First casting call: Diplomacy

I am looking for folks who are interested in playing Diplomacy for The Gameshelf. We're going to concentrate on fun, and making great television by turning it into a kind of one-shot reality show. I plan on joining as a player, though I have never played before. (I shall host a "rehearsal" of a full or partial play-through before the shoot, though.)

This is going to be a a marathon shoot. Diplomacy can take up to six hours to play, and I intend to capture a whole game. With prep and other overhead, players might end up hanging around for as long as eight hours. Location TBD, but probably someone's house. Possibly mine. (Not your house, if I haven't already asked you about it.) We'll have a dinner break. Really, it'll be like a gaming party, except with far more A/V equipment poking around than you may be used to seeing.

Unlike every other shoot, players won't be seated and micd under hot studio lights while on-camera. Instead, they'll have the run of the house (including the yard, if it's a nice day, and if there's a yard) and it's going to be up to the camera jockeys to keep up with them. This is to encourage players to gather into groups for conversations out of other players' earshot. We'll probably have to live with crappy audio for these parts, but that's life.

I will need at least five guest-players, and an "understudy" or two wouldn't be unwelcome; I'm led to understand that Diplomacy just isn't Diplomacy with anything other than exactly seven players. (Your humble hosts shall take the other slots.)

If you are interested, let me know (via comment, email, or other method) what weekend days between May 22 and June 28 work for you. I'm in contact with my crew, and can settle on on a date quickly, but want to pick one that works for everyone.

Addendum: The fate of last spring's game shoots

A quick note to those who participated in game shoots for The Gameshelf last spring: I've decided to sink the idea of a whole episode about locally designed games, because it just wasn't coming together. Instead, we're going to put a short local-games feature onto upcoming episodes, and to kick it off I'm going to dip into all the footage we shot last year. So, look for yourself to appear eventually there!

Army of Davids

Excerpt from this past week's Gene Weingarten chat:

Alexandria, Va.: "We are heading for a period of indeterminate length where there will be insufficient eyes on our government, on business, and on the powers that be in, in general. Where official pronouncements will be accepted and printed as news. Where the heart-and-soul changing stories of human interest are going to remain unnoticed. I think it's bad, and I think it's going to take a while before we realize what we're missing."

Gene, you are so dead wrong about the effect of use of the Internet -- in fact, citizens are now armed with much more information about government, business and society than ever before. The only difference is that the WaPo, NYT and other major media are no longer the gatekeepers of information and have no monopoly on the questioning of authority. You should buy a copy of "An Army of Davids" and get ready for the new world.

Gene Weingarten: The army of Davids do not have people paid well to cultivate sources over years, people like Dana Priest, who will expose malfeasances via years of training as investigative journalists. With an army of Davids as protectors of the realm, I guarantee you Richard Nixon would have served two terms. Possibly succeeded by President Spiro Agnew.

_______________________

Gene Weingarten: I don't mean to overstate this, cause it sounds defensive, but: People who think we will be protected by bloggers really have no idea what they are talking about. David Simon made this point eloquently yesterday on WAMU.

He noted that when he recently broke a story about police malfeasance in Baltimore, he wasn't having to push past all the bloggers working the story.

This particular exchange has stuck in my head for several days. I find it very hard to dismiss, and rather chilling.