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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 8798375" data-attributes="member: 27780">Polyhedron Issue 122: August 1996part 5/5Member Serving: Four more short pieces here from the various volunteer positions. The person running the TSR website on AOL, the regional directors, the convention organiser, and most importantly, the guy who created and maintains the databases. Without him, they wouldn't be able to track all the player XP and item certificates nearly as quickly or accurately. And he did all this for free in his spare time while also working a day job. All these volunteer positions may have cool names, but they're all responsibility, the main reward is the warm glow of knowing you helped a lot of people have fun. That people fill them anyway is testament to their fundamental selflessness. Just a shame there's not enough of them to go around. If people like that were a little more common, or at least rewarded better for doing all that work for free instead of the people who profiteer winding up holding all the real power the world would be a better place. Writing For The RPGA: The Forgotten Deities series has concluded successfully, but Eric Boyd is still a highly active member, so he takes on the job of encouraging other people to send more articles in. It's not rocket science, but learning brevity is important, as polyhedron runs on a very limited page count. The best articles manage to pack a whole load of ideas into a small package while still leaving readers room to do what they please with them. (and he's learnt well from Ed how to do that) You won't get rich, but it sure beats digging a ditch and might lead onto working on official books. Just watch out for that code of conduct, because even if you get the spelling, punctuation & grammar right, come up with interesting ideas, remember to include your SASE and sign the standard disclosure form anything that'd upset Tipper Gore will go straight in the bin. This is all pretty familiar despite their attempts to liven it up with stories from regular members. Despite saying you ought to avoid repeating topics other people have already sent in, they sure are having to repeat themselves a lot in the more editorial parts. Polyhedron Newszine Clearance Sale: One of the casualties of their small size is not listing what back issues are available every time, unlike Dragon. This means the amount of back stock has been building up a lot over the years and they'd like to clear it. Unsurprisingly, the early issues are a lot more expensive than anything else and there are quite a few gaps in the list, with issue 95 being the most recent one that's sold out completely, but you can still get hold of more than 3/4 of them easily. Another instance where they might be trying to fix a problem, but we know in hindsight it's too little too late, as WotC has to deal with big warehouses full of unsold crap like overprinted Buck Rogers supplements and Dragon Dice when they take over. A reminder that it's taken years of mismanagement to get to this point, but the way businesses work mean it's not obvious from the outside that they've been running up massive debts and keeping them serviced with advance money, so it only falls apart when several things conspicuously undersell at once and they can't keep up loan repayments. To everyone else, even many of the staff who don't get to look at the financials, they're still the biggest RPG company in the world. Goes to show. Many things are a lot more fragile than they appear.Notes From HQ: After a long, jam-packed issue full of contributions from people who've never written for the newszine before and probably won't do so again, (they have other, equally important roles) the editorial is here to remind us again that the more you put into the RPGA, the more you'll get out of it. There's no higher power or great stash of company money keeping it going, ultimately it's just us. He himself is just a regular guy who want to a big convention, thought it was awesome, found there wasn't anyone else doing what he wanted in his hometown and set out to get gamers together. One thing led to another, many years later, here he is as editor. This is definitely one that makes more sense placed after all the articles than before. You can never be sure where life is going to take you, but fortune favours the bold so take those opportunities, reach out to people. You'll probably regret the things you never tried at all more than the ones you tried and failed at, as failure is still often a learning experience that's useful in the future. A fairly positive note to end things on.A pretty sharp contrast to the previous introductory issue in 1989. While that was basic in a silly, cartoony way that wasn't particularly great for me, but I could see working on the young target audience, this one is just a repetitive slog of self-promotion, explaining the same things multiple times in different ways over the course of the issue. Not an improvement overall, showing that they've become much more serious as the years have gone by and the recent financial struggles are adding a further edge of desperation to their attempts to bring new people in. This isn't the kind of atmosphere I want to stick around in at all. Onto the next issue, to see what theme they've chosen for that, if any.</blockquote>

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