Diplomacy Zine -- EP #214 Chapter Seven From: Eric_S_Klien@cup.portal.com Date: Sun, 30 Dec 1990 02:39:28 +0000 Issue #214 of ELECTRONIC PROTOCOL: ************************************************************************* "Letitia shook her head and didn't answer. The dessert was almost finished when Letitia slapped both palms on the table. "Why did you do it?" "Why did we do what?" her father asked, startled. "Why are Roald and I normal? Why didn't you design us?" ************************************************************************* Chapter One contains: BAGHDAD, AUSTERLITZ, BLITZKRIEG, KING'S GAMBIT, PASSCHENDAELE, GET SOME, DRAGONS, BLACK OCTOBER And is published by uunet!cti1!rlister or rlister@cti.com/Russ Lister Chapter Two contains: REPUBLIC, BORODINO, JACAL, VERSAILLES, DRESDEN, KHAN And is published by sinhaa@mcmaster.ca/Anand Sinha Chapter Three contains: DAWN PATROL, BERLIN, EL ALAMEIN, SQUALANE, UNGAWE, BRUSILOV OFFENSIVE, CULLODEN, GANDALF'S REVENGE, GOODBYE BLUE SKY And is published by cwekx@htikub5.bitnet/Constantijn Wekx Chapter Four contains: OZARK, DEADLY DAGGERS, YORKTOWN, MONTREUIL-SUR-MER, FIRE WHEN READY, THUNDERDOME And needs a publisher. Chapter Five contains: DEF CON 5, BORDEL, ERIS, MASADA, YALTA And is published by jjcarette@watami.waterloo.edu/David Gibbs Chapter Six contains: TOKUGAWA, BERLIN WALL, HIROSHIMA, GENGHIS KHAN, SEA LION, VIOLENT PEACE And is published by mike@suna.computation.umist.ac.uk/Mike Reddy Chapter Seven contains: HELM'S DEEP, GROUND ZERO, GIBRALTAR, TIBERIUS, BETELGEUSE, IRON CROSS, DEF CON 4, OPERATION DESERT SHIELD ------------- Chapter Seven ------------- Table of Contents: Part two of the article "An Interview With Fred Davis Jr." (Part one was in issue #213) The following was scribed by Martin Snow/snow@cololasp.bitnet: Taken from Mouth of Sauron Volume Six Number One (English) AN INTERVIEW WITH FRED DAVIS JR. (part two) MN = Mark Nelson, FD = Fred Davis Jr. FD When Larry Peery announced we were going to have the Don Miller Award (equivalent to your Les Pimley Award) he called me from California and asked me to invite Don to the Diplomacy convention where the award was being presented. (I think it was the first MaryCon down in Fredricksbourg, Virginia). I wrote Don a letter, and Stella called to tell me that Don had died two weeks before, of cancer. We didn't know that he was that ill. But I'll say this, he went down with all guns firing and all flags waving. I went over there approximately nine or ten months after his death because we knew Don had this tremendous collection of Diplomacy zines. His wife was not that interested in the hobby; she did not know hwat was Diplomacy, what was SF, and what was detective publications. So I went over and spent an entire saturday sorting out all the Diplomacy stuff, packed it, and Stella had it mailed to Larry for the Diplomacy Archives. I took all his spare copies of the Gamesman, which I tried to sell at various cons in the Baltimore area. The money was used to finance the Don Miller Award. I've also sold the final copies though the PDA (Players Diplomacy Association) FD As he got sicker, he dropped his monthly Diplomacy zine but he had kept on trying to run The Gamesman. I think he either completed all his games or neatly and properly transfered them. He had a ver clean fold, except for the Gamesman which he didn't fold as he intended to go on publishing it. His wife said that for months after he had passed away she kept receiving letters from both new and old subscribers who didn't know he had passed away. MN Talking about Don Miller leads to the topic of Variants in general. What was the variant scene like in the late '60's and early '70's? Was there a small group of active variant-only fans by that stage? FD Well, I think most people played both variants and regular games. It was a period when variants were very popular and there were a lot more variants being played at that time. Every week practically, it seemed someone would publish a new variant in a zine. Most of them were mimeograph and the mimeographing wasn't all that it ought to have been. Some people still used the old ditto process, which enabled you to use two or three colors, so that supply centers might be in red while the map would be in blue and the seas green. Nobody realized that twenty years later on the green would fade away. I have several in the Bank to which I have had to take feathered pens and go over all the green because that's the first color to fade. Of course when you photocopy it all comes out black and white anyway! Luckily nobody is printing variants in ditto and multi-color anymore. MN Ditto has never been used much in the UK, only one or two zines have used it. Is anyone still using it in the states? FD The last ditto zine in the states was, I think, Bruce Linsey's zine. It was such a big zine that what he used to do was to either mimeograph or xerox the first ten pages which had some important material while the rest was done on ditto, as it was much cheaper. Since Voice of Doom's last issue in December 1985 nobody in the states is using the ditto process anymore. ((Ter-ran published by Steve Heinowski is still on ditto)) MN When was the first American Variant Bank set up? FD Dick Vedder decided to do this. He had a large personal collection of zines and he wrote around to various people and over a couple years he kept collecting. He had a small zine which he circulated on a very limited basis in which he gave progress reports on which variants he had and when he would be ready to launch the NAVB. In his final issue he announced that a) he now had enough variants to write a catalogue, b) he presented the catalog, and c) he had reached a point where he had to drop out