Bill Frye Explains his Reasons for Resigning from the HMGS BOD
Bill Frye has sent the following to the HMGS newsletter editors and asked me to print it as well to be sure that it would be published, The HMGS editors chose NOT to publish it! - ED
Four years ago, on a rainy night in Adelphi, MD, the then current President and my friend, Bob Giglio asked me to help out David Luff manage Cold Wars 98. I had pretty much retired, mostly due to a family illness, but since Bob was a friend, and had always supported Conventions I ran I said yes. Before it was over I became the Director of Cold Wars for two years, moved onto a seat on the HMGS BOD. To make the proposal to remove Bob from the BoD, and then resign. I will try and outline how and why I came to that point. The reasons are many but centralize around one individual’s goal to put his ego over and above the Society’s needs.
I learned that to effect change in HMGS it could not be done from the Con Director’s chair, I decided to run for the BoD. To tell the truth, I almost backed out at the last minute when I started to find out that a major change was going to be in the wind. I was already hearing rumblings that there were enough votes on the BoD to not re-elect Bob Giglio as President. Knowing Bob and his past tantrums with Pat Condray, I knew it would be quite a battle. I decided to go forth, Bob even supported me and I thank him for that.
It was a done deal. By the June meeting of the BoD at Fort Mead I knew that the next BoD was not going to re-elect Bob as President. Since I knew that Jay was going to seek the Presidency I urged him to call Bob and tell him that this was going to happen. He did and Bob’s first response was that it was okay. He then called Jay back and told him he wanted to finish out his term on the BoD as President and accept nothing less. As I said it was a done deal.
The Thursday night meeting of the BoD at Historicon was not pleasant. My first act as a BoD member was to not elect a friend as President and put another friend in his place. I would highly suggest not to begin your career on the BoD in this manner; it will lead to a bad experience. I voted for Jay. I did this for three reasons: Jay showed up at the June meeting with a business plan, a unique idea amongst HMGS Bod’s. I also was FED UP with the constant public bickering between Bob and Pat and felt it has had a negative impact on this organization for years, and it really needs to stop! Finally I believe in “United We Stand, Divided We Fall”.
Well needless to say, Bob was not happy and his letter presented to us at the meeting had a few veiled threats. The first attempt on his, or others on his behalf, to undermine the current BoD was to begin spreading rumors that Volunteers were going to be replaced at the Cons. Well this was not true. Yes, at the June meeting it was discussed, “What happens if we have a huge snowstorm or just can’t get Volunteers to support the Cons staffing needs, what would we do?”
Folks this is called planning and disaster recovery, not a plot to get rid of everybody. The Saturday General Membership meeting was a circus, and I really feel that Jay Hadley dropped the ball, when asked “But why isn’t Bob President?”, considering the personalities involved he should have taken the opening. So ended a wonderful weekend, of having Bob’s wife tell everyone “Don’t trust that Bastard”, while on the front desk - referring to me, and Bob stirring the pot. I would ask that if any one out there personally had Bob come up to them and tell him this rumor please come forth and tell the truth. I currently know of two cases of untrue rumor spreading on his part.
But this was the beginning. Shortly after the Con, Bob gathered together a string of email discussions. These discussions concerned a letter written to the BoD by Pat Condray, and were sent to Pat with a plea, “See how this BoD feels about you, why don’t we put our animosities behind us and make a concerted effort against them”, well Pat didn’t buy it. How many times does a dog have to bite you before you stop petting it, is an analogy that came to my mind.
It was at this point the other six members of the BoD came to a conclusion that Bob couldn’t be trusted and he began to be isolated from email discussions. This has done much to hamper the effectiveness of the BoD.
Shortly before Fall In, it came to our attention, in an email from Bob, that Matthew Grove had created a database and that he would let us have it for a Lifetime Membership. Well we discussed it, around Bob of course. We felt that we would like to see what we were getting and make sure that it would work with all the conventions, and not just Fall In. We also, were somewhat paranoid about what Bob was up to, as I said we didn’t trust him. It seems some folks just can’t read their email and this made us slow in the response.
