Many Strategist readers have noted the appearance of Lloyd Krassner games in recent issues, followed by his actual joining of the society. Krassner is actually a prolific designer of Simple games and variants, all readily viewable at http://www.lkraz.tripod.com. For those of you unfamiliar with Internet company maneuvers, Tripod (www.tripod.com) is one of those companies started by a couple of college guys, in this case in the Berkshires. It offered free web space to anyone, and soon acquired a certain cachet among Gen X types. After Tripod achieved a fair amount of popularity, it acquired Guestbook, and then in turn was taken over by Lycos (www.lycos.com), a search engine giant then turning into a portal. Lycos has pursued a vigorous, almost maniacal, takeover strategy aimed at buying prestigious brand names for its Lycos Network of web sites. Like any Internet company worth its salt, Lycos continues to lose lots of money, but it is backed by web financial powerhouse CMGI and should be around for a while.

Krassner is one of nurnerous wargamers who has taken advantage of Tripod's offer of eleven megabytes of free page space. He offers over eighty-five games and variants, all designed by him. These games are offered freely, although he does request user feedback. His games are classic paper and pencil designs, posted in text format with no graphics. Krassner does offer downloadable maps, counters, and charts from contributors, and also posts a generic hex map which can be adapted readily to many of his designs. The site includes a chat room and message board (both limited to Tripod members), as well as a links page.

Warp Spawn Games cover a lot of terriitory, include iclence Fiction, fantasy, ancient, medieval, early gunpowder, political, abstract, and economic topics, as well as chess, poker, and backgammon variants. He works in board, cards, and dice formats. The typical game has short rules, decent play balance, and little errata, and is easy to learn and quick to play. The card games are complete with no booster packs required. Yes, you do have to make your own parts, but look at the cost, or lack thereof.

Krassner posts a new game every week or two. Right now, he has some thirteen more designs in progress. In addition, Krassner constantly revises his efforts, sometimes revamping them completely. Since these are distributed via the web, players can get the improved versions almost instantaneously. Warp Spawn Games is one site where the "What's New" section is mandatory reading.

Peter L. de Rosa plderosa@altavista.com Academic Gaming Review: www.gis.net/~pldr/index.html