off-the-shelf
vol X no 7

By Popular Demand. A word game! Anyone may join at any time.

The Golden Strider. Game Name: Herb Elliott. Need about 8. Have five or six: Dave Partridge, Mark Stretch, Jim Reader, Brent McKee, Bart Denny, Brad Martin, Tim Snyder, Ward Narhi. Please see game start on next page.

Hardbop Downfall. Game Name: Moria. Need seven. Have three: Vincent Springer, Tim Lurz, Phil Reynolds.

It appears to me that many of you have new computers, and with them, new mail programs. How can I tell? I've had two clues. Firstly, too many of your moves have arrived in HTML or MIME encoded e-mail. Secondly, most, if not all, current e-mail programs put their name into a header in any e-mail they generate. When I receive a message which I can't read directly, I take some advice from "Star Wars", namely: "Use the force, read the source." This shows me every last detail of the message; all the headers, any plain text, the html code, the MIME encoding (really unreadable), etc. Please do all your correspondents (especially me!) a favor by turning off this junk. Click here for instructions for doing so for most mail programs. Please pay particular attention to item 4.

Our player base has been a bit smaller than it has been in times past, but not enough that I'm really worried about it - yet. I'd been concerned that it had shrunk too much, but last issue I took a good look at the number of players (in Dip games) and realized that it wasn't as bad as I'd thought.

Part of my concern was that everyone was playing in so many games that each issue I could not adjudicate any games until after I'd received orders from the last two players. As it turns out, if the last two are always some combination of Denny, Narhi and Weidemeyer, I'll never be able to adjudicate any game, including the non-Dip games, until I've heard from two of these three. Of course, these three always wait until the deadline or the day before to send orders...

Then, after I'd written all that, we gained six new readers. New, that is, in the sense that they weren't listed as one of your Neighbors in the last issue, but are this time.
At any rate, effective immediately, I am no longer requiring subscriptions for playing in off-the-shelf. Anyone willing to take their game reports off the web-site and forgo the printed copy is welcome to play at no cost. In future, subscriptions are only required from those wishing to receive printed copies via the post.
If you are wondering how I can do that and maintain the sanity of a small 'zine, all I can say is, "Don't worry, it'll be easy: I just won't start any more games than I can fit into the standard, 24 page, printed issue!"

You also might be interested in reviewing the house rules, which have been revised, and may be found on the web page.

Enjoy the 'zine!

Apologies to John and Michelle