Editorial

Well, first of all, even though it's a little late, a Happy New Year to all our readers.

And speaking of celebrations, we're full of them this issue. For starters, this is our first year anniversary issue! That's right, we've now been going for a full year. A lot has changed since we began last February, both for the magazine and for all of us. Sometimes I'm amazed we've made it this far. But we have, and hopefully, we'll be still here next February, and many more in the future.

However, of far more importance to the hobby in general is another anniversary. It was January, 1974, when Gygax and Arneson, unable to find a publisher, self-printed a few hundred copies of their game in Gary's basement, and foisted them on an unexpecting world. This can effectively be considered the very beginning of the entire hobby, which makes role-playing twenty five years old this year! Hooray! We'll be looking at that some more in our special birthday tribute next issue.

And on a more personal note, it is now ten years since I bought my first RPG and entered this amazing hobby. My reminisces of that day were featured in issue 2's Once Upon A Time.

But enough about me. Let's talk about this issue. And what a corker it is indeed.

The most important feature in this issue, at least from our point of view, is the Reader's Survey. We've been going for a year, and though we've made some changes, we're still much the same as we began. So we thought it was about time to find out exactly what you thought of us, and what you think we should be doing. So please, take some time out and fill it in for us. And to give you even more incentive, just by doing so you could win for yourself a complete boxed set of starters for the collectible card game On The Edge. Made by Atlas Games, this is a fast-paced and intriguing game, with an eclectic mutligenre setting drawn from the cult RPG Over the Edge The set includes over 600 cards, which should be enough to get some kick-ass decks built.

But enough about the survey. What about the real stuff, the meat of this issue? Well, this time our theme is, once again, Computers and Gaming. We lead off with Brett taking an in-depth look at all the gaming options the internet can provide. Next, a new writer, Joel Esler, tells us exactly why computers are computers and RPGs are RPGs, and never the twain shall meet.

Meanwhile, the History reaches part six, and we're still in the eighties. This installment looks at some of the greatest games in the history, and what they brought to the hobby. But it was impossible to do any of the games justice given the breadth of material the history has to cover. That's why we are thinking of beginning a new series of articles about our favourite games. Each issue, we'd take a long, hard look at one single game, examining its strengths and weaknesses, and where it sits in the gaming world. To keep it going, however, we're going to need submissions. So if you've ever felt that your favourite game has never really been properly appreciated by the masses, why not tell us all about it?

Our final article is of a similar bent. In issue four, the history covered some of the details of the rise and fall of the anti-gaming movement. And again, we couldn't go into the detail we would have liked, due to the nature of the history. Shaun Hately has written a two-part series that fills in these details. Shaun's piece is an exhaustively researched analysis of that most famous so-called D&D suicide of James Dallas Egbert III. The facts of this case are something of which no gamer should be ignorant. Check it out.

And of course, besides the articles, we've got the rest. A bunch of good links, a few interesting letters, news on the Brisbane convention scene in the Local News, and a touching look back in Once Upon A Time. So go on, get out there and read it!

But just before you do, please, turn over to the survey and tell us what you think. We'd really like to know.

Cheers,
Steve Darlington
Editor.