Allan Brian Calhamer (December 7, 1931 – February 25, 2013) was an American board game designer, best known for his game Diplomacy.
Career
Calhamer speculated that his original inspiration for Diplomacy was an article in Life magazine about the Congress of Vienna he read in 1945 at age 13. Calhamer received his bachelor's degree from Harvard University in 1953, then began at Harvard Law School. Reading The Origins of the World War by professor Sidney Bradshaw Fay, whose class he attended, finally galvanized Calhamer. Over the years, Diplomacy has been published in North America by Games Research, Avalon Hill, Hasbro, and Renegade Game Studios, and has been published in several different languages in other nations by various publishers. Calhamer's original face-to-face board game has also been played by mail since 1963. More recently, there are internet Diplomacy games, games run through email or online with or without a human game master. Calhamer later invented two other games, but neither achieved anything like the success of Diplomacy.
Calhamer also published a game of four-dimensional exploration, called "Hyper-Space." The instructions are at the Internet Archive.
Legacy
Calhamer died of heart and kidney failure on February 25, 2013, at Adventist-La Grange Memorial Hospital in La Grange, Illinois. Mike Webb, vice president of marketing and data services for Alliance Game Distributors, said in a posthumous interview, "In many ways, the hobby-game industry as we know it owes its existence to Allan Calhamer" thanks to Diplomacys numerous gameplay innovations, specifically the ability to negotiate and deceive other players.
Personal life
Calhamer met his future wife, Hilda Morales, in New York. The couple were married 45 years and had two daughters together, Tatiana and Selenne.