G-Man and I were shooting the breeze the other day and we both talked about bringing an Extreme Personalities game back to VDip.
For those of you newer folk I’ll explain this variant inside a variant.
It’s for entertainment purposes only (we usually battle it out for a massive 1 or 2 VDip points) and it’s a shitload of fun!
Simplistically you’re playing to entertain others with whacky public dialogue based on the type of character you’re playing.
Based on previous games there’s 28 extreme personalities available, but I’m open to adding more. A games master will randomly choose (using https://www.random.org/integers/ or similar) 3 of the possible 28 personality types. They will then PM you the 3 and you choose which of the 3 you’d prefer to play.
All dialogue is public press. And as you can see from the personality types sometimes they’re not necessarily in it to win it. Usually the game concludes in a draw with still a fair number of players in the game. Here are the current 28 personalities based on previous recommendations from VDip players:
1. Wanna-rule-the-world dictator.
2. Believes non-existent players are about to attack him and others
3. Trying to seize a totally obscure part of the board without regard to normal gameplay
4. You think you're a major religious figure - Jesus/Buddha/Mohammad/your own cult etc
5. You think you're the megalomaniac historical figure of the country you represent - Hitler, Napoleon, insert name of relevant crazy person who's run that country before (Killer, Diplomat and Drano both supported in the forum. Discussion on if we draw that, should one be forced to fight like that person too? I mean it's all fine and dandy if someone's pretending to be Hitler, but if they then make an alliance with France, where's the "crazy" part you know? So Hitler would attempt form an A/I/G alliance (or attempt to) etc)
6. You think you're a famous entertainer - you pick who it could be, past or present eg Elvis, Lady Gaga, member of the Village People, etc (suggested that you could be the whole group of the Village People, etc)
7. Vendetta - Make up a reason to hate a particular country and weave it into a story. Try to get the rest of the board to help you gain your objective. Kinda goes with the fixated on a specific part of the map idea.
8. Paranoid - This person doesn't really trust anyone and will stab/protect from stabs that either don't exist, or wouldn't make sense to go through with because everyone's "out to get them".(Note: previous players doing this role have on occasion been very quiet. Try to avoid this as they just seem very insular and traditionally get eliminated early with this tact.)
9. Extremist group - Your crazy extremist group has grabbed control of the government. Think Westboro Baptist Church if you're a christian nation, or Al Qaeda if you're Turkey. Or it could be as silly as PETA or Greenpeace seizing a nation's leaders
10. Self-loather: The character actually hates his country/loves another country more eg he's English but wants to be French: he emulates another player, their culture etc and does everything he can to support that country. How does he deal with a stab? Who knows? That's the fun part of being crazy.
11. Grossly incompetent character who always f^cks up. Basically you'd put in your orders the way you planned, but would then have to deliberately go back and screw up one of the orders. eg
France (the f^ck up) wants to:
A Marseilles -> Spain
A Paris -> Burgandy
F Brest -> MAO
Has to (randomly?) screw up an order so F Brest->Picardy instead of moving to EC. Basically you have to choose the stupidest move possible (maybe there's a stupier move than that as you could easily pick up Belgium that way, perhaps he just holds?) Again, based on previous gameplay, players who tend to be quiet who have drawn/selected this, tend to do badly. Recommend exaggerated over-acting about WTF just happened/obviously the whole of VDip is broken etc.
12. The bully - someone who feels he's bigger/ stronger then he really is, boasts and make more aggressive only moves. Again, play this one delicately, as no one really likes a bully… unless you’re a totally over the top bully!
13. The pacifist - doesn't start any wars, but fights whoever hits him first (I think this could work, but its not really crazy as such)
14. A person who just randomly supports others with no indications of alliances or trade offs, that will at least keep the game moving (discussion on two personalities: always lies and always tells the truth. But as this may get picked up on relatively quickly, another alternative would be the overly helpful character - overly pleasing & help others out all the time even if it makes no sense eg let's say France has a fleet in Belgium & helps out England by supporting an attack from NTS to German holland while a French fleet in EC supports a german fleet in Denmark attacking NTS. This could be a good character for those with a strong background in hardcore Dip, but may be lost on others
15. Mr. Prissy – although no game-changing crazy like the others. Unless we stipulate that "mr. prissy" must ALWAYS be guided by the person who is loudest and most intimidating towards them (thereby making mr. prissy feel scared and afraid of that person), it shouldn't be a personality.
