The resulting "shared world", created through collaboration, cooperation and conflict, had a substantial, well-fleshed out infrastructure that developed its own rich set of traditions.
The game mythos was set in a mythical land named Slobbovia, after the perpetually frozen country that occasionally appeared in Al Capp's daily comic strip Li'l Abner.
An important early expansion of the postal game beyond the original Canadian players and a handful of Americans was through the efforts of Charles C. Sharp, who operated for a substantial period as the sole gamemaster and publisher.
Despite the fluidity and volatility provided by the requirement to appoint subrulers and commanders, there were several occasions where one player possibly ruled enough supply centers (one-half plus one) to fulfill the standard Diplomacy victory condition.
Eventually the core players finally gave out and collapsed under the sheer weight and complexity of the game and storylines as they moved further away from their college days.
As a complex and involved take on the concept of "King of the Hill," the original Venturer Scout version of Slobbovia anticipated by a fair number of years many live action role-playing games.
By the later years of the game, it was generally recognized that five entities on the board had, through endurance, history and strakh, attained the status of Prinzipality or Prinzdom within Imperial Slobbovia.
Following are some of the more enduring, well-established, and/or interesting nations (a list that is, of course, not at all complete or comprehensive): The legacy of the Rabbitanian Empire is as old as Slobbovia itself, dating back to the canoe and pluglunk era.
The core of the Vurklemeyers' state was the Prinzipality, founded by the Red Prinz, Ivor I, and based around Venturia proper, its surrounding provinces, and the Kaposvarian peninsula.
The most prominent and powerful leader of the Triarchy was perhaps Julian Ivorovitch Boleski-Vurklemeyer, a son of the Red Prinz, whose bastardy prevented him from taking the throne but who ruled as Triarch Major, succeeding his cousin Dimitri Valgoricanus Vurklemeyer.
Ignominiously crushed, then rising again in revolt as head of the Theocracy of Saint Blooper, Vasili's forces became the vanguard battling Chekov and his new allies, the Goreans.
Support swelled for the Theocracy while the Valgorian Empire went through convulsions that ended when Atlatl the Hun absconded with the treasury and left for Parts Unknown (an off-map province to the south).
Seeing the writing on the wall for future support of the Church Militant and wanting to salvage what he still held, Vasili stepped down as Grund Patriarch and turned over the reins of government to his nephew, Jurgen Sekundar Zhukovski.
The actual province name of "Jamul" was taken from a small town near San Diego, California, favored by postal Diplomacy pioneer, Conrad von Metzke, who briefly was a Slobbovia participant.
Phumpha and Phumphans were first encountered in the game in the person of Gregor Herman Werschtenschnitzelbaum, Graf von und zu Schtumpen-Schtumpen, an old friend of the then Czar Raoul Raskolnikov.
When the Empire made actual contact with Phumpha through an Imperial Survey (game map expansion), it was being ruled by the Klutz-Morrow family, who were quickly displaced by a restoration of the Goons under a cadet branch, the Seagoonsky dynasty.
Gregor Gregovitch united the positions and took the title of "Caliph", an arrangement that did not last past his reign, belying the militant stance usual with the sect that bore his name.
The monasteries of the Holy Sativan Church were called "fubars"; the name was derived from the acronym "fouled up beyond all repair" in common usage in a variety of places, especially the U.S. military.
A partial listing of techniques they employed: Scholls ya Nostrils (whipping a malodorous foot beneath the victim's nose causing unconsciousness); Beans Flatula (an area-of-effect attack similar to tear gas); Loins Gadafule (pronounced "god awful"), which involved swinging an unwashed loincloth harvested from a holy man, producing devastating effects on contact with a target.
Famous monks of Mafang Fubar included the monastery's founder, Bolivar Ragoo, and Boris Sharposhnikov, who would become Grund Patriarch (which he was able to do after a traumatic bathing incident).
A more actively combative attitude ruled relations between adherents of the most energetic and militant of the sects, the Satinists and the Gregorians, as they pursued their more extreme religious practices.
Lifestyles of the Strakheinvolk, as depicted in players' press, resembled in large part that of the upper class and aristocracy of Europe during a time period that could be roughly defined as being from the Napoleonic era to that of The Proud Tower.
He did so, having children with all five and his mistress, resulting in a large number of potential, competing heirs when he eventually became unable to rule (i.e., the player playing Valjenkin left the game).
The original live play was conducted in canoes; those battles were decided not by 10 inch naval guns but by the combatants' skill in wielding the traditional Slobbovian weapons known as "pluglunks" (double-bladed paddles).
Land combat was much more varied – rarely did it extend beyond Napoleonic organization and tactics, though chariots, knights, kataphracts, phalanxes, and housecarls ("housechurls", the household guards of the Zhukovski family, known for their churlish behavior) and other medieval/ancient sources made appearances (reflecting gaming cross-over by several players who also indulged in 25mm miniatures battles).
An Oberhorc was usually treated as a mid-grade officer (vaguely a captain or major) while an Unterflunky ranged from a junior grade lieutenant or midshipman to something somewhere below a common private.
Many players believed the simpler things were, the better, but there was a certain joy in perverse complexity, such as Novaria's national telephone system, which consisted of networks of tin cans and strings.
While the "least" (i.e. most) advanced technological developments generally prevailing were at about the level of the late 19th/early 20th centuries, there were also rumors of even more ancient and potentially terrible devices, such as the ballistic supercomputer buried deep under the Gremlin.
Seeming to be what we would now call an AI, nobody knew if it was still connected to ancient thermonuclear missiles, and an Imperial officer was always assigned to play chess with it to keep it from becoming bored so that nobody need ever find out.
These might range from the logical magic of Harold Shea to Darkover starstones to the volatile and explosive antics of Monty Python's Tim the Enchanter, to give a few examples.