We sincerely appreciate the complimentary review of Cincinnati's July 1973 convention. We do plan to hold another convention in July 1974 at the tame place and already have $250 guaranteed prize money for the Avalon Hill tournament which will be run by PWA.

Unfortuntely the vastness of our convention site gave your reporter a deceptive appearance of bad attendance. Actually we averaged 150 gamers per day about 200 different individuals. The discrepency is understandable for two reasons: a good approximation of Cincinnati's great hall is a Geneva Horticultural as a balcony above a Columbus armory; after most out-of-towners left Sunday, there was a large increase in attendance due to the front page coverage of the convention in Cincinnati's Saturday afternoon newspaper.

If you truly desire the small (25-75 attendee friendly mini-cons, I recommend Columbus, Ohio as one of the friendliest. They are consistently able to accomodate scores of visitors on living room floors through the generosity of dozens of Columbus Gamers. Have fun!

AWA POLICY Domination or Cooperation? Individuals or Groups?

So far the members of the AWA have not publicly expressed any interest in the course being followed by the officers. Robert Sackim statement in the December issue of the AW at least indicates that someone disagrees with the policies/actions of the present Directorate. If the "democratic- character of this club in to be more than a facade, members, and especially members whoars not and do not: intend to become officers, must participate in the organization.

The American Wargaming Association-An Introduction", page one, states that the success of the AWA is to be measured in the number and variety of special interest groups affiliated with it, the attendence and success of the conventions which the AWA sponsors, and the number of wargarers who are able to find opponents and follow hobbyists through AWA piblicity. But does, this mean that the AWA should duplicate the efforts of other (and particularly of non-national) organizations? I do not think so.

I think that the criteria of success quoted above are misguided and may help to cause harm as well as good., The number of activities by or affiliated with theAWA means next to nothing, in itself. For example, if a local club like the lake Geneva group becomes affiliated with AWA, AWA , by itself has done nothing.' AWA contributes publicity to the group. but it can do that just as well if this group is not affiliated. And how much good will AWA publicity do the local club? With a small circulation among individuals, and no prospect for a really important circulation in the forseeable future, AWA cannot offer a much in the way of publicity among individual gamers.

What can it offer, then? It appears to me that the officers and I have different conceptions of-the role that the AWA might play in order to help improve'the hobby' - - I believe that, if the AWA follows the traditional of the'national club, grasping for as many members as possible with a1arge 'zins requiring increasing amounts of work as circulation grows, then AWA is doomed to the same fate which IFW met despite the changes that have been made in the Constitution.

To unite wargaming with a large circ fanzins seems to me to be a bankrupt policy, No amateur group can support the effort needed to publish monthly 'zine, even a small one, with a circulation that comes anywhere near that cf Panzerfaust, S&T, or The Genenal. Yet this appears, on the surface, to be what 'our' officers are attempting to do. Rather, I think that AWW might succeed as a sort of federating organization which would unite smaller, local and regional organizations. With a circulation limited primarily to orginization leaders.and NOT aimed at the individual the AWA could serve a vital function without being a burden which no editor or amateur organization could survive.

Many local organizations are unaware of similar organizations nearby. We find organization in nearby cities holding conventions on the same day simply because they are ignorant of each other, We find other organizations offering the same services to the same people duplicating each others eff6rts. We.find organizations beginning to work on projects that have already been accomplished in other organizations. If these organizations were in contact through a magazine, then this waste could be avoided.

Now to AWA following the individual route, or the group route. This is where the question of "domination or cooperation" arises. If the AWA takes the attitude that a convention or other activity is not really good unless.it has the AWA label affixed. If AWA appears to other, local and regional organizations to be another IFW come to absorb them, then AWA cannot accomplish what I have outlined. And currently, AWA is doing exactly what it should not do. Instead of acting an a go between for non-national organizations throughout wargaming, AWA tends to ignore many non-national organizations and caters to the individual gamer. Symptoms of this are the openings for Diplomacy game in the AW (though I must add that, so long as circulation is small and there is room, we might as well do something- but this should not be used as a selling point').