16. Giver-upper - immediately when he loses an SC, he abandons the front and moves on.
17. Color Man - a person who would rather spend moves coloring territories their color rather than capturing SC's, obsesses over "neutral" non-SC territories, such as North Africa, Syria, Finland, Bohemia, Clyde, etc. if we were to do 1897
18. Pirate Pete - Swears all the time, builds at least 1 fleet when he can during the builds phase (or avoids armies all together!) doesn’t move to any inland SCs or territories: must stay on the coast. Tends to raid coastal SC’s and sees no issues moving on,
19. Military Man - Will build armies no matter what (sorry England), speaks in clipped military like tones and behaves like he’s in the army
20. Moocher - Will build alliances based on food, not by different deals which are being made (eg France allying with Italy or England for a fine dinner or a tea break with French bread.
21. Nuke Inventor - Will always try to convince his allies that he will develop nukes in the near future. He constantly keeps explaining what his scientists are doing and the physics of a nuclear weapon.
22. The Horse Trader - basically bandied together & strikes deals to swap territories with players
23. Barking mad - you take on the persona of an animal. You can still speak human language but you take everything from your chosen animal perspective. Open to discussion if you can swap & change animals during the game. Alternatively you could only speak in your species' native tongue eg you bark, woof & pee everywhere the whole game. Could be interesting in diplomatic conversations
24. The Mirror - in 1901 you behave totally rationally like normal Dip player, then in 1902 (grab a dice or do some kind of random allocation of the other 6 players) and then act like & take on the same traits as what you believe that randomly selected player is. 1903 rolls by, see who you'll randomly be next turn. This way you have to do your best to imitate the style/personality you think that player has.
25. Irrational lover/hater - randomly select a player in 1901 & go to war with them with full bravado (even if you're England & you just drew turkey) then in 1902 randomly go to war with another player while sucking up to the guy you just attacked the previous turn, making peace with rainbows and unicorns. Serious craziness if you get the same player back to back with messages swapping between love & hate
26. The Revolutionary - speaks in nothing but propaganda and rants about "liberating" the oppressed masses
27. Captain Convoy - tries organizing the most complex multi-national convoys the world has ever seen, delivering countries' armies to the furthest possible destination just because they can!
28. The straight faced liar - nothing he ever says is true (to be honest sounds like a few players around here!)
I’ve added a few more I think could work that haven’t been included in the past:
29. The “Play it like a gentleman” guy – This is the kind of character that will chivalrously challenge you to a duel. Won’t attack players without officially declaring war a full turn beforehand. After all, anything else is not what a gentleman should do. Tally-ho!
30. The Emissary – I’ve seen someone actually take on this role without knowing it in a previous EP game. Basically you’re the conduit between your rule (eg the Sultan) and other rulers. You need to represent your leader appropriately, and exhault them, but maybe sometimes you lament how they’re not taking your advice etc. You can do a fair amount with this character.
I’m opening this up now to other players to make further suggestions. Suggested character types that get a lot of support will be added to the list (or I think would work.) Likewise if any of the 28 original characters you think should be removed let me know too and I’ll consider.
I’ll then be looking to start the game in 4-6 weeks. That should give plenty of time for:
1. Sorting out the final list of extreme personality types
2. Getting enough dedicated players
3. Giving them (and me!) the opportunity to get some games off their radar.
Important note: Extreme Personality games take up a LOT of time. You know what your personal limit is on how many games you can play simultaneously. I’d recommend you reduce that by at least a third before the EP game starts as there is a shitload of public press pretty much the whole game and you’ll need the time to read it.
Ok, over to you guys now!
PS We also need a game master to allocate roles. Generally works best if they're not playing, but if push came to shove I guess we could have a player-game master do it.