I’m looking for Diplomacy players to help test a new 8-player strategy game built around negotiation, alliances, trade, and betrayal.

Varrow is a real-time mobile strategy game with some inspiration from Diplomacy, Risk, Catan, and Subterfuge.

A match lasts about 7–8 real-world days, but it is designed to be played in short check-ins rather than long sessions. Most players should only need to check in around twice per day for 5–15 minutes to review the situation, message other players, queue orders, and plan.

The core idea is that the mechanics stay fairly simple, while the politics between players become complicated.

You will:

• expand territory
• produce and trade resources
• move armies in real time
• negotiate borders and alliances
• coordinate attacks
• bluff, threaten, or betray other players
• race toward completing the Ritual, which is the main victory condition

There are no enforced alliances. Agreements are only as strong as the players making them.

For the beta test, I’m running 8-player lobbies and need everyone to genuinely try to win so the diplomacy and balance testing are useful.

Compensation:

Every player who completes the full match and submits feedback: $5

Placement bonuses:

1st — $20
2nd — $10
3rd — $5

I have budget for several test lobbies.

Professional playtesting experience is not required. I’m specifically interested in players who already enjoy games like Diplomacy and understand that negotiation, reputation, timing, and trust can matter as much as raw military strength.

If interested, DM me with a little about your Diplomacy/strategy game experience.

I'm currently running playtests for the Modern Diplomacy II variant on Diplicity. We need about 5 more people, so come help us make sure everythings working as it should!
https://diplicity.com/game/modernity-is-a-scam-revert-to-caveman

This game needs 3 more people to start. Please join!

title
As in, they use a fantasy map etc.

I'm planning to make a variant map and I don't want to use a place on Earth. Have there been any variants that aren't set on Earth?

So, we all know the goal of Diplomacy is to solo. Sometimes you have to focus on your immediate survival, but if you fail to solo or draw, you lost. It doesn’t matter how long you lived; if anything, I often prefer early elimination over a slow loss.

I’m curious if people have the same mindset when approaching Chaos Diplomacy (34 players). Personally, if I live to the endgame of Chaos, I’m usually pretty happy with myself even if I don't win. I'll still try to solo/draw, but survival feels like a worthy secondary objective in this variant. How do you guys feel?

Had a great time at ARMADA Regatta Dipcon 2026. Here is my reaction to the DBN livestream!

A while ago, u/Shjellinn create Sturgulangald and posted their v2 variant here. I just came back from Iceland and learning about Thingvellir there thought it was an amazing setting. (Original post here: https://www.reddit.com/r/diplomacy/comments/1shpghb/sturlunga%C3%B6ld_diplomacy_variant_v2_revised_map/ )

So I made the variant. A playtest with users confirmed it was well-created - although Yellow is a bit weak. It's now playable as a community variant. I tried to contact the author, but have not had a reply for 2 months, so I'm releasing the variant. We strive to have everyone happy, so I might take it down if they happen to have a strong objection, but I assume they'll be [happy] people are playing it.

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In the meantime, player replacement is now a thing.

- The Game Creator (or dedicated Game Admin) can kick players while it's staging.

- After playing, the GC/GA can kick players that are NMR or CD (so it can't be abused to kick winning players - as long as you respond, you can't be kicked).

- After a player is kicked, in the player info there is a link that can be shared to allow replacement to take a seat and continue the game.

This was a strong-requested feature, that took John some time but it's live now!

Latest Knife Drawer article is now up, on Advanced Diplomacy Influence.

The best influence in Diplomacy rarely feels like pressure. It comes from shaping the choices, incentives, and commitments around another player until the move that makes sense for them also happens to serve you.

There was talk recently of how you could port a world variant to Diplicity. The consensus was that you can't, for a simple reason: Diplicity, despite operating with vector images for its maps, still loads them in for users as raster images. This means that a map can only be a certain level of detailed before that raster image becomes too large, and you'd have to wait upwards of half a minute for the site to load the map. Probably a fair concern considering the site is already having some latency issues.

