Diplomacy World #103 - Fall 2008 Issue

Welcome back to Diplomacy World, your hobby flagship
since Walt Buchanan founded the zine in 1974! And,
despite numerous near-death experiences, close calls,
financial insolvency, and predictions of doom, we’re still
here, more than 100 issues later, bringing you the best
articles, hobby news, and opinions that we know how to
produce.
Speaking of Diplomacy World’s past glories, this is as
good a place as any to mention that we have FINALLY
completed the task of scanning and posting every single
issue of Diplomacy World ever produced. This includes
every issue from #1 through #103 (the one you’re
reading now) plus the fake issue #40 and the full results
of the Demo Game “Flapjack” which were never
completely published. We also convert one classic
article to html every week, as the Article of the Week,
which allows you to get better results when doing a site
or web search. I think this is a tremendous asset to
have available to the Diplomacy community, and thanks
are certainly due to Walt Buchanan for working with me,
sending me a few of his personal copies at a time (at his
own expense) until I could scan them and return them.
Great job Walt! I bet that when you founded Diplomacy
World all those years ago you never expected it to still
be thriving in the 21 st century, did you? Anyone who
wants to can view and download these pdf files from the
Diplomacy World website at:
http://www.diplomacyworld.net
And while I am on the subject of scanning Diplomacy
zines, I’ll go ahead and plug a personal project of mine I
have been working on. With the assistance of people
such as Edi Birsan and Craig Reges, I have been
building an on-line archive of postal Diplomacy zines (in
Adobe pdf format). The idea is to archive and preserve
the history of the postal hobby (which is where the email
and internet Diplomacy hobbies grew from initially) in a
manner which will eliminate the dangers of a flood or fire
or trash pickup depriving us from access to the games,
creativity, and personality which flourished for so many
years. The project itself actually started for me when
William Christian announced he had two boxes of old
Diplomacy zines which were to be thrown away if
somebody didn’t want them. I paid to have them
shipped from Canada to Texas, and the contents really
renewed my interest in the history of the hobby. I found
classic zines galore, starting with John Boardman’s
Graustark #1, (the very first Diplomacy zine ever). Now
I’ve got boxes more from nearly every era, courtesy of
the work Edi Birsan is doing going through Tim Haffey’s
archive material. The personality really shines through
in many of these zines, from the editorials to the letter
Notes from the Editor
Diplomacy World #103 - Page 2
columns to the sense of community and family so many
segments of the hobby had. Fiction, hilarious press,
take-offs and send-ups, serious debate, triumph and
tragedy; they can all be found here, along with unobscured
looks at the world as it changed over the last
40+ years. I’m not sure how much I’ll be writing about
this project in future issues of Diplomacy World, but if
nothing else it gave me the material for an article this
time, about the first real hobby scandal. If you’d like to
read some of these zines, you can find them in the
Postal Diplomacy Zine Archive section at:
http://www.whiningkentpigs.com/DW/
Incidentally, if you’d like to be kept up-to-date on what
zines are added to the on-line collection (I seem to be
posting new zines numerous times a week lately) you
can join the Yahoo group formed for that purpose, at:
http://games.groups.yahoo.com/group/postalzine/
Finally, while we are on the subject, I have this latebreaking
development: partially as my own enthusiasm
sparked his dormant energy, Stephen Agar has resumed
work on his UK Diplomacy Postal Zine Archive! This is
terrific news, especially as Stephen has a near-complete
set of UK Diplomacy zines. He’ll be posting update
messages to the forum listed above (giving you another
reason to join it), and you can view the results of his
efforts directly at:
http://www.diplomacyzines.org.uk/
I wanted to be sure and remind everyone that, while we
are now announcing themes for upcoming issues far in
advance, those themes IN NO WAY mean we only
want to publish articles that match those topics. The
themes are meant to take up only a portion of each
issue. The rest of the pages need to be filled by nontheme
articles of any description: strategy and tactics,
variants, humor, puzzles, history (both hobby and realworld),
convention reports, demo games, personal
experiences, and anything else you can think of. So
please don’t ever feel an article you are considering is
inappropriate for a particular issue. Just write it and
send it in. If it really doesn’t fit for some unknown
reason, we’ll simply hold it until the following issue!
I’ll close by reminding you the next deadline for
Diplomacy World submissions is January 1st, 2009.
Remember, besides articles (which are always prized
and appreciated), we LOVE to get letters, feedback,
input, ideas, and suggestions too. So email me! See
you in the New Year, and happy stabbing!