of the hobby. So he was not able to run the variant bank, although he had organized the manilla folders for all the variants. What he did was to type titles on sticky labels and stuck the labels over the folders. FD He had third-cut manilla folders in aphabetical order with all the sticky labels on the folders. Anyway, he turned it over to someone else over in Virginia who actually began selling photocopies of the variants. This person, in turn, after a fairly short period of time, turned the bank over to Dave Kadlecek in California and Dave at first was very concientious about turning out a little newsletter about what was going on and filling orders. FD Then, all of a sudden, he stopped and nobody heard from him or got a response to orders. At this point Rod Walker looked him up and found he was living in a commune and seemed to be dropping out of the hobby. In the meantime I had a personal collection of variants in manilla folders labeled using a heavy feather pen, to make the titles rather easy to see, and I called that the "NAVB East". So when Rod finally went to this commune in the San Francisco Bay area he persuaded Kadlecek to let him take the Bank, and Rod called it the "NAVB West" because he still wasn't ready to take over the full bank. He wanted to see whether Kadlecek would get back into the hobby. It was only after six months when Dave decided that he had no further interest that Rod called his file the NAVB, naming me as his back-up officer. FD At that point Rod filled all the outstanding orders, except for variants that I had designed, and he explained to "customers" that my variants should be ordered directly from me. In addition, I occasionally got other orders. Rod also asked me to get in touch with the UKVB and to find out if there were any other variant banks across the world. Well, there was one in Europe, called the Central European Variant Bank, operated by Walter Luc Haas in Basel, Switzerland. Walter had some German and English variants. He sent me English translations of a couple of German variants. I sent him some of my things. And for a short while we worked together. When I was over in Europe in 1976 we went to Stuttgart for some time, and as it was only a short train trip to Basel, we visited Walter for a couple of days and exchanged some more material. Shortly after 1976, Walter began losing interest in the hobby, and as you know the UKVB exchanged hands so many times. I could barely keep up with all the changes. Anyway, the division of labor was such that Rod would handle most of the orders and that I was to keep in touch with the International people. Eventually I got in touch with Jaap Jaccobs, the Dutch Variant Custodian; Michael Liesnard, who although not personally the Belgian Variant Bank custodian lived in the same building as the Bank Custodian so there was direct communication; and I kept up contact with one UKVB Custodian after another. We would no sooner establish communications then he would drop out and someone else would take over. This was very frustrating. FD Eventually, Andy Poole took over the UKVB and we communicated back and forth. As I understand it, he rescued the UKVB at one point. Rod and I stayed in touch with all these people. Then about Spring 1985 Rod advised me he was sick and tired of running the NAVB and that the novel he was writing was taking up too much of his time. I told him that I was retiring from my civil service post at the end of August 1985, and this was my big mistake. He said, "Ahh, in that case you'll be retired with nothing to do. I'm going to give you the NAVB!" I protested at first, but I gave in very easily. So, Larry Peery went to Rod's house in October 1985 and went through every folder. The trouble with any transfer is that you really want to go through everything you've got to see if anything is misfiled or if anything shouldn't be in the files or anything needs corrections, and Rod simply didn't have the time to do that. So Larry went through the files and then bundled it up into three large cartons which he had shipped to me by UPS. I received these approximately the first week in November 1985. FD However, because I had to check everything, it wasn't until February 1986 that I was able to say to the Hobby that I was able to fill orders. I went through all the files, rewriting the folder labels in large lettering so that they could be seen and distinguished from each other at a distance. There are now FOUR boxes, since the number of variants has grown so much between November 85 and July 1988. MN Originally, I understand that variants were only given Miller Numbers when a game started. FD No, that idea came later, from Robert Sacks. Originally, each design was given a catalogue number when Miller or whoever was the MNC, first saw the rules. The games were identified by letters. The first game on the list was 'a'. The following ones were b, c, d, e, ..., z, aa, ab, ac, ..., etc. reaching into the g's or h's before some people realized that this system was no good. All it does is show you how old a variant is. The lower the letter, the older the design. Even that wasn't strictly true, since the letters were assigned in the order in which the MNC received the game, and not the order of their design. MN Did Don Miller start that? FD Yes, Don Miller was the one. And since Boardman had always issued Boardman numbers in the same way that comets are numbered, i.e. 1964A. Don took this little letter (the variant code) and would add it on so the first variant game in 1965 would be 1965Ax with x signifying whatever variant x was. It was all right as long as everybody knew the variants and there weren't more than 100 variants. The trouble was that as you were getting up to 200-300 