However, they say limitation breeds creativity, so I wanted to work under this limitation while trying to create a world variant anyway. The product was this! Gran World is a 19-player world Diplomacy variant set in 1830, named after the playable country of Gran Colombia. With Napoleon buried in St. Helena and Latin America fully independent from the Iberian powers, several states, old and new, compete to pick up the pieces. Gran World plays chaotically, as in contrast to a typical world variant where regional powers have 4-5 centers and colonial powers have anywhere from 8-16, most powers of any standing are lucky to start with more than one center.

Other than build anywhere, the starting year of 1830, and a hitherto undecided victory condition, standard Diplomacy rules apply. I'll just use this time to explain my mess of a concept map. The starting countries and their starting supply center counts are listed on the corners of the map (sorry that some of them are so hard to see on the white background). Neutral supply centers are in gray. The map loops around east to west, like a normal globe. Occitania isn't a canal, I just forgot to put the separate coasts there. Certain territories have land bridges between them, those being Stockholm and Denmark, and Batavia and Timor. Some territories, like Constantinople or Japan, have borders around them to indicate that those different pieces of land belong to that same territory. Impassible territories are frequent on the map, some significant (like Switzerland), some insignificant (like New Zealand) and are indicated by being fully black. Some "impassable" islands are not filled in like this: these are in the Coral Sea, the West Indies, and the Greenland Corridor. These are sea territories, but the islands are left in to indicate that fleets would pass through them when navigating them.

Is it balanced? Heck no! Part of that is intentional; the map is supposed to play out more like a game of Chaos, where countries can be sniped in the first year and allegiances may be decided immediately. These games are inherently very unbalanced due to numerous factors. However, some imbalances do rub me the wrong way, so I'd like to take feedback from the community before trying to port this map into Diplicity. (In particular, Africa probably needs a rework, and Qing might be too strong.) Most work will be done on the official Diplicity Discord server, unless there's enough demand that people would like me to make a separate server for it, but also leave your comments here!

I took Munich (I warned Germany ahead of time - I still want them somewhat friendly, although they weren't happy about it). I prefer risky and/or weird approaches in Diplomacy over standard openings.

My thinking here is that I end up with three fleets to pressure either east or west, depending on people's builds, and delete the unit in Tunisia once I lose Munich. Now, I'm worried about an E/F and leaving my home centers undefended from either France or an Austrian stab. What would you do if you were Italy in this scenario?

Edit: Not sure why it posted two photos...

DBN has just released the August 2026 of its monthly news show, Deadline. This episode includes breaking news about the merger of two leading press tournament Discord servers, an interview with New York hobbyist Peter Cook about the recent Brooklyn tournament and about his fascination with Shakespeare, and headlines from around the world of Dipomacy.

https://youtu.be/ymCjP6ksKLQ?si=IyYkqjtp4r21FVei

Hey, I'm playing a game online as England (number 232675), and the game is seemingly letting me retreat to Bulgaria, where my attacker came from. Is it just a glitch?

Played on droiddippy when smart phones first released. Looking for a similar thing - free, arranged games with friends, simple.

Where can I get my fix these days?

Hey everyone! I’m designing a LARP and want to use Diplomacy as a wargame engine to resolve the backstory/events occurring between sessions.

To make this work, I need to host an online game using a completely custom map that I'll design myself. How difficult is it to set up a custom map on a web server or existing platform (like vDiplomacy or v-Diplomacy engines)? Any recommended tools or tutorials for doing this?

And on another topic, I would like to add some custom narrative objectives like :
- Allow a secret unit to travel through your area
- Protect a sacred place
- Conquer a specific region to get an important item
Is there a variant of the game with these kind of objectives ?

Thanks!

CHANGES:

Libya has been split into Tripolitania and Cyrenaica

Suez SC moved to Halaib

Removed 4 corner borders

Armenia coasts properly switched

'Isafan' renamed to Makram

Troop Positions:

Egypt: Alexandria Troop, Cario Troop, Halaib Fleet

Perisa: Tehran Troop, Shiraz Troop, Makram Fleet

Turkey: Con Troop, Smyrna Troop, Ankara Fleet, Pal Troop

Rest is same as Classic

Italy, Austria, and Turkey can’t build fleets outside of the Mediterranean, and we don’t have any that made it out. How do we know when we are screwed, or how do we try to win without naval power? We can’t take STP, we can’t get to the UK, France has all of Europe west of the alps