Thanks for that because I have always been thinking of suggesting this =D

Anyone ever played the card game Bang? It got four roles and each of them has a different objective in the game, and I think such elements can be implemented in our game, and ideally 4-7 players will do.

Ill join depending on the map.

Alright, this is what I propose (with much reference to the card game Bang though ... and the names are just to make things more interesting) :

The King
The objective of the King is to eliminate all Assassins and the Traitor by joining forces with the Knight(s). Only the identity of the King should be revealed to players publicly at the very beginning of the game.

The Knight
The Knight has to protect the King from the Assassins’ attacks, and at the same time help the King to defeat the Assassins.

The Assassin
The objective of the Assassin is simple – eliminate the King.

The Traitor
Being the Traitor, the player has to survive in the game till the very end, where he will go onto a 1vs1 with the King.

The game will end when it comes to any of the following situations:
1. The Assassins and the Traitor are eliminated.
Victorious parties: The King and the Knight(s)
2. The King is defeated.
Victorious party: The Assassins, even if the Knight survives
3. The Knight and the Assassins is all out of the game, leaving only the Traitor and the King as survivors.
Victorious party: Whoever defeats his opponent

I'd be interested, although I'd need a pause during summer holidays. If that doesn't work then count me out.

summer holidays will be from when to when for you?

Maybe...

What? I don't really get Lukas's suggestion. I meant roleplaying as the countries. Summer holidays start around the 13th, although I wouldn't mind starting earlier if we have a longer phase length.

Hmmm, actually better count me out. New project has popped up in real life so
I'm consciously limiting my VDip games for the moment.

bump.

Roleplaying as countries? What do you mean?

In fact what I suggested is "roleplaying" in the sense that each player will be assigned a role right at the beginning of the game, and their objectives and winning conditions also differ according to their assigned roles.

Well, sounds funny. Count me in!

@Lukas - Vat comrade Nonevah mean is using fake accents to support Mother Russia to win.

Or maybe he means we should keep up the British end by charging forward into the valley of death!

Or perchance he wishes to make peace, mon cherie...

You get the idea. Play your nation as it's leader in that time frame, so a Russian Czar, Austrian Duke, Turkish Sultan, English Queen or King, etc.

There seem to be two different ideas going here which is why Fasces asked to clarify roleplaying.

Nonevah started this thread and appeared to have the idea that each player would act as if they were from the country they were in. This would probably work best public press and would only really work if the players knew the countries well. By the way, Nonevah can't join the game whatever happens because he currently has 0 .

Lukas Podolski has been quite clear about his understanding of roleplaying. I would just worry that Diplomacy might not take so well to such a game due to distance. In Bang, as players get eliminated, the "map" basically shrinks. In Diplomacy, it will be almost impossible for England or Turkey to kill the other regardless of what happens. I think that Migraine, Pure or Rat Wars might be the best choices of map for that way of playing. This style would also require Full Press.

Another way of roleplaying which kind of combines the two ideas is the "Extreme Personalities" game. In this, you act like some specific role which also determines your objectives. For example, one of these was recently played on the Known World 901 map. The personalities included "Grossly incompetent character who always *$&@*s up" (self-explanatory) "Pirate Pete" (who only cares about his fleets) and "nukeboy" (who conducts diplomacy as if he is conducting nuclear weapons research). Others included a character who randomly chose a target of aggression every year and another who gave into the demands of whoever was the most aggressive. Other possibilities would be "Captain Convoy" whose objective is to arrange large international convoys, and "Captain Colour" who cares more about colouring territories than actually winning. This style would also be best Public Press.

Sorry for the trouble but I was rather unclear about Nonevah's suggestion. If we're playing the role of, say, an English Queen, what are the differences between that and a game with no roles at all? With the role does it mean that we will have to play according to history?

I think people mainly do mannerisms and accents.

Well most people think of roleplaying as "pretending to be someone you are not." Rarely is it about your role in the game, but how you present yourself. My characters role in SWTOR is a cybernetic Bounty Hunter. But I don't "roleplay" her in chat, adopting some kind of strange alien emotionless part-droid part-humanoid Data/Spock accent or anything.