variants these letters meant nothing. Hartley Patterson, here in Britain, was probably the first person who suggested that we should reclassify the designs into orderly categories. This was followed by various proposals from others... MN When would this be, about 1974? FD About 74-75. Doing this by mail takes an inordinate amount of time. If we could have got around a table together we might have done it in one day. It was discussed over a two year period. Conrad von Metzke got into the thing and came up with a very large number of categories. Hartley's original proposal was for about nine categories: Tolkien variants, Space variants, variants using a map of Europe, one for changing the rules but not the map, etc. We thought that we could get by with just nine categories, so this was suggested to Robert Sacks who was then Miller Number Custodian. FD Sacks would not accept this. Now it had the approval of the UKVB, the NAVB, and several leading people in the hobby, such as Rod Walker, Conrad von Metzke, Der Gravey in Ireland. (He was one of those people who lasted only a very short time in the hobby. He had access to a computer in his office at a time when home-computers didn't exist and he had put this all onto a computer cassette and sent copies to us.) Everybody except Robert Sacks agreed to this classification system. MN What was Sacks' objection to it? FD It wasn't HIS system. MN Was that all it came down to? FD In my personal opinion, yes. A dog in the manger situation. If I can't have the hay, nobody else can have the hay. He wanted his own system, and he did then come up with another system. The problem with Robert Sacks' system was that under it no variant could receive a designation until it had been played postally. Whereas Don Miller's idea, my idea, Conrad von Metzke's and everybody else's idea was that variants would receive a designation when they were designed...otherwise we would have hundreds of variants without a classifying number. What Sacks said was No, if a variant isn't played it shouldn't have a number. MN I suppose the problem was that you were looking at it as a librarian... FD Yes, mine was a librarian's viewpoint while Sacks' was as a gamesmaster. He said that if a variant is never played postally why does it need a number? My feeling was that every design should be classified. You never know when it might be played. Who knows, ten years down the line, someone might ask for a variant based on the Roman Empire. Well asking for a design based on the Roman Empire is meaningless, there's dozens of them. But if he says send me variant "ac/21", all we have to do is to look at ac/21, photocopy it and send it to him. That was my feeling, Walker's feeling, and everybody else's feeling in the hobby: That every variant should be classified and given a number. MN So what happened then? Two conflicting systems? FD Well, Conrad von Metzke had actually designed what we called a Variant Numbering System with nine basic categories. Copies were sent out to many people, as a starting point for the new system. So Walt Buchanan, who was the publisher of Diplomacy World and at that point the supreme arbiter in the Hobby, said "Wait a minute, we'll have a vote on this." So I was asked, under Walt's jurisdiction to prepare a ballot to decide who should be the Miller Number Custodian: 1) Robert Sacks or 2) Conrad von Metzke. We explained that Sacks was going to use the original system, until he came up with his won, while Conrad would use his new system. FD I thought that Robert Sacks' system was rather poorly thought out... Anyway the ballots went out to every known zine publisher in North America, most of the UK, and those that we knew of in Europe (2 in Germany, one in France, and I believe one in Italy). Every ballot was on green paper and had an individual code number to prevent stuffing of the ballot box. A very strange thing happened. We got about 50% return and the result was exactly a TIE between Robert Sacks and Conrad von Metzke. FD What happened was that those publishers who did not publish variants knew very little about this feud and didn't give a damn. Since Robert Sacks was the Miller Number Custodian, they voted for him. Conrad was very upset by this as he had put an awful amount of work into his system and this caused one of Conrad's four folds from the hobby. (Conrad is the only person in the hobby to have folded four times and to have resurrected four times). In effect, he said the hell with it and lost interest in variant classification, and very shortly after that dropped out of the hobby. So Sacks assumed that he had been vindicated by this. So we muddled on for another year or so, by which time Sacks had turned the MNC post over to Greg Costikyan. MN Why did Robert Sacks hand over the Miller Number Custodianship? FD Well, Sacks had a lot of other material taking up his time. He had Known Game Openings, which is a complete list of game openings, he was also running the Diplomacy Variant Comission, and he had also graduated from MIT and had started work in the real world. I don't know the ins and outs, but Sacks did say that other work was taking up a lot of his time. So he got Greg Costikyan, who also lives in New York City, to become the Miller Number Custodian. MN How did the changeover occur? Was it announced in the hobby that the post was vacant? FD I don't think so... Actually, Sacks had appointed a pseudo replacement in January 1978, named Michael Smolin. No one I knew had ever seen or heard from Smolin, but he was titular head for about 18 months, during which, as I recall, he published only one issue of the MNC's zine, Lord of Hosts. Everyone assumed that Sacks was still running things behind the scene. Costikyan finally