For example, the original mailing of the AWA went to many gamers in Michigan using a list gathered by a regional organization In that state; but there was no attempt to contact this organization (which at the time numbered over 100 members) for possible cooperation; the officers of the AWA were callous (or careless) enough not to bother to mention this mass mailing to an MOW officer beforehand. Later, we find that there is a rumor that Kevin Slimak and company will produce a "Midvest Pathfinder". Was MOW (now the Midwest Wargaming Association) contacted concerning possible cooperation? After all, Mr. Phillies is a member of MGA and knows that we have published address lists for Ontario. Indiana, and Ohio as well as Michigan, and that we were preparing a list for Illinois. Nevertheless, they was not contacted concerning cooperation. When I noticed this "rumor", I immediately contacted Mr. Slinak and let him know that K,A was preparing a mass address list of gamers for Indiana, Illinois. Ohio, hichigan, Ontario, Wisconsin, and Minnesota--most of them in the "Midwest' so far as people in the area ire concerned. Mr. Slimak replied that it was not he, but some friends of his in the area, who intended to prepare a list, and that they had different ideas of what constitutes the Midwest (Missouri, Indiana. and Illinois were the heart,he said). OK, we are only overlapping and not completely duplicating, I thought. but nonetheless we might cooperate. Mr. S's friends intend to hold a convention this Summer, he said, so I asked him for the address of one of these people so that MA could avoid holding its convention at the same date as theirs (assuming that they might be close enough to one of WA's conventions to make it matter). That was over a month ago, yet I have no reply. in the meantime the projected address list has been published, with over 1.000 listings. Finally, Mr. Slimmak. was tactless enough to ask KA to change the name of its winter convention, called the MGA WinterconII because he was director for "The WinterCon" which is also in its second year. He seemed unaware that 'Wintercon" is not so original that more than one group might have selected the name at the same time (which is in fact what happened). His patronizing attitude was not calculated to encourage MGA to cooperate with AWA. but he is an officer and be was acting in his capacities for AWA. (And I had better state he that I am in- no way a spokesman for WA; I use the MGA experience with AWA as an example with which I am, familiar.)

Where does this leave us? I submit that individual can best be reached by local organizations.and by professional magazines. Any club which attempts to unite the individual wargamers of this country in any manner is doomed to failure. These people can best be "united" by an orgs which improve contact among local and regional organizations and which can use publicity through professional gaming mags to reach individuals who have not been reached by local clubs.

AWA is currently on a course of "domination" and rather than 'cooperations and 'groupies'. If they go in this direction, then IFW's fate can only be close. AWA can be either just another club, grubbing for duplicating services, or it can be a unique unit that will fill in a yawning gap in wargaming. Right now, we're on the wrong track.

I have a couple of other questions to ask.- First, will Phillies please justify to the membership the squandering of funds for mass mailings. I calculate that out of 600 people contacted the first mass mailing, about 12 joined (and two of these at least, would have heard of AWA through other sources and in order to observe rather than participate.) The fate of mass mailings appears to be the same, Yet I see another mailing is planned for the Spring. Will Mr. Phillies attempt to justify, in dollars and cents, this sort of expenditure? What will the extra copies mailed cost, what will be brought in by advertising and (based on past mailings) how many people will join as a result?

Apparently the Directorate or somebody , is making decisions, which determine what this club does. How can this be when it in no longer possible for the Directorate to,meet. Will minutes of meetings be printed so that the AWA 'members have an idea of what is going on? Elections are useless (in fact, elections are impossible to hold) when secrecy follow the election. There seems to be an attitude (and I may be repeating Mr Sacks here) that now that the club is an avowed Democracy, everything will take care of itself and there's nothing to worry about. We keep hearing that by-laws have not been establised for this or that, but how long can this continue?

I request that the 'no reply' in this issues policy be waived for this article. The sooner the Directorate answers the questions I've posed, the better for AWA. I may give up some sort of advantage by this request, but my purpose is to discover what is going on, not to debate.

Reply

I have never really known that we had a good set of criteria to measure the success of AWA. Kevin Slimak thought of the AWA as a unifying force, bringing local groups and persons not in local groups together. I added that AWA conduct activities of a sort which require contact with people . For example, I know a few people who like Campaign game of USN. There are probably a lot of people like this in the entire US, but the number of them in any one place is small. The AWA offers a chance for these people ( and anyone else who feels tle same way) to get togegether in a Society, as the old IFW offered. (See "Luftwaffe, Anyone?" elsewhere in this issue.)

One part of this effort is the affiliation agreement. The affiliation agreements we have offered such groups as the MITSGS, the Lake Geneva TSA, and the Potomac Wargamers Society have had certain features in common:

1. Obligations of these groups to the AWA: none. We hope to hear regularly from them, so that we may give their activities publicity, but we do not require anything of them.

2) Obligation of the AWA to the affiliated group: Publicity. We let the rest of the world know what thei are doing.

You may ask what the AWA gets out of all this? First, we are serving the purpose of the AWA; information for the membership. Second, we are doing something of benefit to wargaming: we are giving these groups publicity. Third, we are acquiring a list of affiliated clubs. This is an indirect benefit: it lets us approach other groups and show them that nothing terrible has happened to our other affiliates. This will serve to quiet those people who believe that the AWA wants to tamper with the affairs of its component societies in the way that the IFW did.

The major benefit that the affiliates gets out of this is publicity. At the moment, this is not that much of a benefit--we have slightly fewer than 50 members. However, this will change with time, so that our publicity will become more valuable. (We also intend to run mass mailings, paid for entirely by advertising, to publicize conventions and other activities. It is true that a local club could publicize its own activities. The benefit of a national group like the AWA is that we eliminate the duplication of which Lew was talking- in one maling we tell everyone about a large number of activities.

I will not spend too much time here discussing the problem of running large circulation magazines. Panzerfaust, after all, reached a circulation of around 1000 as a one-man, show; Don Greenwood did everything except write the articles that he printed. I believe that the IFW/IW does prove that it is possible to come up with a scheme that won't work! It certainly did not. Let us recall, however, some differences between the two:

The IW was right-justified. If you don't have access to modern, machinery, which, was the case, this means that everything must be typed twice; once to determine how many extra spaces to insert per line and once to determine where to put them. (The, second run is used to print). I can type about 40 words/minute; which lets me get out the AW in a decent amount of time--with right justification, it would take four times as long.

