As I write this we still don't know who is president, it's Ramadan, and Christmas will soon be upon us. In other words, everything is in turmoil. I am looking forward to a happy new year and a great new year of Matrix Gaming. We have had a year full of PBEMs (Mad Forrest, Dar as Salaam, Vietnam 1946, The Infernal Engine, Blake's 7, Hwa Rang Do, Blood Island, Passchendale, The X-Files, and now Dracula). I ran games at The Seven Years War Association Con, Nashcon, GenCon and Indy Gamefest. Other games were run in New Zealand and Mark Kinney ran Hwa Rang Do and The Three Musketeers in Louisville Kentucky (I got to play!) I've started running into people now who have hear of Matrix Games and a few who have even tried to use them in their games (not always successfully mind you, but tried). Some games have been sold (I got a message from someone saying they saw a copy of Dark Portals in Australia!) And other several new games been written. On the game development front. What we are now calling the "Classical Matrix Game" reached it final form last January. It is now freely available to anyone who wants a copy by going to the Hamster Press web page This has not put an end to MG game development. Not by a long shot! The Classical Game stands as a foundation for us all to build on. A common language as it were. Already we are seeing quite divergent thinking popping up in discussion in the Matrixgamer egroup. Good stuff. So what about this next year? I am looking forward to running playing, and just watching more PBEM Matrix Games. I hope that we will reach a critical mass and that new gaming egroups will start up. I am planning on going out to one of the PBEM web pages and carrying the message to the masses. Maybe with Land of the Lost? More convention games will happen. I'll be back at GenCon. In fact I need someone to run a couple days of gaming for me. I'LL PAY YOUR WAY IN! So this will be good. My hope would be to get some Matrix Game products in publishable form this year that I have not written. There are a number of good game scenarios out there that would make good products – its just a matter of getting them written down. So I'm hopeful! Ramadan will end, we will get a president (one of them will win!), and the world is looking good the games. Have a happy holiday (which ever one you celebrate!) Back to Table of Contents -- Matrix Gamer #22 To Matrix Gamer List of Issues To MagWeb Master Magazine List © Copyright 2000 by Chris Engle. This article appears in MagWeb (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other military history articles and gaming articles are available at http://www.magweb.com