took over as MNC in mid-1979. Since he and Sacks were on good terms, he continued to use the antiquated numbering system for variant games right up to the time he stepped down from office in June 1981. FD Robert retained his post as Chairman of the Diplomacy Variant Commission. Originally this was the Diplomacy Variant Committee, an arm of the IDA, but when Len Lakofka was President of the IDA Robert was fired from his post as Chairman of the Committee. So Robert bounced back the next day with the Diplomacy Variant Commission of which he was the head man, and he continued to issue instructions to the Custodians of the various Variant Banks--most of whom ignored them. MN Yes, I've never understood what the purpose of the Diplomacy Variant Commission was... FD The Diplomacy Variant Commission stated that they had two functions: (1) every year they gave out an award for the best variant design of the year and (2) they felt that they had a right to tell the various variant custodians how to do their work. For example, in England, Sacks wanted to appoint Will Haven to take over the UKVB, whilst nobody wanted this fellow to run the UKVB. Anyway, Robert issued orders that Haven should become the new UKVB Custodian. So there was quite a feud as the UKVB ignored Sacks completely. So he has this idea that he has the right to control every Variant Bank Custodian and every Miller Number Custodian in the world. He says they are responsible to Robert Sacks, answer to him, and should follow Robert, as he is the head of the Diplomacy Variant Commission. It's a very strange delusion frankly. FD Anyway, by the end of 1980, Walker had the NAVB and Greg Costikyan was falling down on issuing Miller Numbers. There were variant games appearing with no Miller Numbers and people who had written to Costikyan to get game designations were getting no reply. Oh, they were still using the old Miller Number system at this time. So Rod Walker sent a letter to Costikyan saying that if Greg didn't bring out another issue of Lord of Hosts (Sacks had founded this as a MNC publication) by April 30, 1981, Rod would take over as MNC and start to issue numbers. Greg beat that deadline by bringing out an issue of Lord of Hosts, but he again became delinquent a short while later, and again we weren't receiving any letters from him. FD Let me jump back a little bit. When Walker got the NAVB files he decided that he would classify them, for the use of the NAVB. He invented a library classification. This was done purely for the internal use of the NAVB custodian. He used the system we use now with capital letters to designate time periods. A: Ancient world, M: Medieval Europe, H: Europe 1501-1900, etc. FD A copy of this was sent to Greg Costikyan, asking if Greg would consider replacing the old Miller system. We were STILL trying to get rid of the original Miller Number system some seven years after Hartley's suggestion! Costikyan never said yes or no, he never did anything. Well, finally Costikyan dropped out and Walker became acting MNC for a period of 30 days. At this point Costikyan was jogged into action and appointed John Leeder (the Canadian publisher of Runestone) as the new MNC. So Rod got into touch with Leeder, who agreed to use the NAVB classification system as the variant designator part of the Miller Number. FD This gained the name ARDA Number designator because Rod's NAVB zine was called ARDA. Technically speaking they are NAVB catalogue numbers. John Leeder agreed that this was a much better system. Now, no system is perfect because there are so many variables. You really need two/three designators; one for chronology, one for Geography, and possibly one for special rules. We had tried to do everything in one classification, deciding what was the most important thing in any particular design: i.e. is it the geographical location, special/wierd rules or the time period? Depending on the most important aspect, we classify it accordingly. But the NAVB system had one great advantage over all the other proposals, namely that it went into use! One bird in the hand is worth two in the bush. So beginning in summer 1981, Rod began issuing a new catalogue and from summer 1981 all new Miller Numbers used this system. Games under way could apply for a new number, or continue. FD As far as I know, no one asked for a new number, although I had started a game of Atlantica using the Conrad von Metzke numerical system--possibly the only game ever to use the VM Numerical system. That game was coming very close to an end and on either the last or next to last move I finally announced that the new system was in place and I announced the new MN for that game. (Using Walker's system). FD Within a very very short time everybody in North America except Robert Sacks was using the new NAVB system (or ARDA if you prefer) for designating variants at the end of the Miller Number. Incidentally, the last part of the NAVB system isn't part of the Miller Number. That's the part which shows the number of players in the game. It's the least important for any variant game he has run. Originally, even Dick Martin used the new Miller numbers in his zine Retaliation, until a certain time when he stoped using Boardman Numbers and Miller Numbers for his games. Why he stopped using any Boardman Numbers I have no idea. The reason he stopped using Miller Numbers was because his wife (Julie) was negotiating with Robert Sacks to become a so-called "Miller Number Custodian under the Covenant" (MNCuTC). MN I've never understood the MNCuTC business... FD It's a pure and simple power struggle. Let me disagree here. Robert Sacks has KGO, which is his list of games, and Diplomacy World has their own list. Now when Rod Walker was the editor