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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 8164807" data-attributes="member: 27780">Polyhedron Issue 43: September 1988part 1/532 pages. OOh, they've mastered the art of doing transparencies on their cover images, so they can put their trade dress and logos behind the active figures, but in front of the backdrops. That's the kind of thing that's much easier once you have decent computers in the office, and an interesting sign of their technical progress since the old school years. Let's see what other bits of progress, and hopefully improvement they've made this time around.Notes From HQ: Well, they've definitely made improvements on how well-prepared they are since last year. They can happily report that they now have enough reader submissions to actually start being choosy. This does not mean they don't want more! It just means they can raise the average quality of what they publish. Don't get lazy again, or the deadline beast will soon start to raven and howl. Of course, being better prepared involves the rest of the supply chain also planning ahead down the line. You can't expect them to cover your convention unless you tell them at least 5 months in advance. A full year would be preferable, which is why you make these things regular yearly events if you have the audience. They then remember that positive reinforcement is as important as nagging, and remember to thank all the people who have gone above and beyond in writing articles and modules, running games, editing stuff for free, etc. The memories of their recent struggles are obviously fresh enough to keep complacency at bay. Let's hope it remains that way for a good few years. Letters: We only have two long letters this issue. The first continues the long-term debate on the problems with their scoring system, whether points should be allocated individually, or for good work as a team, how you prevent people from gaming the system, and how transparent they should be in their process.  The big conflict comes in that transparency reduces corruption, but increases how easy it is to manipulate the system. Getting the best combination of freedoms and protections is an incredibly fiddly balancing act far larger systems still struggle with.The other letter wants less tournament talk, modules and classified ads, and more timeless crunchy material that's good for home games in years to come. They are gradually moving in that direction, despite it blurring the lines between them & Dragon. They also get reminded that they need to include more artwork of nonwhite humans, not just the various demihuman races. You don't want players to be more able to relate to a pointy-eared person who lives for hundreds of years than one that just has slightly darker skin. They reply that they'll try. It's not as if they actively want to exclude people - they didn't plan to wind up 95% male, and probably even more than that white. But cultural pressures are a complex and intractable thing, and have a lot of inertia once a social group has started out a certain way. You'd need a new game that brings in a whole different demographic, and then you have the grognards complaining that they're not real gamers. As with the last letter, this battle continues to the present day.</blockquote>

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