Its been a busy month what with the war starting and all. I've been busy to, writing articles and working inordinately long hours at my private practice. Still it is good. I'm building up a back log of articles so that with Paul Hayes' help (he has volunteered to do some editing work) future articles will be proofread and edited. Check out Howard Fielding's letter on setting up a mail list for MGs. It sounds interesting. I'm hoping some will be willing to set this up. Hint, hint, to all those computer literate people out there. I've been working on a draft of Matrix Game rules that will be the guts of spy, murder mystery, horror encounters, crime, master crime and quest games. The product will be in book format rather than in a plastic box like Dark Portals. I'm switching to this format because 1. Lots of people have told me it is a better format, 2. When I get the product back from the printer it is ready to go – no more labor cost, and 3. Because of a new production technique. The production technique is called "lightning printing" - all it is is a computer hooked up to a printing press and a binding machine. Push a button at one end and you book pops out the other end in five minute – indistinguishable from a trade paperback! The unit cost is twice as high as normal printing but you can order them in runs of ONE! So there is no need to have a lot of inventory. The books are sold at Barnes and Noble.com and Amazon.com. It all costs only $500 to get a product out. The weakness with lightning printing is that there is not room in the pricing structure to sell through traditional distributors. Stores could potentially buy direct but even there they would only get a 40% discount. So this technique has problems. But just think of it! It is possible to get good quality products out for very little money. This will cause an explosion in the number of small games out there. Anyone can afford to put out a game! I'm trying to format this issue in a 4 inch column to see if it comes out any better in an email format. I'm certain there is a way to tell the computer to reformat it for me – but I don't know it. Did I mention I'm a noodle brain when it comes to computers? Back to Table of Contents -- Matrix Gamer #4 To Matrix Gamer List of Issues To MagWeb Master Magazine List © Copyright 1999 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