of Diplomacy World Robert's column appeared in Diplomacy World, but he kept on injecting all this political stuff and attacking people, so Rod Walker fired Sacks. At this point Sacks went back to producing KGO as a private publication. Since Diplomacy World was only quarterly, and thus slightly out of date, while KGO would be monthly, Rod resumed an old, old, title which he had used years earlier called Pontevedria and used that to start issuing HIS list of games openings also. You had two competing games services. FD Then, when Bruce Lindsey issued his Novice Package SUPERNOVA, Sacks, in connection with Bob Oslen of Kansas and Woody Arnawoodian of Pennsylvania, decided to have their own novice package. They formed their own group and issued MASTERS OF DECEIT. This is a fine publication as it goes, but it does not mention anyone who is opposed to anything Sacks or his confederates dislike (i.e. no mention of Mark Berch's Diplomacy Digest, no mention of Bruce Linsey's SUPERNOVA. In the first edition there was not even a mention of the NAVB...) In later editions of SUPERNOVA, Bruce Linsey mentions MASTERS OF DECEIT and both KGO and Walker's Pontevedria. The other side doesn't reciprocate. They call us the Dark Side of the Hobby and say we're out beyond the pale. Sacks' ultimate aim seems to be to have control of the Miller Numer Custodian and to issue orders to all variant banks. This may sound paranoid, but the man is very ambitious. MN Could you elaborate on how the MNUtC feud started...Sacks wrote somewhere that the MNC wasn't giving out proper MN's and how Greg had signed a binding covenant... FD Well, when Sacks passed on the MNC to Greg Costikyan he drew up a legal document called the Covenant, and I think there may have been as many as seven paragraphs. The most important one was that the MNC would never charge any sort of fee for issuing Miller Numbers. The Boardman Number Custodian doesn't charge a fee, but they do like a donation for each number issued ($1). Everybody else in the hobby interprets this "Covenant" as a private transaction between Robert Sacks and Greg Costikyan but Robert Sacks says it is binding on ALL future Miller Number Custodians. So, when John Leeder became the Miller Number Custodian, Sacks wrote to him, asking him to sign the Covenant. Leeder refused, and so Robert Sacks said that Leeder was not the proper Miller Number Custodian. When Lee Kendter Sr. replaced Leeder in December 1982, Robert wrote to Lee saying that he must sign the Covenant. Well, Lee also refused at which point Sacks started writing to people in the hobby stating that Kendter was not the legal Miller Number Custodian. FD Again, when Fred Hyatt took over the Miller Number Custodianship two years ago, he also got the same bombardment and Robert Sacks said that Fred Hyatt was not a legal Miller Number Custodian as he had not signed the Covenant. So he got Julie Martin to sign this Covenant, and he makes her MNCutC. I should add that the unbroken ranks of the Custodians is like the bishops, there is laying on of hands: One custodian appoints the next. The only time someone else in the hobby should get involved is if a custodian dissapears without appointing a new custodian. Then several hobby bigwigs would have to get together and appoint someone. But Sacks, from out of nowhere establishes this new line of MNCutC. The first year Robert Sacks announced that the MNCutC was Karel Aleric. Everybody said "Who the hell is Karel Aleric?" Nobody had heard of Karel Aleric. It turned out that Karel Aleric is Robert Sacks' alter-ego when working at the New York Games Board; when he wants to issue something but doesn't want to sign it Robert Sacks he signs it Karel Aleric. In the first year Karel Aleric issued two MNsutC, one of which was a hoax game. Then Julie issued about 12 or 13 MNsutC in 1987, and the last I saw she had got up to letter P (16) in 1988. However, most of these Miller Numbers are for Hansard (Sacks' zine) or Retaliation (her husband's). There was one for Bob Olsen and one for Michael Hopcroft, who started all this mega-feuding when he thought that Julie was the Miller Number Custodian. But when he was informed that she wasn't, he promptly got a proper Miller Number from Fred Hyatt. FD The system used by the MNutC was designed by Sacks and is a very simple catalogue with about 8 categories, based on a very simplified NAVB system. However, it only contains postal games started in 1986-88... MN Doesn't he saythat you can't have a MIller Number unless your variant has been played at least twice? FD Yes, that's right, he also adds that the variant can't have been run twice in the same zine! I guess that's to prevent someone from starting two games and saying there's two games. His system is extremely limited and most of the games that have been issued under the Julie Martin system are Gunboat games (the most popular game in America now). So we have this dual system, two Miller Number Custodians, two Known Game Opening packages and two Novice Packages. It may well be that Sacks will try to spread out and duplicate other aspects of the Hobby. He has people who will work with him because they hate Bruce Linsey so badly. I will say this, the third edition of MASTERS OF DECEIT does list the NAVB. I've told novices that they should get both packages. Three years ago there was almost two separate Diplomacy hobbies in America. MN I've got both of these packages and it strikes me the type of articles in them are remarkably similar and that when they were doing MASTERS OF DECEIT they said 'Oh no, Linsey's got an article on forging letters, we've got to have one.' or 'Oh no, Linsey has an article on how to use the telephone in diplomacy, we'd better have one too'. FD