Exploring Gaming Communities and Cultural Dynamics

The guys interview prolific Diplomacy writer Brother Bored and discuss other Diplomacy stuff including the Scottish Clan Wars variant before Amby stuffs up.

Intro & news

• The guys are still at Red Hook (a back to back recording) (0 mins 10 secs)

Interview with Brother Bored

• The guys introduce the interview with Brother Bored, who plays as swordsman3003 at webDip (2 mins 40 secs)
• Brother Bored discusses how he got into Diplomacy  (3 mins 30 secs)
• He talks about how the flexibility of online Diplomacy really worked for him, how he got competitive about the game and how he started teaching his friends about how to play (6 mins)
• He discusses how this got him into blogging about Diplomacy so he could share his learnings, initially around gunboat. You can read his Diplomacy teaching blogs at brotherbored.com/diplomacy (8 mins 30 secs)
• Amby asks about how Brother Bored addresses different learning styles in how he writes his Diplomacy content. He touches on his Gunboat solo win guides , stalemate lines and how strategy differs in gunboat compared to normal press or face to face (13 mins)
• In comparison he's also written a 80,000 word journal about the gunboat game, The Biggest Game of All Time (18 mins)
• Amby asks why Brother Bored's handle is different to webDip and how he choose them both (23 mins 30 secs)
• He discusses where he gets his ideas from for posts (26 mins 30 secs)
• Amby asks how much time Brother Bored spends on his blog (30 mins)
• Amby asks whether Brother Bored gets any weird web traffic coming through (34 mins)
• Kaner asks Brother Bored about whether he has any interest in Diplomacy variants (36 mins 20 secs)
• Brother Bored talks about his timing bad luck on being able to play face to face (42 mins 45 secs)
• Amby asks with all the online play due to Coronavirus, whether Brother Bored has got a bump in traffic due to more online Dip interest (44 mins 45 secs)
• After discussing his dream of writing more teaching blogs for other games, Brother Bored mentions he's now become a paid Diplomacy tutor (46 mins 30 secs)
• The guys wrap up the interview before returning to their drinks and discuss the interview. Kaner talks about the exercise of keeping a record of each moves across all players (48 mins)

The boom in online Diplomacy

• Amby discusses how when the podcast started vDiplomacy had only 500 active players, but its now up to 1,300 active players. He wonders whether this has been driven by Coronavirus limiting face to face and turning people to online platforms (53 mins 45 secs)
• Kaner supports the etiquette and ethics of these players who keep the games to their friends in password protected games. He then mentions webDip is now at over 3,000 active players (56 mins)

More online Diplomacy chat

• Amby's joined back into the Winning thread at vDip (58 mins)
• Amby thinks he's being goaded into playing a game called "The Ambassador should join, because they need to b" (1 hr 2 mins)

Scottish Clan Wars variant

• They discuss Scottish Clan Wars a new variant over at vDip which Kaner is currently playing (1 hr 6 mins)

 

• Amby discusses the times he's been to Scotland (1 hr 10 mins)
• Kaner talks about how he's finding the game (1 hr 12 mins)
• And then... Amby fucked up cutting the show early, with the teaser of next episode to discuss "Stupid Greedy vs Smart Gains" (1 hr 14 mins)

Venue: Red Hook, Brisbane

Drinks of choice:

Kaner & Amby - Newtowner Australian Pale Ale by Young Henry's from Sydney, Australia

Just a reminder you can support the show by giving it 5 stars on iTunes or Stitcher. And don't forget if you want to help improve the audio equipment... or get the guys more drunk, you can also donate at Patreon, plus you get extra podcast episodes!

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Thanks as always to Dr Dan aka "The General" for his rockin' intro tune.