You will note that this is MGer No 6a. That is because I numbered the last one 6 when it should have been 5. Oops! I plan on sending this out before going off to Gen Con because it looks like the rest of August I will be out at conventions (Gen Con, Peninsula Campaigns, Glathricon). I'm hitting the road to spread the word about my own convention (Hamster Con) here in Bloomington in October. I hope that a lot of you have joined the MatrixGamer:Onelist, since I am moving towards distributing this newsletters via that down the road. At the moment I'm still doing things the old way, but in a couple of more months I'll stop that and only send it out to the list. So don't wait! Sign up now! Let me see...What have I been up to? Primarily I've been writing scenarios. This spring I got together drafts of Matrix Game rules packets to do 1. spy intrigues, 2. murder mysteries, 3. horror/sci fi investigations, 4. fantasy quests, 5. Military campaigns and 6. miniatures battles. Each set of rules needs scenarios to make it a marketable product. So far I've been averaging a scenario a week. By fall I hope to have several years worth of publications in the can. Now all that is stopping me is lack of money to print the darned things! Early in the month I signed a sales agent agreement with Jim Dietz of Jolly Roger Games (Maul of America and Orcs at the Gate). So hopefully we can begin to build up working relationships with game distributors. I expect this to grow slowly over time but eventually I am hopeful that Matrix Games will take a seat in the mainstream of gaming. Everything is in place, now it is just pushing the ball till it starts to roll down hill. All this couldn't be happening at a better time for me. After three years in private practice I am thinking of going back into agency work so I can have a secure income again. Being on my own has made it mentally possible for me to do the games as a business (even if not full time) and given me time to write and think, that I could not have done as an agency drone. But now a lot of that work is done - so I'm looking forward to having a set schedule, not having to work every evening and making more money! I keep having my age jump in my face when I go out to stores to run games. I pull out my toy soldiers and am struck by how many of them are older than my players. Some as much as twice as old! I guess this was inevitable. I have been gaming for twenty three years. And I don't want to moan about the graying of the hobby. I guess I'm just moaning about the graying of me! Hummm...adds dignity they say...I hope that's right. Back to Table of Contents -- Matrix Gamer #6A 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