Since SUPERNOVA came out first that is a possibility. There is quite a difference in personality between SUPERNOVA and MOD. In my opinion, SUPERNOVA presents the game of Diplomacy to a novice in a very rational way, in a nice way, so to speak, emphasizing that it's only a game. MOD has too much emphasis on stabbing, cheating, and lying. They're part of the diplomatic scene, but I prefer to emphasize that one can make friends through the Postal Hobby. So I prefer SUPERNOVA. MN You've always taken an active role in the UK hobby, being associated with a number of zines including Albion, Greatest Hits, Hannibal, Outposts, Variants & Uncles (both editions), Ethil the Frog first edition. There don't seem to be many people interested in such extensive international contacts ((This situation has greatly changed in the time since this interview)) FD There are only a handful of people who are interested in this. Gary Coghlan did the best job with Europa Express. I think one third of his subbers were living in Europe, including a couple in Sweden and others in Germany, Belgium, and Holland as well as a large number of British. Gary was a very nice guy who decided to form a purely international zine and did everything he could to further this aim, including a famous trip with Woody Arnawoodian a couple of years ago to Europe. He was a postman but the USPS had so much work to do--under the Reagan administration they wouldn't hire enough people--that he was working six days a week and he simply had no time to continue publishing, so Europa Express folded. FD As for my interest in developing the international aspects of the Postal Hobby, perhaps it's because I've always had relatives overseas. In England and Germany and been interested in travelling and meeting people from other countries. Diplomacy certainly gives you the opportunity to meet new pen pals. I'm really suprised as how few people have taken the opportunity to do so. The expense of international postage may be one reason. For me the cost has been worth it. I'm hoping a lot of Europeans will come to the US for the next World DipCon in 1990. FD The American flagship zine Diplomacy World has British subscribers, but not too many. I was amazed to discover that Dolchstoss has only two American readers. I think it's one of the most literate zines. As for the erutition and the way it's written, it's definitely a magnificently written zine. If Dolchstoss was a North American zine it would be in the top three. FD I started most of my international trades more or less by accident. Maybe I'll get a letter mentioning a zine, but I made a special effort to get Dolchstoss. I have been told that many of the British Publishers are not in the least bit interested in trading with anyone outside of the British Isles. MN That's probably true in the American Hobby as well. FD Now the Australians seem to be very interested, probably because they're a small group. Andrew England almost overnight became a trader with half the publishers in the world. MN Wasn't there an Australian Hobby in the early 1970's? FD Right, there were two publishers: Larry Dunning (Perth) and Tas Ryrie (the first Australian publisher, Sydney)...oh I still send Xmas cards to him. I believe they've both dropped out. MN Wasn't Larry Dunning an SF zine publisher? FD I believe so. At one point his zine was half SF and half Diplomacy. The new Hobby there started out from scratch. I nearly met Tas Ryrie, as once he was in Washington DC (only 40 miles away). However this was in the middle of a very bad winter and when he called both my wife and I were laid up with the flu. So we couldn't go that night. We said we'd go on Saturday. On Saturday we had eight inches of snow, which paralyzed the roads, so we couldn't go and on the Sunday he left Washington to go to London. MN Didn't there used to be some editors in South Africa? FD I believe there were two publishers: Nick Shears (Down Alien Skies) and another fellow who was handicapped and wrote from home, where he was more or less confined to a wheelchair. Shears later went to live in the UK and published here for a while, the only person besides Simon Billenness to publish on two continents. In fact one of the Youngstown variants, the one which adds South Africa, was designed by a South African, to get themselves on the map. There is a MENSA Diplomacy Sig in Kuala-Lampur, Malaysia, but I don't know if it's postal. I was amazed to find this and wrote the fellow two months ago, enclosing a copy of Diplomag (the bimonthly newsletter fo the Mensa Postal American Sig). I haven't heard from him yet ((Fred received a reply in Sept 1988. The Malaysia group was only playing FTF, but they were given the names and addresses of several Diplomacy zine publishers in the States and Australia. Subsequently two of them joined an international game in the Australian zine Victoria.)) MN Now that Bushwacker is approaching issue 200, which other zines have reached 200? I count Courier (240+), Runestone (358)... FD That was because Runestone was published weekly you understand. MN ...Graustark of course (over 500), Hoosier Archives... FD And Boast (248). That seems to be it. The reason Herb Barents is in front of me is that for a while he was publishing every 3 weeks, whereas Bushwacker has always been monthly. MN Didn't there used to be an American zine that published on ten-day deadlines? Brutus Bulletin? FD Yes, Brutus Bulletin by John Michalski. His numbers got quite high before he retired. As far as continuous publication goes, although Diplomacy World has only reached issue 50 it has been publishing for fourteen years. Conrad von Metzke's Costaguana would be one to check up on. He uses Volumes & Numbers, so you would have to sit