Happy New Year! I'd write "happy new millennium," but I happen to know that the Romans didn't have a zero in their number system. I hope you took advantage of the New Year's Sale and that you've been enjoying your favorite games including our latest (as I write this) offering, Aspern-Essling. Longstanding readers may have noticed my high regard for the NBS. To that let me add my frank puzzlement that it hasn't taken off as strongly as other series from The Gamers. The games look great, the rules give just enough attention to tactics and formations and the command system is outstanding. Do I get paid to write stuff like t~e previous sentence? Well, not enough to write it unless I believe it too. And this issue of Operations gives NBS its due, thanks largely to series enthusiast Anders Fager.

If you have run with The Gamers pack at conventions or even read the playtesting credits, you've noticed that a cadre of reliable guys stays involved with research, testing, and various sorts of assistance, game after game. Whether motivated by the allure of a bit of fame, the wish to have their particular expertise acknowledged, the simple need to feel useful, or the desire to make sure the games they play are as good as possible, these guys make the extra effort. That said, Dean announced in his Dean-o-Gram that he is "spread too thin."

The solution is to make better, more organized use of the talented and willing helpers out there. For example, Anders is the NBS honcho, helping steer and push the series along. Here's how Dean explains the idea:

"What I would like to encourage and ask for from you is a call for volunteers willing to help out, either by forming teams of guys willing to act as system chaperones (like Anders-and to help Anders, as well), guys willing to help Andrew Fischer & Perry Andrus in coordinating, running, and playing in the game room at Origins, or guys willing to help in other ways.

Some ideas might be:

1) Game initial development (some submissions need some serious checking of map and 00B, initial playtesting and such).

2) Groups interested in promotional activities, such as inspiring internet/ board discussions, helping answer people's questions on the boards, and so on.

3) Generating Operations article support for their favorite series (a part of a committee under the series honcho ... more organized than it is now)."

If any of you are familiar with "free software" a.k.a. "open source" (Linux, GNU, Apache, etc.) you realize that this approach works not because there are armies of hackers out there contributing to huge projects. Rather, out of all the programmers who'd like to be involved in such projects, and who volunteer, a core group of reliable people forms and, over time, accomplishes substantial work. E-mail and the Internet make it much easier to form these groups than would be the case if they met only in the computer science lab or at their day jobs.

Similarly, convenient electronic communications can help honcho and helper groups form around a game series and collaborate. Even if you don't have e-mail or Internet access, you can use answering machines, personal computers, and good old postal mail to contribute and work as part of a group. I want encourage such groups and hope to support their work through this magazine. Along with working on particular series, maybe some of you are interested in forming a "demo masters" crew, becoming researchers, or running playtests. Now is the time. Contact The Gamers to learn how you can participate.