Oh, you know I'm in.
I agree, that the true game comes out in the PBEM format. Yet I have many fond memories of playing real time games with my high school friends. We probably played 30-40 times in real life over those years. We often tried to organize weekend game days to play. Although we usually only played for like four hours and had a general consensus about the winning player(s). We didn't find it fun to try to truly play things all the way out to 18 supply centers, especially since there are so many stalemate lines where sides can stay tied at 17-17 and it just takes hours to truly finish. We were more than happy to play and just decide the two players who were at 12 and 11 were the winners and either one of them actually would have gone on to win or stalemated probably. To this day I still really do enjoy real time Diplomacy games, but not really the late game.
So I'd agree PBEM is ultimately better. I do somewhat miss the mad dashing around the room trying to talk to all the other countries that a real time game provides, the PBEM environment is much better--not to mention it's easier to pull off those famous blindsides. Real life certainly had some issues when your ally noticed you having lengthy talks with a mutual enemy....
Anyhow I'm super interested in playing. I'm good with whatever site others want to play on. I haven't been in the PBEM community for Diplomacy in years, so I have no clue really what people use anymore. My friends and I used to use the Diplomacy app/game on Facebook that worked alright, but I had always heard there were better sites and communities. Whatever people pick I'm happy to register there.
Finally, as for others who are new--welcome! It's a fantastic game. The rules aren't that tough to grasp either, the complexity arises from the tense negotiations and the board positions that can happen. But that's part of what makes it so great--there's no luck, there's relatively few units, but the game gets deliciously cutthroat and quite deep strategically without having tons of mechanics or rules.
And actually speaking of this...no clue if they'd want to try learning or joining, but
@
Dysole
,
@
scorpiusx
might want to check this out.