down and count them. I used to just show Volume and Number until I reached number 100. Now I show my total number of issues each month. MN I see that in the All Time Zine Poll in DW 50 you're in the top 10. FD That's because of my longevity. Bruce counted so many points for each year and I've been in the Runestone Poll since the beginning, so I've knocked up a high score. But Bushwacker is a small zine compared to others. Only my 6th annual, 12th annual, and a few special issues have run more than twelve pages. The early issues were all about 8 pages. MN You mention Conrad. Now according to Mark Berch MONGO is not a hoax, I've alway thought that it was obviously a hoax... FD It WAS a hoax, although a flier was sent out to players. They had actually started a FTF game and couldn't finish it that night. Since they were all going to college in the very near future, somebody suggested that if they wrote down the positions they could finish the game by mail. Conrad wrote down the positions and college addresses and sent out a flier asking if they'd like to continue, the first gamesmastering report in history you might say. As I recall only one of the seven players sent in a move so he sent out a second letter asking if they wanted to continue, and after that it was abandoned. FD Rod Walker then started the hoax about ten-twelve years ago, claiming that he had found these papers of MONGO in a trunk that was stored in his parents' garage or attic. When Rod produced them, the very first one may actually have been the letter Conrad sent out. There was no numbering system and no name. What happened was that as Rod wrote it by the third issue the Emperor Ming had begun putting out press releases and after that Conrad supposedly gave it the name MONGO. There were even more press releases from Emperor Ming as the game went on and Rod showed the game going into 1903 or 1904. The reason Rod did this was to annoy John Boardman. Rod Walker and John Boardman hate each other...no, that's not true. John Boardman hates Rod Walker. I don't think Rod hates Boardman. FD Anyway, to annoy Boardman, Rod published the discovery of MONGO, claiming it to be the first diplomacy zine. Conrad will tell you that although he did send that first letter out the game was a hoax. There never was a zine called MONGO and 1963A run by John Boardman was the first diplomacy game. Incidentally 1963A is the only five player game given a Boardman Number because being the first we can't discriminate. MN As you can see virtually all the attendees at this con are white. What's the racial mix of people in the American Hobby? FD There are several Asian people in the Hobby. Of course, in America, most Asians are no longer considered as "minorities", if you use the term to mean an underclass. Except for the very newest arrivals, most Asians have joined the middle class. Many are professionals or self-employed. Asian-American children score about ten points higher than Caucasian children on I.Q. tests. Since you have to be both crazy and smart to play Diplomacy, it's not suprising that they are entering the hobby. FD As far as we know there has been exactly one black publisher, by the name of Clifford Mann (from Washington DC) who's zine was called The Watergate. It ran for approximately a year. He never announced that he was black, and nobody knew he was except for a few people that knew him. Word got around after he had dropped out. As far as I know there has never been a black person show up at any DipCon or regional Con. In Detroit, I saw one or two black people at the entire wargaming convention, but I don't think they played Diplomacy, they were there for other games. FD It doesn't matter how much money you have, it matters how you were raised. 99% of us in the hobby had a relative who took us to our first zoo, museum, play, concert...because this is what Middle Class people do. If you are black and you grew up in the ghetto and you were lucky and you got out, you perhaps haven't developed this concept of going to a play or museum or even playing boardgames. These are concepts for which you have to be 'safe' before you can develop them. If you are worried about being robbed every time you walk out of the house, or having your house broken into, you haven't got enough 'safety' to 'waste' your time on a boardgame. So we don't see any blacks. There may be some who are playing postally who don't tell us. FD There are some women who play by mail using just their initials, because there are a small handful of men who are so prejudiced that if they found a female player in the game they would destroy her for no other reason than that she is a female. FD They respect Kathy Caruso, because she is such a damned good player (she was voted top player in North America for two years in a row). I wouldn't be the least bit surprised if there are two or three black players in thje hobby who don't advertise that fact. MN I'll finish by asking you to give a character description of various people in the American hobby...This seems a good idea. For instance very few UK Hobbyists recognize the name Larry Peery...((Larry was at WDC)) FD Well, almost everyone in America knows Larry. He is an extremely hard and concientious worker. Larry has annoyed some people because they think that he works too hard and spends too much time on Diplomacy. APPARENTLY Peery's entire life outside of work is Diplomacy, he really doesn't have many other interests except Diplomacy. If he has one failing it is that when he gets somebody on his staff he keeps sending out more and more work for them to do, without realizing that most people are either married or working or in college, and don't have an unlimited amount of spare time to devote to the Hobby. FD He saved Diplomacy World, which was bankrupt by hundreds and hundreds of dollars before he took it over...