Ok, have filtered them and here's the suggested 32 Extreme Personalities for this game:
1. Everybody Wants to Rule the World - Wanna-rule-the-world dictator. Self explanatory, but please make it entertaining.
2. I See You - Believes non-existent players are about to attack him and others
3. Messiah - You think you're a major religious figure -Jesus/Buddha/Mohammad/your own cult etc
4. History Repeating - You think you're the megalomaniac historical figure of the country you represent - Hitler, Napoleon, insert name of relevant megalomaniac/prominent person who's run that country before. Discussion on should that person also 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)
5. Entertain Me - You think you're a famous entertainer or character in a TV show/movie. You pick who it could be, past or present eg Elvis, Lady Gaga, member of the Village People(or the whole band), or a character in TV/film eg Dexter, Homer Simpson, Tyrion Lannister etc (ideally please don't select a character/real life person who is generally obscure or fringe)
6. 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.
7. 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.
8. 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
9. 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.
10. The F^ck Up - 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 stupider 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.
11. 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!
12. 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)
13. Random - A person who just randomly supports others with no indications of alliances or trade offs, that will at least keep the game moving
14. Picasso - 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
15. Pirate Pete - Swears all the time, builds only fleets when he can during the builds phase (no armies!) 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,
16. General Mayhem - Will build armies no matter what (sorry England), speaks in clipped military like tones and behaves like he’s in the army
17. 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.
18. The Horse Trader - basically bandied together & strikes deals to swap territories with players
19. Barking mad - you take on the persona of an animal. Either you speak human language but you take everything from your chosen animal perspective or you only speak in your species' native tongue eg you bark, woof & pee everywhere the whole game. Could be interesting in diplomatic conversations
20. The Mirror - at the start of the game you behave totally rationally like normal Dip player, then the following year grab a dice or do some kind of random allocation of the other players eg https://www.random.org/integers and then act like & take on the same traits as what you BEST CAN DETERMINE that randomly selected player is. Another year rolls by, then 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.
21. Irrational lover/hater - randomly select a player in the first year & go to war with them with full bravado (even if you're England & you just drew turkey) then the next year 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
22. The Revolutionary - speaks in nothing but propaganda and rants about "liberating" the oppressed masses
23. 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!
24. The Straight Faced Liar - nothing he ever says is true (to be honest sounds like a few players around here!)
25. The Gentleman – 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!
26. 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 ruler (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.
27. The Grammar Nazi - Always corrects people's grammar, and only attacks rule breakers.
28. Mr. Inappropriate - Has trouble keeping a straight line of thought without falling off tangent into something that is inappropriate or whacky and far removed from whatever was originally being discussed. I.e., this does not have to be vulgar, crude, or sexual (and if it is, shouldn't be so offensive as to really piss people off or make them feel like throwing up).
29. Another Drink Bartender! - is only interested in conquering lands that are renown for fine wines/fantastic beers/choose your favourite spirit. A certain amount of research is needed for this role and also not over extending it. A player could tangibly conquer pretty much any territory saying it was expanding its brewing empire (bit piss poor in my view as there's breweries everywhere now) or play it fair and square and go for places (depending on the map) like Munich, holland, Belgium, Milwaukee etc. Likewise a wine connoisseur would be targeting large amounts or France, Northern Spain, napa valley in California, barossa in Australia, Marlborough in New Zealand etc, while a piss poor player would find some obscure place that technically makes wine but is not REALLY known for it eg my home state in Australia, Queensland, has some wineries but a wine connoisseur would generally scoff at it as a place worth owning.
30. The CEO - The player is the head of a global corporation interested in becoming a monopoly in its chosen field - choose a good storyline and throw in a little to target real life locations (whether they have SCs or not) for a particular resource/business activity. This could be oil like the Shell suggestion, but could be any resource based on real life resource location, eg Uranium, Gold or for that matter any hubs of business/commerce activities eg financial centres (desperate to capture NYC, London, Zurich, Tokyo, Hong Kong - couldn't care less about the rest of the map), movie making (obsessed to get LA and Bombay, other areas... What's the point?) Basically whatever your CEO is desperate to develop a monopoly of.
31. The Schizophrenic - Must alternate between lying and telling the truth with every message.
32. Bitter Lose / Ugly Winner - Spends his time ranting when he gets screwed or boasting when he manages to do better.
As we've got a number of players and no-one wants to be disappointed that you nominate your preferred order of FIVE Extreme Personalities to Battalion who will GM the start of the game. He will evaluate everyone's preferences and let you know what character you will be playing. Please hold off on PMing Battalion though until the game is created.
Current player list is:
Amby
G-Man
Hypoguy
YouCan'tHandleTheTruth
KingCyrus
Petyr Baelish
ccga4
Valis2501
Titus
Captainmeme
Al Swearengen
DoubleCapitals
StupidIdiot
Kaner406
That's 14 and could play Gobble Earth. Its countries are based on the start of WW1 so might be easier to base a character on.
Alternatively our last person to put up their hand (rodgersd09@gmail.com) could be included and we can do Known World 901.
My personal preference is Gobble Earth as Known World has rather obscure countries (old empires in central Asia and Africa.) But I'll put it out there for players to have their say (48 hours to post here your preference - most votes decides).
Confused
, unrated, 2 day phases.
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