But in a game of Diplomacy, how would you "roleplay" a character through orders? Even your previous post described a chat-focused roleplay.

We had a fun game with "extreme personalities" where everyone made orders according to their personality. For instance, I was supposed to cave in to whoever was cruelest to me, so I would just move my armies away and leave parts undefended. Another guy was the Pirate King and only wanted to build fleets/have coastal SC's.

I meant roleplaying through the tone of your conversation, your actions, in a fashion similar to an IOT. It would be all communication allowed, of course.

Alright, but if we are doing the extreme personalities thing, will our primary objective still be winning? If yes, that will be rather hard for specific characters like Captain Convoy as mentioned by Gman. If no, then the game will lose its meaning to some extent ...

In extreme personality games the primary objective is entertainment. The buy-in is set at the minimum (2 ) so that winning the game is a very distant secondary objective.

Here's a posting from the Forum re: the last Extreme Personalities game:
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As a reminder here is the updated list of personalities with recent additions:

1. Wanna-rule-the-world dictator.
2. Believes non-existent players are about to attack him and others
3. Trying to seize a totally obscure part of the board without regard to normal gameplay
4. You think you're a major religious figure - Jesus/Buddha/Mohammad/your own cult etc
5. You think you're the megalomaniac historical figure of the country you represent - Hitler, Napoleon, insert name of relevant crazy person who's run that country before (Killer, Diplomat and Drano both supported in the forum. Discussion on if we draw that, should one be forced to fight like that person too? I mean it's all fine and dandy if someone's pretending to be Hitler, but if they then make an alliance with France, where's the "crazy" part you know? So Hitler would form an A/I/G (or attempt to) etc)
6. You think you're a famous entertainer - you pick who it could be, past or present eg Elvis, Lady Gaga, member of the Village People, etc (suggested that you could be the whole group of the Village People, etc)
7. Vendetta - Make up a reason to hate a particular country and weave it into a story. Try to get the rest of the board to help you gain your objective. Kinda goes with the fixated on a specific part of the map idea.
8. Paranoid - This person doesn't really trust anyone and will stab/protect from stabs that either don't exist, or wouldn't make sense to go through with because everyone's "out to get them".
9. Extremist group - Your crazy extremist group has grabbed control of the government. Think Westboro Baptist Church if you're a christian nation, or Al Qaeda if you're Turkey. Or it could be as silly as PETA or Greenpeace seizing a nation's leaders
10. Self-loather: The character actually hates his country/loves another country more eg he's English but wants to be French: he emulates another player, their culture etc and does everything he can to support that country. How does he deal with a stab? Who knows? That's the fun part of being crazy.
11. Grossly incompetent character who always f^cks up. Basically you'd put in your orders the way you planned, but would then have to deliberately go back and screw up one of the orders. eg

France (the f^ck up) wants to:

