Allan B. Calhamer, 1931–2013

last updated 8 January 2015

To win a game of Diplomacy, players must dissemble, deceive, and double-cross their way to victory—hence the game’s fan-ordained tagline, “Destroying Friendships Since 1959.” But by all accounts, Allan B. Calhamer, the Harvard graduate turned mailman who invented it, was too gentle a soul to excel at his own game.

Calhamer had the idea for his strategic board game while at Harvard Law School, said The New York Times, drawing inspiration from an atlas he’d pored over as a child. The game is set in pre-WWI Europe, with players representing seven Great Powers out to conquer the Continent. Players must make and break alliances, amassing “supply centers” with well-timed invasions. A short game takes six hours, and when played through the mail, “a single game can unspool over years.” Calhamer’s fellow law students loved how Realpolitik, as the game was then called, “enfranchised aggression.” Calhamer quit law school to publish the game.

Diplomacy was eventually bought by game company Games Research, said the Chicago Sun-Times, and found an audience of passionate fans. Henry Kissinger and John F. Kennedy were reportedly players, yet the royalties “didn’t pay the bills.” After a variety of odd jobs, including a stint as a park ranger at the Statue of Liberty, Calhamer happily settled into life as a mailman in the Chicago suburb of La Grange Park. “Sometimes, Dip geeks would appear at his home, unannounced,” to discuss tactics. To them, Calhamer was the creator of a classic game. To his neighbors, he was just “the guy who delivered the mail.”