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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 8235908" data-attributes="member: 27780">Polyhedron Issue 51: January 1990part 1/536 pages. A new decade, a bright new future! Well, they're definitely in a futuristic mood at least, if not a bright one, as the rather murky spacebound cover indicates. Let's see just how far from earth they're willing to go, and how dystopian they'll get this time around. Conventions continue to come up with terrible pun names. Genghis Con? Total ConFusion? ConnCon? Have yourself a solid round of groans and slow claps. Notes from HQ: Once again, they're very keen on the idea of increasing size, so most of the editorial is devoted to the membership drive, it's regulations, and the prizes you can win. Unsurprisingly, the prizes are fewer and smaller than last year's flop attempt, but don't let that put you off. Even if you only recruit one or two people, you're making a genuine difference to the long-term strength of roleplaying in your community. This all seems pretty stressful for them. They need to figure out how to get people more engaged without seeming like they're nagging, which will just be irritating and counterproductive in the long run. In anticipation of their hopeful success, they've moved Skip from long-term freelancer to full-time staff, given the sheer quantity of stuff he was doing for them for free anyway. It's safe to say he won't be going anywhere anytime soon, given how big a part he played in both Dragon and many full D&D books over the next decade. On the negative side, that also means we'll probably be seeing some more obnoxiously whimsical modules from him in here as well, but oh well, no-one's perfect. His positive contributions to gaming definitely outweigh the negative ones overall. Letters: In connection with the membership drive, many of the letters are about the struggle in finding people to join and play with. The first points out that while there's plenty of gamers and games in the plains of Spain, there's virtually no RPGA presence there. You're absolutely right. This means you're a prime growth area with a little more promotional effort, preferably from someone who actually knows the local culture and it's quirks. Hey kid, wanna be a regional director? :winks: We can sort you out with some real good gear if you do. If no-one steps up, it'll never get done. The second one addresses another problem with international growth, that it costs more than for USA residents. If a regional office gets big enough to do it's own printing that might be improved upon. Until then, you're stuck with the air mail costs. it's not as if they're seeing the extra money from it, especially if you paid for membership several years in advance and they rise in the meantime. The third complains that not only are there not enough gamers in Hawaii, the ones that there are are nearly all military, who don't have any incentive to sign up to the RPGA because they already get service members discounts. Yeah, that is a problem. Might want to rejig your discount structure to help with that. The 4th is another one complaining that they offer too many tournaments open to non-members. If they were bigger, they could be a bit stricter with the exclusives. Once again, fixing this is up to you guys really. Finally, Multi-tournament champion Donald Bingle writes in to reveal that he's decided to try and actually make his own RPG's, and bought the rights to several other out of print ones. As he's a nice kinda guy, he's also offering a discount to RPGA members. That's the sort of community spirit we want to see. Hopefully this co-operation'll be profitable to all involved.</blockquote>

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