By Fall In we were presented an invoice for $3500.00. Now an Invoice is generally only presented for services rendered, and since my tenure on the BoD there had been no discussion concerning purchasing anything in the way of a database. This was a case of Bob overstepping his boundaries as a member of the BoD. Rick Egtvedt was very upset to the point that he openly stated that if the BoD passes this through he was going to seek Bob’s removal.
This was why through the FOB (Friends of Bob), that Rick was attacked (at the Cold Wars Meeting - ED). Bob stated after the meeting that if Rick had not put “verbatim” some of our BoD discussions he wouldn’t have voted against him in the Cold Wars 01 vote. If it was just for late minutes, how many previous Secretaries should have been removed on those grounds. Plus, Bob was the reason for the delay in posting the minutes due to constantly changing the content of the minutes. During, Fall In and new rumor began to circulate concerning the paying of Director’s expenses to the convention. This is also untrue, the only time any money was used for BoD travel was for the June retreat and per the minutes Bob voted for the proposal.
At our Fall In Sunday Meeting, Bob presented a proposal stating that “Any recognized dealer at an HMGS Convention could not hold a position on the BoD.” This was ridiculous and an attempt to keep certain retired BoD members out of the running and any new concerned dealer out of the office. This was never seconded by anyone.
Before the general meeting of Cold Wars, the BoD was sent three different referendums via email by two individuals that I know are friends of Bob’s. The first “Would define the boundaries of HMGS East”, it never got seconded and never was discussed. It was clear to me and others, this was another attempt to remove certain individuals from possible BoD positions. In this case, since our current President resided at the time in Arizona he would be out of the running. The one that did get seconded was from Chris Johnson. This motion was about the “Performance of the Secretary”. Was Chris concerned about Rick’s performance or the health of his friend Bob Giglio’s BoD position, or that his friend was upset over damaging verbatim comments being placed in the minutes.
In our Thursday night meeting at Historicon 01, JT came forth during our discussion about Historicon 02 Directors and proposed Bob as the new Historicon Director. I was told that while I was adequate by JT, I did not have the qualities that Bob had for the position. Bob then proceeded to pass out prepared lists of how all the Cons would be laid out and who would run what. My biggest fear after reading this and what you the member should start to fear is out of control spending. Take a look at the profit margins and the lack of concern that the Fall In Director has had in this area and you should be concerned.
After the General Membership meeting at CW01, I had had it with Bob and his use of his friends to attack the BoD. It was at that point, I decided he had to go. I knew I may not have had enough votes, but hopefully some of this would come out in the open. I had spoken to other Directors and believed I had two other votes, my hope was to sway one other. That hope was dashed when JT, with his fist slamming to the table, said that if Bob would be removed from the BoD he would not run Historicon 01. I would call this the smoking gun of payoff for past items and issues. I could say more about the actual meeting, but right now, I feel I shouldn’t, this may not be over.
The vote was five to one, me being the one. It was at this point that I knew I would be the next victim to stand in front of a membership meeting full of Bob’s friends and beg their forgiveness. I resigned and the further I got from Lancaster the better I felt. I refused to work with people when their goal is to promote themselves. I work on a daily basis with just such an individual, I refused to do so in non-work life where I am supposed to be having fun. I would never be writing this letter and have lost a number of friends if Bob could have just been a man about this and said, “OK, I feel you are wrong about this but I will do my job to the best of my ability” and left it at that. So that is how, I came from giving up hundreds of hours of personal time for a friend to seeking his removal. I ask you to ponder this one thing if nothing else, why for two years did the same individuals vote for Bob as President and then have a change of heart?
A Warning
Now a bit of warning for the membership: Bob is trying to take control of the BoD, take a look at how many of the folks running this year are his friends. That means he controls your treasury. While you may not care about the politics of HMGS you best start. My old friend Bob has a couple of great ideas that is going to drain your treasury. If he gets the job as Historicon Director and spends like he has on Fall In, you are going to see a substantial decline in profits and more $1000 phone bills. Profits make the Cons happen, it allows you to have muscle when dealing with Hotels. He also is very eagerly looking to take your treasury and produce a glossy miniatures magazine.