((due to financial mismanagement by Rod Walker--but that's another interview!)) MN Conrad von Metzke. He's well know by the old timers in the UK such as Piggott and Walkerdine... FD Roughly fifteen years ago, they listed the top twenty-five UK players and Conrad was one of them, as he was in so many UK games. Conrad is known as the "gentle giant", as he is 6'8" tall, and he is one of the nicest people I have ever met in my life. I have never known anybody else in my life who would give you the shirt off his back quicker than Conrad, he really is a delightful guy. FD I first met him at my first DipCon in 1973, at the Bismarck Hotel in Chicago, as he walked in. One of the girls gave him his card and said sign in green ink, so Conrad grabs a pen and writes "in green ink" on his name-tag! FD When it comes to press releases Rod Walker is the best writer (except that he doesn't play in any games any more). When it comes to volume I put Peery first (he also tends to write too much), but when it comes to text Conrad's the best writer in the Hobby. FD When I started out Rod Walker was my mentor: he encouraged me in drawing up Abstraction and later printed Atlantica. He guided me when I was about to start publishing, gave me some advice and all together was the most helpful person in the hobby. We've corresponded for twenty years now and worked together on numerous things such as the Miller Number reclassification and the 1982 DipCon. He's a brilliant man with a renaissance mind. He isn't just knowledgeable on one or two things, he knows about everything. His quizzes are like the Dolchstoss ones, as Rod comes out with the most magnificent material on any subject imagineable. MN Edi Birsan got a bad reputation in the early 1970's in the IDA-UK. Is he still around? FD He only gets a handful of zines these days and plays in maybe one or two games. I met Edi only a few times. He was a typical New York street smart person. No-one ever put anything over on Edi. He was a very fast, sharp thinking person. He once came to a DipCon and gave a lecture on how to carve up Turkey, and I proceeded to draw Turkey in the first round. Austria and Russia just wiped me out. MN Mark Berch? FD Mark is a very reliable and mature person, whose writing is a little bit on the pedantic side, but he is a patent clerk examiner, which is a job which requires a very very precise person. That describes Mark Berch. I like him also because he's almost my own age. Being forty, that's only one half a generation away from me. As one gets older, one does tend to have more in common with people who are closer to your age bracket. He's rather a poor typist, that's his only failing. Diplomacy Digest contains too many spelling errors as he doesn't correct them. MN Is it possible to pick up a zine without Melinda Holly playing in it? FD I've never met her, but I've seen lots of her writing and most of it is good. Sometimes she writes loke she was a little Southern Gal, but she lives on the Ohio River on the northern edge of West Virginia. That's practically in the Midwest. Perhaps she was born farther south, I don't know. Anyway, since I grew up in Illinois, I don't agree with some of her pro-southern comments about the Civil War. However, she doesn't feature her own writing in Rebel. Instead she tends to write for Conrad von Metzke and others. She has played in more games than anyone else except Rod Kelly. Apparently she's able to do so and handle it well. I don't know how she finds the time, though. MN Dave McCrumb... FD Again, I've never met him. He does a very good job at being Diplomacy World Variants Editor ((now retired)) and editing The Appalacian General. He's finishing his masters. He lives in a god-awful location which almost requires a mule to get out of, it's a terrible back of beyond mountainous area. His wife writes SF novels, which are quite successful. Publisher comments: Quote is from P. 208 of Tangents by Greg Bear. The zine is back! I am sorry that it has taken so long to publish, but the zine is growing too big for me. I NEED more help. My records show that we have reached almost *300* players! I need guest publishers immediately. Not only does a guest publisher publish the results of games, but he lets me know which games are in trouble which is a big help to me. Because of my lack of guest publishers some games may be in trouble that I don't know about. If this is the case with a game that you know about, please tell. Because of the zine's huge size I am in the best position to provide replacement players and GMs that I have ever been in. I find it very EASY to get new players and GMs, I find it fairly HARD to find out which games are in trouble. In addition to guest publishers, I will need people to help me organize new games and to build endgame reports for the BNC. I will not try to get these positions filled until I have an ample supply of guest publishers. Oh, I will accept new scribes immediately. I am also in a big need of a dutch GM and dutch standbys. (I am about to start my second dutch game. The first dutch game has already come to a successful conclusion.) This zine has more games and players than any other Diplomacy zine in the history of this planet. It has the potential of becoming much larger than it is. But I need more volunteers to keep it running. Volunteer today! ****************************************************************************** To join in the fun, send your name, home address, home and work phone numbers, and country preferences to Eric_S_Klien@cup.portal.com. ****************************************************************************** Up