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.
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