1930!

a diplomacy style board game

1930! is a game that requires 5 players and you each take leadership of one of the major powers of the time; Great Britain, Germany, France, Russia or Italy. There are also a number of (initially) neutral minor powers countries such as Spain, Belgium, Ireland etc etc. Each country has two key properties: Military strength and Political strength. The territory held and political points value of a country determine its military strength.
One of the key features to the game is ability to influence a minor power using your political points. If enough are used then there is a chance the minor power will be come friendly (allowing passage through their territory) or even allied (allowing use of their military).
Like Diplomacy orders are written down and executed simultaneously. In 1930! the orders include everything from movement to application of political power. Conflicts that arise are resolved according the combat strength of the forces involved with a simple percentage roll. In between turns it's time to make and break alliances with the other major power players.
1930! is my attempt to produce a game that retains a set of simple rules and the personal interaction found with Diplomacy, but extends the game play to include aircraft, the political or economic power of countries and many more neutral countries.
The first draft of the rules was made back in 1994. The rules that can be downloaded from this web site are the most recent revision. The game has only been played once and that was a simple test of the mechanics so if you decide to play the game please let me know of any questions or problems encountered.
The game pieces have been made, electronically at least. I have generated them using Paint Shop Pro and the three types are available for downloading in *.psp format. The files have various layers that hold the different information (such as combat strength, country and unit type). I have only created layers for the major countries so you will have to create your own layers for the minor countries. It should be clear from the files and the layer palette what to do - just create a new layer, fill with the chosen colour for the country, add the country name in black 11pt arial and set the layer opacity to 75%! An image for all the countries, different combat strengths etc can be made by turning the visibility of the appropriate layers on and off, you can then use the "Print Multiple Images" to print off as many pieces as you need. The files are set at 200dpi which will produce a 0.5 inch square piece. Here are the different pieces, click the example to download *.psp file, about 330k each.
       
The game board is pretty big! An image of it can be downloaded (800k jpg) here for printing out. The image is set to 100dpi which will produce a 42inch by 30inch playing area. As far as I know all the regions are marked - it's been a while since I made the original board and checked the rules against it.