlessly projected into the future and analyzed, there is one sole objective that is fully understood, absolute victory means absolute defeat for your opponent and vice versa, everything can be sacrificed toward the single all-important objective ...

Can you think of a single war that had any of the above characteristics?

War is not a zero-sum game (it's always negative-sum). Battles are never fought between perfectly symmetric armies. Chaos and uncertainty is the nature of war. Ideological objectives are weighed against pragmatic and humane realities.
War is the unbounded application of force to resolve disagreement. Chess is just a mathematical exercise, and resembles war no more than checkers (the similar characteristic being the elimination of opposing units).


Poker is about calculated decisions in the face of uncertainty and risk which resembles business, but it is also a zero-sum game that promotes deceit and intimidation.
I think it would be highly cynical and damaging to society as a whole to conduct business as if it was zero-sum game with deceit and intimidation being essential tools. To simplify business in such a manner would be to assume that all involved are simply con-men.

Business, viewed as the productive enterprise of man, should be a positive-sum game. By exploiting nature rather each other, our productive labor and ingenuity can be leveraged to ensure that everyone is better off.
The fundamental idea behind barter is that we can exchange goods/services such that we are each better off because we each place more value in what the other offers. This same basic idea extends to general trade, business deals, and economies/societies as a whole. This idealism doesn't stop deceit, intimidation, and the zero-sum mentality from affecting business, but society actively works toward limiting its impact with various mechanisms ranging from the criminal justice system to regulatory oversight to reputation networks (e.g., public opinion, boycotts).

"Should I treat the game as being more of a gentleman's pursuit?"

No, absolutely not. It's just a game. No one is literally being back-stabbed. No countries are literally being invaded.

The purpose of the game is to exercise manipulation toward the sole objective of winning without regard to any "gentlemanly" ideals that have no place in this game. If you want to call that "warlord" behavior that's fine, but really I think the behavior needed to win is a bit more refined.

The profile of a winning diplomacy player is the kind of guy that can talk to someone he has just met and make it feel like two old friends having a chat. It's the kind of guy that can use friendliness and charm to get what he wants, all the while making the other person feel that it's really in their best interest as well. And, most crucially, it's the kind of guy that is willing to ruthlessly betray those he's charmed and befriended at the exact moment he can ensure his own objectives.


"What should our culture be?"

Within the game, absolutely ruthless. Outside of the game, friendly and civil, we're just a hobby site after all.

@Jamie,

Thank you for your inquiry. What do I mean by warlord? Well, I suppose that I should answer that.

Electoral accomplishment has never that much impressed me. I have always admired men who have acquired and held a kingdom, ruling skillfully, by the sword.

But don't I decry violence? Yes. My admiration for warlords is only from a standpoint of entertainment or historical interest. Violence is nearly always terrible.

I admire men like Ghengis Khan, and Timur, or Napolean not because they could successfully march a group of men for a thousand miles for the express purpose of murder-stabbing another group of men who are hiding inside of a castle.

Even the lowest among American military generals will have had the training and preparation to accomplish this, no matter how difficult it might seem to a layperson or civilian.

Rather, I admire each of those men because of their ability of rhetoric and dealmaking.

The men I've listed, they came from nothing. They didn't inherit an army, they built one. They didn't discover a military-agricultural complex and it's associated hegemony - they forged these things, in each case in tumultuous regions.

How the hell do you do this? This is amazing.

Someone had to be Napoleon, and it was Napoleon. Is that really an amazing feat? I recommend you read War and Peace, where this great man theory is addressed in painstaking detail