When Allan B. Calhamer invented Diplomacy, he invented a game that was designed to be played at home, between friends and family, as a fun way to spend an evening… or a day, more likely.
Over time, the way Dip has been played has changed; more games are played online today than any other way. Looking at the evolution of ‘house rules’ is a good way to map the timestream of the Diplomacy Hobby.
In the Beginning
One of the problems with playing Diplomacy was that it took a long time to play. You needed seven players who could give up a good number of hours. In the rules it was suggested that you set aside “about four hours” for a game1. When Games Research Ltd bought the rights to Diplomacy, they even added a “Short Game” option, stating:
Since gaining control of Europe takes a long time, it is generally advisable to set a time limit for the game. The player with the most pieces on the board at that time is the winner.2
In 1971, the rules added: “… even for a short game” to the suggested time to set aside3. This is, and was, optimistic. The chances of playing a game to the end, when playing for a SOLO, in four hours are slim!
Still, Diplomacy was played in the home initially. Games would often be played following SHORTHANDED RULES simply because it was so difficult to bring seven players together for the time needed. However, it is such an addictive game that enthusiasts found others who lived locally who would meet, in someone’s home, to play.
What then developed were local groups made small changes to the rules, I guess to make the game more playable within a short period. I can only surmise here but I can’t help but wonder if this led to Games Research introducing the SHORT GAME RULE. It’s likely, also, that some of the rules were changed to add something different to the game. These rule changes were the first House Rules.
The Paper Age
In 1963, John Boardman published the first Diplomacy ZINE, GRAUSTARK. This marked a change in the way Diplomacy was played. POSTAL DIPLOMACY was a way to play the game remotely, with the game being HOSTED by an amateur zine. Players would communicate by post, and they would send their orders to the GAME MASTER, who was often the publisher of the zine. The moves would be adjudicated and the outcome published.
When running a game postally, the rules needed to be adapted. DEADLINES couldn’t be set as they were in the published rules; they needed to be much longer. After all, you couldn’t write a letter to another player in fifteen minutes, let alone send it to them through the mail, have them read it, and reply to it!
The term ‘House Rules’ was adopted by the postal hobby4 to reflect these changes. Another change was that a lot of zines adopted changes to the year structure, requiring Retreats and Builds to be sent with movement orders. This meant the games, which were being run to monthly deadlines, were shortened. For me (yes, I played in a couple of PBM games), this adaptation was difficult to manage, but I may have been more than a little anal about this!
Other changes were introduced, too, and it was with PBM Dip that scoring was first introduced. When you get a larger number of players, it isn’t just about competing against players in one game: it becomes about rating yourself against all the people who play the game in the zine! And so the first RATING SYSTEMS were introduced … and the game was changed (not always for the better: see Calhamer’s article “Objectives Other Than Winning“, first published in the 1974 IDA Diplomacy Handbook.)
The Electronic Age
With the evolution of computers, from the huge room-sized mammoths to desktop tools, email eventually came into being. And this became a new way to play Diplomacy. Now, rather than waiting days for letters to reach you, players could communicate electronically. Games could be much quicker.
In time, as people became skilled in coding, the Dip JUDGES appeared. These were automated programmes. A GM could enter orders into the programme, and they would be adjudicated automatically. And once more, Diplomacy moved forward: Dip could now be organised electronically, through chat rooms and forums.
PBEM play eventually became a regular way to play the game. Games were still played postally, and they were still hosted by zines, although some zines were published electronically now. But GMs could adjudicate games more quickly (once the Judge had bugs removed and the human GM could be more confident that the adjudication would be accurate!) and could spend less time poring over written orders, often having to decipher poor handwriting.
With the emergence of electronic ways to play the game, House Rules changed again, if subtly. They became more like SITE RULES many of us are familiar with today.
The Digital Age
In time, Judge programmes were adapted to be used on Diplomacy websites. The first was phpDiplomacy, the site which is now known as webDiplomacy. And, with the arrival of Diplomacy sites, came an influx of new players, a good number of whom knew little about the game.
Site Rules came into being, now governing aspects that had rarely been needed before, such as ways of cheating that were more trouble than they were worth previously. On a website it was comparatively easy to create multiple accounts and to enter a game controlling more than one account, which is widely known as MULTI-ACCOUNTING. Similarly, METAGAMING, in its various forms, needed to be controlled. Metagaming was generally seen as bringing something from outside the game into the game, often in the form of alliances between the players simply because they knew each other, either from previous games or off-site. It had existed before the Digital Age, of course, with players treating each other differently if they knew each other.
Once more, deadlines changed. There was really no need to vary the length of a deadline based on what existed in PBEM Dip, except that fully automated adjudication software could mean deadlines could be even shorter. No need for a human GM to publish outcomes, for instance. However, deadlines became shorter and, occasionally, too short to play Diplomacy well, frankly.
What had started off as a set of rules used to govern the way Diplomacy was played by groups of players in someone’s house, House Rules had become Site Rules. They still, however, did the same thing.
- “Diplomacy, Rules of the Game,” p. 6 ‘Miscellaneous, Length of Game’. Calhamer, A. B. 1959. Accessed on 27 May 2025. ↩︎
- “Rules for Diplomacy,” p. 1 ‘Short Game’. Games Research Ltd, 1961. Accessed on 27 May 2025. ↩︎
- “Rules for Diplomacy,” p. 7 ‘XIV. MISCELLANEOUS, 1. Length of Game.’ Games Research Ltd, 1971. Accessed on 27 May 2025. ↩︎
- The term ‘the Hobby’ very correctly refers to postal Diplomacy. Today, however, it is used more widely to refer to all ways to play Diplomacy. ↩︎
THE DIPTIONARY 