Mr. Member, it requires tens of thousands of dollars to get something like this off the ground, if it were easy and had an avid readership don’t you think there would already be more than one magazine in America devoted to the hobby? So take the time to vote this year.
Observations on the DBA 10th Anniversary
Fame at last! After over twenty-five years of involvement in wargaming, including helping Metro Detroit Gamers to organize several popular conventions, including Origins ‘78, I have achieved the accolade of being extensively quoted in the pages of The Courier - albeit with my surname misspelt repeatedly - by Bob Beattie. I’m not sure Bob really appreciates my literary style, purposefully a pastiche of H.G. Wells’ prose in Little Wars, but that is the reader’s privilege. Sadly, however, he has been inclined to rip a few choice quotes out of my ten-year-old review of DBA in order to set up a straw person that he can knock down.
First and foremost, he seems to have missed altogether the point that the review was, as the title stated, a sequel to an earlier piece about a game played under a version of the old Society of Ancients’ Rules written by the founder, the late Tony Bath. Unless one reads it in context with “Three Questions in Search of an Answer” (Slingshot March 1990), exactly how DBA fitted in with my 1990 thinking about ancient wargaming, described in more detail in the first article, is absent.
Second, he summarizes a quote with the words, “One of Szuscikiewic’s [sic] complaints focused on the inability of players to provide a pre-battle oration.” He might have done better to quote the actual text: “The movement dice [or PIP] roll is a simplistic way of abstracting command, control and communications. This is probably the most important aspect of good generalship, yet under DBA it is a matter largely left to fortunaŠ.I think the emphasis placed on speeches in ancient histories gives some indication to the importance attached by ancient generals to preparing the plan as thoroughly as possible.” The text, as opposed to Bob’s poor quality abstract, provides a different meaning, I submit.
Third, he refers to two paragraphs being devoted to the use of the semi-colon. To this I must plead guilty. But they were fairly short paragraphs, your honor. The intent, however, was to illustrate that if an author is unable to write according to fairly standardized rules of punctuation, is it at all surprising that infelicitous phrasings may cause players to misunderstand more complicated matters that arise under the rules. Or, in Bob’s own words, “Yet, it still suffers from some tricky language.”
Bob dwells on the idea that DBA is somehow a paradigm shift in the world of wargaming. It has certainly proven influential, as his article has illustrated. But, if I understand the term correctly, I think the jury may still be out on this.What DBA did was to pick up on an attitude that had come to the fore in British wargaming during the 1980s, associated with Wargames Developments and championed in the Society of Ancients by Slingshot Editor Ian Greenwood, among others. This held that it was not necessary to simulate every aspect of an army in battle to produce a game that represents the decision-making undertaken by a general during a battle. The more abstracted basing and combat mechanisms of WRG’s 7th Edition had already moved in this direction.
However, because Bob has failed to provide a definition of what he thinks this fairly abstruse term means to him, it is not yet time to engage in debate with him on that one. He may be right; and he may be wrong.DBA is certainly a popular achievement, and perhaps it represents Phil Barker’s greatest contribution to wargaming. (I still think that he was on the right track with some of the command and control ideas provided in 7th Edition, but these were prematurely abandoned in favor of the ugly simplicity of the PIP dice.) However, it was not the answer to my personal dissatisfactions with commercial ancients rules, only resolved by the arrival of Arty Conliffe’s Armati.
Reply from Beattie
It is good to hear from readers, even when they have some critiques in mind. Sorry for the name misspelling. Note I got the first reference in the text right but I’ll bet that I then did a copy and paste for future occurrences and trimmed the trailing “z.” Another penalty for using technology but a poor excuse.
It’s a small world again, I attended MDG conventions and put on a Column Line and Square game at Origins ‘78. I wonder if I ran into Paul there?
