Novice Tutorial #1 - Understanding Press

External Since: Nov 26, 2007 Posts: 34

This is an excerpt from the "training materials" that I use in my
novice games:

Novice Tutorial #1 - Understanding Press

A complete treatment of press on the diplomacy judges in available in
the file "press" available from the judge with the get command - "get
press". This broadcast is intended to be an overview.

The most important thing to know about press is how to end it. Always
terminate press with the "endpress" and/or "signoff" commands. This is
important to avoid sending orders, press intended for other powers, or
even your password to the recipient of your press. There is no space in
endpress or signoff. You can send multiple press messages and orders in
one mail to the judge, but best practice is to split them up.

Also important is using the abbreviations *only* when sending press. At
one time "press to turkey" would send press not only to Turkey but also
Russia and England. The latest version of the judge, which USAK runs,
will return an error message instead of sending press when duplicate or
nonexistent powers are specified as recipients, but it may be possible
in variants or on other judges to send press to unintended recipients
when you spell out the name of the power.

You can specify powers to omit from a message instead of powers to send
a message to. Use "press to all but rtmo" if you want to spread a rumor
about the "Steam Roller" alliance, for example. The r and t are for
Russia and Turkey, m for Master (unless you want my attention on some
matter), and o for observer so that your press can't be read by using
the "history" command. Also, "press to all but o" is useful if you need
to direct something to all participants without airing 'dirty laundry'
in front of observers. I may not read broadcasts (and many GMs never
do), so using the "broadcast" command is not a good idea for matters
that require GM attention. I might reply to a broadcast, but you must
use the press command if you want to ensure that I read a post.

This and many other games support Grey (or anonymous) Press. To send an
anonymous message to Austria, for example, use "press to a grey". Note
that "grey" is spelled with an e. You will always be identified when
communicating with the GM. Send a test message to yourself before using
this feature to be sure that you understand it. The "grey" option also
works with broadcasts. Note that your email address will be revealeded
unless the game is anonymous.

It my observation that the more you send press to other powers, the more
likely you are to do well. Those who play press games as if they are No
Press get eliminated early...

Chris

External Since: Nov 26, 2007 Posts: 34

> Excellent, Chris, stated in a good way that notes the key points in
> order. The number one point about press IS the endpress command. It
> even is worth noting that it IS one word, endpress, not 'end press'
> as you do, as point number two. Very cool nuanced training document,
> all GMs should use this, I think.

Thank you. While I *think* that nJudge 1.7.6 will parse "end press" as
"endpress", the most active nJudge (USOS) was running 1.5.0 last I
checked so I think it's still important to use it as one word.

Interestingly enough, I have more trouble with trailing spaces than
interjected spaces. Because of the encoding scheme favored by Microsoft
products, a trailing space can cause "endpress" to be rendered by the
judge as "endpress=20". The result is often something like this:

endpress=20
signoff=20
------=_Part_109324_8027342.1174309132351
Content-Type: text/html; charset=Base64
Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable
Content-Disposition: inline
<html>signon Egamename mypassword

Right now, USAL is the only nJudge I'm aware of that has filtering in
place to prevent that. Alan has generously offered to share the
scripts, but they're written in Procmail so they are not trivial to add
to the judge distribution - and those who have already climbed a
rather steep learning curve to install and to run the judge software
are not necessarily prepared to learn yet another obscure application.

I also left off my post here a a paragraph that I know needs to be
rewritten... The one where I threaten to boot a (novice) player if he
is late for spring '01 and hasn't sent any press yet.

Chris