A Marseilles -> Spain
A Paris -> Burgandy
F Brest -> MAO

Has to (randomly?) screw up an order so F Brest->Picardy instead. Basically you have to choose the stupidest move possible (maybe there's a stupier move than that as you could easily pick up Belgium that way, perhaps he just holds?
12. The bully - someone who feels he's bigger/ stronger then he really is, boasts and make more aggressive only moves.
13. The pacifist - doesn't start any wars, but fights whoever hits him first (I think this could work, but its not really crazy as such)
14. A person who just randomly supports others with no indications of alliances or trade offs, that will at least keep the game moving (discussion on two personalities: always lies and always tells the truth. But as this may get picked up on relatively quickly, another alternative would be the overly helpful character - overly pleasing & help others out all the time even if it makes no sense eg let's say France has a fleet in Belgium & helps out England by supporting an attack from NTS to German holland while a French fleet in EC supports a german fleet in Denmark attacking NTS.
15. Mr. Prissy – although no game-changing crazy like the others. Unless we stipulate that "mr. prissy" must ALWAYS be guided by the person who is loudest and most intimidating towards them (thereby making mr. prissy feel scared and afraid of that person), it shouldn't be a personality.
16. Giver-upper - immediately when he loses an SC, he abandons the front and moves on.
17. Color Man - a person who would rather spend moves coloring territories their color rather than capturing SC's, obsesses over "neutral" non-SC territories, such as North Africa, Syria, Finland, Bohemia, Clyde, etc. if we were to do 1897
18. Pirate Pete - Swears all the time, builds at least 1 fleet when he can during the builds phase doesn’t move to any inland SCs or territories: must stay on the coast. Tends to raid coastal SC’s and sees no issues moving on,
19. Military Man - Will build armies no matter what (sorry England), speaks in clipped military like tones and behaves like he’s in the army
20. Moocher - Will build alliances based on food, not by different deals which are being made (eg France allying with Italy or England for a fine dinner or a tea break with French bread.
21. Nuke Inventor - Will always try to convince his allies that he will develop nukes in the near future. He constantly keeps explaining what his scientists are doing and the physics of a nuclear weapon.
22. The Horse Trader - basically bandied together & strikes deals to swap territories with players
23. Barking mad - you take on the persona of an animal. You can still speak human language but you take everything from your chosen animal perspective. Open to discussion if you can swap & change animals during the game. Alternatively you could only speak in your species' native tongue eg you bark, woof & pee everywhere the whole game. Could be interesting in diplomatic conversations
24. The Mirror - in 1901 you behave totally rationally like normal Dip player, then in 1902 (grab a dice or do some kind of random allocation of the other 6 players) and then act like & take on the same traits as that randomly selected player. 1903 rolls by, see who you'll randomly be next turn. This way you have to do your best to imitate the style/personality you think that player has.
25. Irrational lover/hater - randomly select a player in 1901 & go to war with them with full bravado (even if you're England & you just drew turkey) then in 1902 randomly go to war with another player while sucking up to the guy you just attacked the previous turn. Serious craziness if you get the same player back to back with messages swapping between love & hate
26. The Revolutionary - speaks in nothing but propaganda and rants about "liberating" the oppressed masses
27. Captain Convoy - tries organizing the most complex multi-national convoys the world has ever seen, delivering countries' armies to the furthest possible destination just because they can!
28. The straight faced liar - nothing he ever says is true (I thought this one might be good)

----------------------------
The list isn't exhaustive and grows over time, so if interested and you'd like to throw in another extreme personality that's cool too.

The last game had I think the best way of allocating the personalities. Have a coordinator who is not playing receive PM's from each player nominating 3 personality types they wouldn't mind playing. The coordinator then gives them one (ensuring no double ups) and the game begins.

I personally found the last map (901) had too many players and it was hard to work everyone out. In hindsight I'd recommend a map like Classic and keep it to 7.

Extreme Personalities was a blast. Some players really milked it for all it was worth. I was really into it for most of the game, but found it hard to go full blast when I got really busy in real life towards the end. Fortunately, I was "Military Man," who even saw entertainment and the game as a military exercise, so I just pressed on relentlessly. Also around this time, the game concept began to wear itself out, so it was appropriate we called the draw when we did. That said, if there's going to be another "entertainment-only" game, count me in! I'd love to play a different character and I have more time than before coming up.

I would rather a large map, it would make it more interesting, and we hvae enough personalities...

Well I'm on holidays in a month for 2 & a half weeks, so I'd either need a pause, put in place a sitter, or i can give the next one a miss & be the coordinator.

Sounds fun. However, I would like to be the religious fanatic seeing how it perfectly matches my name.

"I'd be interested, although I'd need a pause during summer holidays. If that doesn't work then count me out."----The Ambassador

I'm so terribly confused.

Poor gopher.

summer?

Where I go its summer. You see the world has two hemispheres and these big flying things that can take you from the bottom to the top and vice versa.

Bottom and top hemispheres? So whose on top? And how do the people in the bottom one keep from falling off? I've heard of Northern and Southern...