The Little Wars approach to the text of Paul’s article slipped past me. Marginal drawings of elements in combat would have helped. In any event the article was placed following a DBA review and the text seemed like a review of the new rules, so I took it as such. I was trying to see how reviewers saw these new rules - as nothing really new or something quite different. I had made the point that reviewers do not always see the potential of new games as evidenced by The Courier’s reviewer of Dungeons and Dragons; saying they would not amount to much. While Paul did say that he liked the rules, I took his article to fall into the former camp and did use him as the proverbial strawman, along with a number of others. He said that he had some reservations: too much luck involved, dice rolls too simplistic for command and control, bad semicolon use, games too fast. He did note that “DBA employs a different system than other common rules sets for classification of troops for combat...” but gave credit to TSR for developing the concept of using battlefield role as determiner.
I did however, find the tone and text of Paul’s (seeming) review to be on the whole negative. References to Phil Barker as “Mr. WRG” were troubling. I note that he omits to include that reference to the quote he gives regarding the importance of a plan. The full paragraph in the text ends, “... as thoroughly as possible. Now Mr. WRG, just tell me how one addresses a six-sided dice?”
It was that particular sentence that led me to include the remark about the oration. The final sentence of a paragraph is usually the “punch line” and this thus seemed to be Paul’s conclusion. On the notion of whether DBA is a “paradigm shift in the world of wargaming, “ Paul says, “ However, because Bob has failed to provide a definition of what he thinks this fairly abstruse term means to him, it is not yet time to engage in debate with him on that one. He may be right; and he may be wrong.
I guess I did not think paradigm such a rare term. I thought most people used it to mean a pattern, example, or model of something, as so defined in my Webster New World Dictionary. I was mostly moved to use the term, however, as it is presented by Thomas S. Kuhn, in his The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1970). I saw a similarity between DBA and Kuhn’s observation that paradigms share two characteristics:
“Their achievement was sufficiently unprecedented to attract an enduring group of adherents away from competing modes of scientific activity. Simultaneously, it was sufficiently open-ended to leave all sorts of problems for the redefined group of practitioners to resolve.” Of course, for “scientific activity” now read games structure.
I will not take more space to argue that DBA is thus a change from previous game structures that has drawn a large and enduring (11 years at least - 1/3 to 1/4 the history of the modern gaming era) group to it. Moreover, this group has been trying to resolve a number of open-ended problems.
Well, anyway, what does all this academic babble matter. Playing games and having fun is what we are about and I should not try to mix epistemology and gaming. I am glad that Paul has his Armati for gaming with toy soldiers and I have DBA to use for playing with mine. So I guess we should get on with it.
Looking for Infromation on Hudson and Allen Studios
Thank you for providing those of us “in the life” a magazine that is more than “pretty pictures”. Particularly useful are the Reviewing Stand articles and pictures, and The Courier Dispatch news of the hobby.
Regard news of the hobby, do you have current information on Hudson and Allen Studios? I would like their phone number and mailing address (and website?). My favorite periods are all historical, including Ancients, ECW, Naval (Age of Sail) and Napoleonic, mainly 25mm.
Thank you for your kind words. I have no new information on Hudson & Allen studios - I hope that one of our readers has it and will pass it on to me so I can pass it on to all the readers. DICK BRYANT
Appreciates the Renewal Notice
Thanks for the postcard reminding me to renew my subscription. I knew that it was up, but couldn’t remember if I had renewed or not. I checked The Courier website to see if I could access my account in the members’ area. Maybe you are planning to make a subscription status a feature of the site someday (or maybe I just couldn’t find it), however I offer it as a suggestion.
That’s a very good suggestion. To access your sub status, one needs the ID number and Ending Issue number as a password. This of course doesn’t help much since if you knew your ending issue number - you wouldn’t be trying to look it up. I look into a way that we can make this info more accessible. One problem is that we don’t update renewals and address changes until we are getting close to mailing the next issue. It takes too much time when I am trying to get the next issue out. I expect that I may get a lot of “nastygrams” from people who renewed and haven’t seen it “click over” on the website.
Meanwhile we send out 3 postcards besides the notice on the “dummy cover” and the ending issue number on your address label. One to say your last issue has been mailed, the next to say that you missed an issue, and finally one when you have missed a few and asking you to come back. - DICK BRYANT
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