The IW stayed with hand-addressing (or typed) mail labels retyped for each issue) right up to the end. We are using) real mailing labels starting with this or the next issue. This will save hours of labor.

We are making a specific effort to conserve the time of officers. Not by appealing to the membership for help (although the IFW didn't always make good use of volunteers), but by organization. For example, if circulation ever reached the point that collation became major burder, we would simply have the printer do it--this would add slightly more than 2 cents to the cost of an issue. Alternately, we would go over to a fomat that requires no collation; e.g. a newspaper format. When we get the volume, this method will be much cheaper too.

Thus, while it is not our particular plan to "unite wargaming with a large circulation fanzine, I do not think that it is an unreasonable or impractical objective.

On the matter of Diplomacy games, I do not entirely agree. One of the great difficulties of Diplomacy is that they disappear without finishing up games. As Rod Walker pointed out in the most recent issue of Blood and Iron (Lew Pulsipher's diplomacy and gaming magazine), one or the major reasons that this happens is the editors get tired of the work. Not the work of running the game --which is very little work at all -- but the work of typing, collating and mailing an issue every three or four weeks. By havirir, Diplomacy gaming in the AW, open only to AWA members, which are run by members other than Editors, this difficulty in obviated. The gamemaster need only resolve each month's moves, analyze what has happened, type it up, and give it to tho editor. The move then becomes a very short article. Since we are monthly, at least while I am Editor, this means that we could run a lot of Diplomacy games (dozens?) without using much space in the magazine. I therefore see no reason not to put in Diplomacy games.

We come to the question of mailing lists. While I am aware of the MGA mailing lists, this does not mean that Kevin Slimak or his friends in St. Louis are. In particular, I did not hear of the MGA mailing list "Great Laker Game Census in time to tell anyone else about it.(I believe that this proves Lew's point about communication.)

I am a trifle tired of hearing discussions about the part of the country that is in the Midwest. Suffice to say that the Midwest Gamers Association views the Midwest as including Michigan, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, part of Ontario, and (I think) Wisconsin, while the Interest Group St Louis people (to judge from Kevin) would say that it start with Missouri, includes Kansas and Illinois (implying Wisconsin and Minnesota) but to some approximation does not overlap with the MGA definition of the Midwest. Given this lack of overlap, plus some earlier correspondence that Kevin was involved in, I am not surprised that no one has tried to approach anyone else..

My entire information on convention dates for next Summer is contained in the Convention notes. As far as I know, the St. Louis- people haven't fixed on a date yet. I have written various people, but the various groups running conventions for this Summer haven't been willing to say a lot yet.

"Kevin Slimak claims that he wrote MOW about their WinterCon speaking only as President of the MITSGS. To my,knowledge, he has not heard from MOW about this overlap in names, which I hope will remain also private matter between the MITSGS and the MGA. Certainly, I don't want to hear about it.

I am asked to "Justify to the membership the squandering of funds for mass mailings." For the record, there have been two such mailings 1.1 and 1.3. A fairly large number of issues of 1.2 were also mailed..

The mass mailing of 1.1 was carried out with the, agreement of more-or-less every person then a member of the club. We felt that it was a good way to give the club initial publicity. Furthermore, the break-even point was relatively low--if only 5% of those approached were-to join, the mailing would pay for itself. Low correctly Calculated that the first mass mailing brought in 12 persons, which was a real disappointment to.us, too. .(It also surprised a number of people in the hobby more familiar than I. am with mass mailings). The most reasonable explanation for the failure (and I still think so) was hat this was a first issue, and that people were afraid that we were going to duplicate the IFW only with a shorter lifespan. I was strongly urged to try another large scale mailing--I did with issue #3. It should be pointed out that the total cost of that mailing was about $23.for printing-- all postage was covered,by WintorCon.II. (I should point out that WinterCon provided us with a significant amount of money and a number of now members.) To conclude, I believe that the mass mailing was not an unreasonable idea which didn't work. We do have some discussion of having another mass mailing this Spring. If we do this, the mailing will be paid for primarily by advertising, not by the AWA- Since at that point we will have most of a year, and our difficulties with printing behind us, I believe that we should be able to sell more people on the AWA. (In particular, sine I do not plan to go ahead unless we have the ads to cover mailings, we will be assured of getting enough of a response to pay for the mailing).

The Directorate has been running most of its business (such as it is) by mail since our inception and with only one face-to-face meeting. We simply have not done anything that could be of great concern.

To an excellent approximation, there have been no decisions made since the club started. This statement only becomes false at the meeting this last month (see the minutes elsewhere.) We had some general policies, a convention, and the idea that we wanted to copy the strengths of the IFW. Bylaws have not been established in great detail because no one had written them (We now have the work of Lou Atwood, which Kevin and I rewrote a trifle). We are looking forward to membership response on these.