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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 8601037" data-attributes="member: 27780">Polyhedron Issue 98: August 1994part 1/532 pages. A wizard and a pipe-smoking halfling. Now that's a familiar starting point for an adventure. Where will their wanderings take them, what dangers will they face, and what treasures will they find at the end? Under hill or over mountain, time to see how challenging and dark the latest issue I face manages to be. Notes From HQ: Progress ticks onwards. Apparently this issue is the first produced entirely on desktop software. They've been typing up individual articles on macs for many years, but now memory sizes have reached the point where you can lay out and color an entire issue as one file, making moving things around, changing typfaces and font sizes etc much quicker and reversible, allowing a lot more experimentation. As usual with computers, there was a bit of a learning curve, but before too long they'll take all that extra flexibility for granted, just like musicians switching from editing on tape to being able to shift things around non-linearly. Nice to know when it happened, and as with the internet, I think they're slightly ahead of Dragon & Dungeon technologically, who didn't start futzing around with desktop editing until the little red triangle issues next year and had a somewhat rougher learning curve. On the other hand, human nature hasn't changed at all, and even a small organisation like this can have very vicious and petty politics. Jean has to tell everyone to simmer down on the backstabbing. You won't get a regional co-ordinator job by overthrowing the person currently doing it, and trying that kind of crap blatantly will get you marked as someone to avoid giving any kind of responsibility too or even expelled. Don't cut other members down, poach their customers by running a convention on the same weekend as another in the same region or spread rumours about them behind their backs. Instead, work together to make the RPGA and gaming as a whole bigger and more welcoming. This is the problem when you have people who see social interaction as a zero-sum game with winners & losers, rather than an opportunity for mutual gain. Of course, there's the equally problematic other end of this spectrum, where people squash rumors that turn out to be accurate in the name of appearing unified, allowing someone to get away with sexual harassment or financial wrongdoing for years while the people reporting the problem get pushed out, but the RPGA is a long way away from any kind of #metoo revelations, so the current company line is towards making a show of unity and getting along even if you don't actually like each other. Hopefully we shall see how this is received in the letters page in a few month's time.</blockquote>

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