In the absence of parties and happy hours and date nights, millions of Americans living under lockdown have regressed into pastimes like playing Animal Crossing, reading War and Peace, baking sourdough bread, or attempting to learn Romanian.
For me and around two dozen friends, the diversion of choice has been Diplomacy, the strategy board game invented by a Harvard University undergraduate named Allan B. Calhamer in the 1950s, mass-marketed by the game company Avalon Hill, and eventually developed into an elaborate (and mostly free) online hobby. My friends, some of whom had never played before the COVID-19 pandemic, have quickly become hopeless addicts. For me, Diplomacy has been an on-and-off obsession since high school, when I played it at the home of one Michael Ellis, then a young conservative, and now an obscure but potent player in the Trump administration. The lessons the game taught both of us stuck, but in very different ways.
