Happy New Year! It's amazing what we take for granted. As I put the finishing touches to this editorial, I am flying at 20,000 feet somewhere over California heading back east for the holidays. A few unexpected snags such as a wayward ferret and a few missed deadlines prevented me from bagging the issue as planned before my flight departed, so here I am pecking away from my seat over the wing. It makes me wonder if all this new technology is really liberating me or just making me a slave. [Look, Jolly, see the nice shiny new beeper we got you for Christmas? It matches the cellular phone in your stocking.] When I land, I'll hook my laptop up to a modem and transmit the final layout and editorial back to the home office where it will be outputted and rushed to the eagerly-awaiting presses. And thus ends another year of SHADIS. As of this writing, some exciting things are coming up for our readers. The biggest announcement - SHADIS, is going monthly starting with this issue. Well - sort of. We've decided to do six mini-issues called "SHADIS PRESENTS" which while come out between the regular issues of SHADIS. These special editions of SHADIS will allow us to focus on various aspects of gaming without disturbing the popular format of SHADIS, proper. The special issues will be between 64 and 96 pages and will be distinguished from the regular issues of SHADIS by numbering them with a '.5' suffix. The first SHADIS, PRESENTS (17.5) will hit the stands in February and will be devoted to card games. After that, we will rotate the special issues through various aspects of gaming. The extra issues will be free to subscribers and will not affect subscription rates. So enjoy! Our Gamemaster's Workshop series has proven to be extremely popular with our readers. But several of you made a valid point; "There are more players out there than GM's. How about some articles geared toward players?" We plan to do exactly that, but we'll need your help. Any of you freelancers out there sitting on any material which deals with player-aids? Send 'em in! Now to the issue at hand. A little over six months ago, my partner John and I were sitting on a pile of wooden pallets watching SHADIS #14 come off the press when the conversation turned to Magic: The Gathering". Almost in passing, one of us suggested that it would be "neat" if you could use your Magic cards to play with a board game. A few moments later we had stolen . . . er, borrowed a black magic marker from one of the press operators and had retrieved some scrap paper from a dumpster. For the next hour we sat huddled around the scraps of paper as we began to draw different variations of the gameboard. Not ones to let a good idea slip away, we sought out our new card section editor, Dave Williams, and asked him to rack his brain and 'make it work'. The results of Dave's efforts appear in this issue as The Conquering. It was amazing to see that small spark of inspiration grow into an exciting new game product. At Origins, last July, I was sitting at the Origins Awards with one of the newly hired employees at Wizards of the Coast when the mention of a certain game designer name, she turned to me and said, "Who's Gary Gygax?" After picking myself up off the floor, I realized just how much the gaming industry has changed over the past two decades. As soon as I got back to the office, I embarked on a personal quest: to find someone qualified to write a history of the role-playing phenomenon. It didn't take long for the same name to continually come up in response to my queries. Victor Ramond answered the call and the first installment of his history of role- playing appears in this issue. Game designer gamers and other interested parties are encouraged to contribute to Victor research since we want it to be as accurate and as informative as possible. Fans of Bright Future will notice its absence this issue. A few days before going to press I received a phone call from the distraught creators. Apparently, a pet ferret knocked over a bottle of ink and danced tango over the original masters. Hey, everyone's a critic. I'm not sure if the ferret had anything to do with it, but Jason Holmgren called shortly before press time to tell me hard drive had crashed and Finieous Fingers was vaporized. So no Finieous this issue either. Not to fear, both strips will be back next issue. Enjoy the issue! As always, we are keenly interested in hearing your comments and suggestions. Back to Shadis # 17 Table of Contents Back to Shadis List of Issues Back to MagWeb Master List of Magazines © Copyright 1995 by Alderac Entertainment Group 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