Diplomacy (game)

Lore & Background

The idea for Diplomacy arose from Allan B. Calhamer's study at Harvard of nineteenth-century European history under Sidney B. Fay and from his study of political geography. Calhamer also drew inspiration from the card game of Hearts, in which he observed that players were at an advantage when they teamed up against the leader, and from the game of chess, which inspired him to use a limited number of spaces and pieces. The rough form of Diplomacy was created in 1954, and its details were developed through playtesting until the 1958 map and rules revisions. Calhamer paid for a 500-game print run of that version in 1959 after rejection by major companies.

Reader's Guide

Diplomacy holds a significant place in board game history as the first commercially published game to be played by mail (PBM), with only chess, which is in the public domain, seeing significant postal play earlier. It was also the first commercially published game to generate an active hobby scene with amateur fanzines; only science-fiction, fantasy and comics fandom saw fanzines earlier. The game's emphasis on negotiation and social interaction, combined with the absence of random elements, made it uniquely suited to postal and later email play. Competitive face-to-face tournaments have been held since the 1970s, and play by email has been widespread since the late 1980s. Diplomacy has been published by Games Research, Avalon Hill, Hasbro, and Wizards of the Coast in the US, and licensed to companies such as Parker Brothers, Waddingtons Games, Gibsons Games, and Asmodée Editions internationally. Its legacy includes influencing later strategy games and fostering a dedicated community of players and publishers.

Did You Know?

• The first copy of the first print run was sold by the Calhamer estate through auction in 2017.
• The game board reflects the political boundaries of Europe in 1914, just before the outbreak of the Great War.

From Harvard Lectures to a Self-Funded Print Run

Allan B. Calhamer conceived Diplomacy in 1954, drawing on his Harvard studies of nineteenth-century European history under professor Sidney B. Fay and his broader engagement with political geography. Two existing games shaped his thinking: the card game Hearts, where he noticed players gained advantage by ganging up against whoever led, and chess, whose limited board spaces and pieces inspired his own constrained map design. The rough prototype emerged that year, but Calhamer spent the next four years refining the map and rules through extensive playtesting, arriving at the 1958 version. When major publishers turned him down, he took a bold step and personally funded a print run of just five hundred copies, released commercially in the United States in 1959. That stubborn independence set the tone for the game's long publishing journey. The very first copy from that original run eventually found its way to auction in 2017, sold by the Calhamer estate, a small but telling artifact of how a single student's vision became a cornerstone of the modern board game world.

A Game Built on Words, Not Dice

Diplomacy strips away the randomness that defines most wargames. There are no dice rolls, no chance-based resolution tables; every outcome flows directly from the decisions players make and the agreements they forge. The heart of each turn is the negotiation phase, during which players spend considerable time proposing alliances, making promises, and—inevitably—betraying one another. After this social window closes, every player secretly writes down attack and support orders, and all moves are revealed and executed simultaneously rather than in sequential turns. This means no one gets to react to a rival's last action; everyone must commit blind. Victory hinges on controlling supply centers, which act as the game's economic engine: the number of centers a player holds caps how many armies and fleets they can field. Once the twelve neutral centers are typically seized in the opening moves, every further gain becomes a zero-sum contest, with one player's expansion directly funded by another's contraction.

Pioneering the Modern Hobby Scene

Diplomacy occupies a singular place in gaming history as the first commercially published game to be played by mail, a format known as PBM. Before it, only chess—being in the public domain—had seen meaningful postal play. Equally groundbreaking, it was the first commercially published game to spawn an active community of amateur fanzines, a phenomenon previously limited to science fiction, fantasy, and comics fandom. Competitive face-to-face tournaments have been organized since the 1970s, and by the late 1980s, play by electronic mail (PBEM) had become widespread, extending the game's reach far beyond any single physical table. The title has passed through several major publishers in the United States—Games Research, Avalon Hill, Hasbro's Avalon Hill division, and later Wizards of the Coast—while also being licensed to international companies such as Parker Brothers, Waddingtons Games, Gibsons Games, and Asmodée Editions. Today the name remains a registered trademark under Hasbro's Avalon Hill banner, and the game continues to be adjudicated online by either computer programs or human gamemasters.

A Map Frozen Between Two Wars

The board depicts Europe as it stood in 1901, yet the political boundaries largely mirror the 1914 landscape on the eve of the Great War. Bosnia already sits annexed to Austria-Hungary, and the Balkan provinces reflect the territorial reshuffling that followed the 1912 and 1913 wars. The map is divided into fifty-six land regions and nineteen sea regions, with forty-two of those land areas allocated among the seven Great Powers—Austria-Hungary, Great Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Russia, and Turkey—while fourteen remain neutral at the start. Thirty-four of the land regions contain supply centers, the game's vital economic nodes; twenty-two sit within the Great Powers and twelve in neutral territory. Starting unit counts vary slightly: Britain fields two fleets and one army, Russia gets two armies and two fleets (the only power beginning with four units), and all others start with two armies and one fleet. The map is not perfectly historically accurate—Montenegro is shown under Austro-Hungarian control, and North Africa and Tunis begin as neutral despite being part of the French colonial empire in 1914—but these choices serve the game's strategic balance.

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