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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 8542461" data-attributes="member: 27780">Polyhedron Issue 90: December 1993part 2/5Letters: The first two letters are thank you's from the charities mentioned in last issue's editorial. Guide dogs for the deaf and sick kids in Wisconsin can sleep a little easier knowing we're donating money to them.Third is somewhat more substantial, as it's from a fresh recruit who's a little baffled by all the rules and in-jokes of the RPGA. They don't repeat them every issue so it's quite understandable it'd take a while to feel like you really know what's going on. Losing accessibility is one of the things any fanbase really has to worry about as they get bigger and longer established, particularly if gatekeepey people get into a position of middle management.Fourth praises James Lowder's movie reviews. They do seem to be pretty popular. Let's hope he's not going elsewhere anytime soon.Fifth is about more unofficial charity work by individual RPGA members, this time doing sponsored walks and donating to GMHC to fight AIDS. We've had a few deniable moments of homoeroticism in here before, but this is the first time they've openly mentioned the existence of gay people. Now how long before they'll allow that in game material as well? Hopefully the majority of the membership agree with this and will donate as well, or at least not cancel their memberships and send vitriolic letters attacking them for supporting degeneracy. Sixth is from someone who wanted to buy ultra-early back issues and put in a classified ad asking for offers, only to have some anonymous kind soul just send them for free! Thank you very much, mysterious benefactor. That could have been pretty expensive done the hard way.Finally, someone complaining how slowly the lines went at the RPGA booth this Gen Con. Victim of their own popularity. That's why they're so keen on getting more volunteers to help out, make things run more smoothly next year. The Dragon's Den: R. A. Salvatore recycles the notes from his Gen Con speech and gets them printed in here. (without all the ums and ahhs) Asked to talk about the past and future of gaming, he decided to go for a sappily heartwarming story of how it can turn young lives around. The Dragon's Den, Fitchburg, MA is a FLGS that really works on the F part, providing free gaming to socially disadvantaged young kids as long as they go to school, stay out of fights and get decent grades. This actually works pretty decently; as we've seen before, gaming is a good way to improve your maths & english skills without it feeling like a chore, while also learning co-operative social skills that are applicable to the real world. Their parents can feel safer knowing they're rolling dice after school instead of wandering the streets getting into gangs & drugs. The only problem is that having deliberately opened shop in a rough neighbourhood, getting enough well-paying customers to keep the shop going is proving tricky. Maybe making a few more people aware of what he's doing will help with that? Googling it, it turns out that the owner died in 2016, at which point he was the owner of multiple stores, so it looks like he did become more financially successful and help a lot more people in the intervening decades. I can't really say if that's a happy ending or not, as this is the real world, not a story, but it does look like he made a lot of people's lives better, many of whom are still alive today and hopefully passing those lessons on in their own way. If there's a point to gaming other than pure pleasure and escapism, this is it. The delivery may be a bit schmaltzy and lifetime movieish, but he's not wrong. There's always going to be challenges in life, but by working together they can be much easier than everyone going it alone or fighting over the same limited resources. If you can leave the world a better place than when you came in, then by that metric, your life was a success.</blockquote>

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