i should probably shut my mouth right now so as not to be perceived as
arrogant or offensive
but i can't
so...
Youngstown was okay - for its time. The variant design community has
come a long way since then however. The explosion of online groups in
the late 90s caused a sort of rebirth of the Diplomacy hobby, and
dramatically increased the opportunities for variant designers to
collaborate and refine their games.
Even the name Youngstown reflects this trend. The variant was
designed by a Dip community in Ohio that at the time still primarily
played face-to-face. Today, Diplomacy variants are subjected to a
truly global court of public opinion, one that expects much higher
standards of balance and aesthetics out of a variant. And rightly so.
Nothing is more annoying than drawing France in Colonial and knowing
the odds of even scraping out a survival are against you, or trying to
make sense of
Youngstown's off-board regions while looking at the unusual blob that
is supposed to represent Asia.
I have many fond memories of working with Don Hessong to playtest his
early versions of Ancient Med, and working with David Cohen to refine
Sengoku back in 2000. Out of these early partnerships, the DVWorkshop
was born, and though that group has certainly passed its heyday in
favor of gaming community groups like this one, the current group of
successful variant designers still collaborate extensively. Case in
point - Oliver Auth's recent coding of SengokuRev5 and South American
Supremacy for webDiplomacy, and Mario Huys' and Manus Hand's coding of
Sengoku Rev5 for the DPjudge. During those processes, all of them
contributed valuable advice obtained through playtesting.
I don't claim to be the authoritative voice in variant design, or that
mine are the best around. In fact, my favorite variants *aren't* my
own. Those honors go to Ancient Med, with up-and-coming variants like
Known World 901 and WW2-1931 deserving honorable mention. Nor do I
mean to be overly critical of Youngstown - just saying it needs a
facelift, and to be subjected to the same painful process of playtest
and revision that say, Ancient Med (finalized on Version 9) did.
B.
--
http://www.dipwiki.com
Realpolitik files available here for the Sengoku, Balkans1860, South
American Supremacy, and DarkAges Diplomacy Variants
On 5/7/10, variants(at)diplomaticcorp.com wrote:
Poobaloo posted in Variants. The message was...

________________________________

Wow.

The Youngstown game is the most popular of the many Diplomacy variants.

That's quite a statement. I'd like to know where the writer of that article
came up w that. It's certainly not as popular (2 games) as say Ancient Med
(6 games) or Colonial (8 games) in terms of activity here at dc.

The original Youngstown variant was pretty pathetic. The rendering for
Realpolitik was choppy, with hard to understand off-board locations. A
couple years back tho it was redone, and the new one is actually quite nice.
I would say it's really good since the redo.

In my opinion, the desire for it comes from the two most popular games,
Standard and Colonial. It simply bridges the gap between the two.

________________________________

Read or reply to this post online.

You can also reply to this post via email. If you do, be sure to leave the
[post:16113] in the subject line so your message is routed to the
appropriate forum.

You received this message because you subscribed to the Variants forum at
diplomaticcorp.com. If you do not wish to receive future posts, you may
change your subscriptions in your profile. If you are unable to discontinue
undesired messages, please notify feedback-at-diplomaticcorp.com.
.