Ah well. I see John Boardman is still alive, though. I won a dip tournament he managed when I was a kid.
Thanks rei. That Chicago Mag article is very interesting, and a little touching.
I heard of Diplomacy in 1969, but didn’t actually find it until Toys R Us carried the Games Research version in 1973, when serious multi-player games were few and far between. There was a flyer in the box about postal Diplomacy, and I wrote to Rod Walker, who was going through one of his many Diplomacy withdrawal phases and Conrad von Metzke got back to me. Spent a number of years in the hobby playing postally and live at DipCons and DinkiCons, and participated in the longest running Diplomacy variant ever (there were no rules regarding “winning” - check out “Slobbovia” in Wikipedia). Our local group got so big that the 10 player Youngstown variant wasn’t big enough and we came up with a 13 player variant (Coyne-Hubbard World Variant). But I always seemed to miss the conventions that Calhamer appeared at - my friend has an autographed board stashed away somewhere. Eventually I gave it up as too inherently vicious.
Anyway, rest in peace, Allan - you don’t have to watch out for backstabs any more.