Proposal For Future Games

Anon play is something that is interesting and I've done it in the past, but it would not be easy to do on here, unless you want to just create throwaway accounts, which I'm loathe to do in general, but also I don't want to use bandwidth or server space or whatever unnecessarily. This is a meta-issue to the game, and one that deserves some attention. Because it would be unfair to me if you (or @Skyrock, for instance), refused to even deal with me in another game because of what happened in this game. Or if @Skyrock and @PMYA decided to immediately ally one another since their alliance is working good in this game, without giving other players a reasonable chance. In general, the rules I hold myself to are - - Don't carry grudges (or positive feelings) from one game to the next. Each game must be its own independent event. - Be aware of other players' histories, but give everyone a fair shake. Taking their past into account is fine, but be level and balanced in your dealings and decision-making. - Never go into a game with any kind of pre-arranged deal, or make deals across multiple games. I think these rules handle the vast majority of the problems that arise, but some more can still crop up (not necessarily with this group, but who knows). For instance, imagine two weaker and/or newer players are in the role of Austria and Turkey, and you have an extremely strong player with several solo victories playing Russia. The two weaker players might both be of the mind that they would get out-played and out-manipulated by the very strong Russia, and after their initial communications with each other, agree to ally against Russia as a way of protecting themselves. Is that meta-gaming? Is it fair to the Russian player, who's gonna have a hard time dealing with the alliance of these two? And the answer is, I don't know. Maybe it is, but maybe it also isn't. Maybe because he _is_ such a skilled player, he can sow discord in the alliance and get one or the other of them to flip, or maybe call in Italian support to help him out. Sometimes even in game where everyone is basically equal, people get 2v1'd like this, and there's sometimes not a lot they can do about it. Initial communications between two people go very well very quickly, and they quickly decide that an alliance (of whatever length) is a good idea. I've been bullied out of the game early plenty of times, and sometimes there's just nothing you can do. On the one hand, that's _Diplomacy_. On the other hand, it's not a ton of fun for the person who gets gang-banged early on and there's just no good way to deal with it. I mean, I think I'm able to separate the games clearly enough that everyone will get their fair shake. It's a matter of how well you can kind of untangle the person from the game, in a way. And I suppose different people have different...levels of ability to differentiate, let say...when it comes to that. But, if we played using an off-site client (such as [WebDiplomacy](http://webdiplomacy.net/) or [Backstabbr](http://www.backstabbr.com/)), might be a way to provide anonymity if it's something that can present a serious issue. I recall the main time we used anonymous games. I was in a league, where there were 4 games played a round, with one player from each of 7 teams playing on each board. So for instance, I was on board 4, and I drew Italy in round 1. And one thing we did in the league was make it anonymous games; the idea being, particularly as we got later in the league, it would keep the games interesting, instead of in round 4, everyone looks which team is in the lead, and gang-bangs those players on their respective boards. There it made a lot of sense; the anonymity ensured everyone had a fair game within the context of that one board. So if that idea, where everyone can get a fair game, is in jeopardy, then having anonymous games would be worthwhile.