A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

My brother Allan, the only one of my three brothers to also take an interest in postal games, was also Ode’s first contributor. The first puzzle page under Allan’s control was in issue 2; the last was in issue 6 – although occasional puzzles appeared after that.

Allan is also one of Ode’s most successful Diplomacy players, with two wins and several other good results. However, having never (as far as I know) subscribed to any zines other than Chimaera (he gets Ode free, so it doesn’t count) his fame has not spread very far.top

Someone was comenting to me on a dispute between a player and the GM in another zine, and thought that maybe over 21 years I must have had a few of those. Actually there have been very few (I usually defuse them), but this was the first – and worst.

BDC41I (1974N) was one of the games I picked up with the Ethil the Frog orphans back at the beginning of Ode. It was a venerable game by this stage, five years old and up to Autumn 1924. Originally, it was the first invitational international game, run by Conrad von Metzke in a one game zine Is It Free? (hence the American series Boardman Number) and featured noted players of the time (including Richard Sharp (UK), Roland Prevot (France), Robert Correll (Canada) and Dave Johnson (USA), and the positions had seesawed for many years. Subsequently John Piggott had taken it over, initially in a flyer entitled Fortis Est Rana and finally in Ethil the Frog. When I got hold of it the argument weas whether France (Dave Johnson) had a winning position, or whether the stalemate line was solid (as Roland insisted). As it happened, Robert wrote to resign, and Richard wasn’t ordering, so I declared the game over as a French win, on the grounds that the game had never used standbys. Roland protested loudly, calling me the worst GM ever, and I believe that Richard Sharp, with his usual lack of impartiality, has it recorded otherwise in the statistics, but I stand by my decision, even now!

Ode has been published from eight different addresses; thei first alphabetically is this one. Flat 3, Bishop’s Farm House, Oakley Green Windsor, Berks, to be precise.

The date over the front door was 1288, making it the second oldest building in the Windsor area to the castle; until the mid-19th Century a working farm called "Bishopps" and only being called "Farm House" when it wasn’t! It had fallen on hard times and been divided into bedsits, but it was a fascinating old house owned by a fascinatingly eccentric retired ballerina who lived in the galleried hall. The downsides were the aircraft noise (it was under the Heathrow landing path), and the six mile cycle ride to work (at least until I resigned!). It was from there that some of the best issues of Ode (25-34) were published.

Alphabetically first of Ode’s many outside GMs. Tony ran one game of Railway Rivals between issues 53 and 66. top

Caroline appeared on the Ode scene with issue 67, at which point doing any exciting content in the zine held little appeal.

It was mutual convenience at first; we both wanted to get to social events in the country, and Caroline had the car while I knew how to find the way! We seemed to get on very well together, and managed to continue doing so, and subsequently she has found the way to my heart through my stomach, which is part of the reason that I put on weight subsequently and have never lost it since!

In those days Caroline taught French to top junior classes in several schools, a practice that might be revived soon, and prefers to teach children old enough to concentrate but young enough that hormones haven’t taken over! That is why we have moved to somewhere where middle schools still exist.

After 16 years, we are very contented with each other, despite the rush of life. Caroline doesn’t get involved in Ode much, but she thinks it is a much better hobby for me than many I could have, and is always willing to say hello on the phone.

Esther Carpenter has been photocopying Ode since issue 75, and despite the distance involved, has provided an excellent way to get the production done.

The advantage over other commercial copying services is that Mr Carpenter is a retired photocopier engineer, so there are no maintenance charges. The main problem is uncertainty about the Post Office delivering the masters on time (experience means I always allow an extra day, although this slows the turnround), but still a great help in maintaining the regularity of the zine.

My address when I met Caroline, 17 Church Road, St Leonards on Sea was the venue for issues 52 to 69. The ground floor front of one of St Leonards’ many Victorian grand houses, it had plenty of room for a bachelor pad; unfortunately it also suffered badly from damp. It was in this period that circulation peaked...

The issues immediately following the takeover of the games from The Acolyte (issue 59) were the peak of Ode’s circulation, when I had a print run of over 170. This was not a huge increase, since the mailing list in issue 47 contained 146 names, but it did mean a lot of envelopes to write!

Subsequently there was a considerable decline, but for nearly ten years the numbers have been stable at between 100 and 110. This seems to be a stable level now, but I’m not sure why. I don’t expect much change, anyway.

Sticking with 1985, in the spring of that year I thought it would be a good idea to organise a convention for gamers in the south of England, and, as I was working part-time at the Queen’s Hotel in Hastings, which had a huge hall, I booked it for the September.

Unfortunately my engagement to Caroline in the August reduced my involvement, so that the bulk of the organisation fell to Steve Jones and Keith Loveys, who did a very good job, and I think most enjoyed themselves. I never managed to organise a repeat, moving away at the end of the following year, and the Queen’s is now a boarded up blot on the seafront, having defeated the efforts of several owners to make a profit.

Alphabetically first of Ode’s many guest GMs, Simon’s first game was 1829S2, which started in issue 89, at a time when I had realised that I made too many mistakes to run 1829! He made a good job of that, and then was free when I needed a GM to revive "Damnation" (q.v.).

Simon ran the Empires in admirable fashion for five years, until pressure of work saw him fade out, the last adjudication being in issue 181. top

Just a quick mention for the game which started the tradition for variants. A game of Vain Rats, orphaned from Dolchstob , which I ran before starting the zine. Two of the players, Ken Flowers and Dave Crichton, are still with us...

Ode’s "Grand Scenario Empires of the Middle Ages" started in Mellow Yellow, continued in Shadows of Amber (with me as first new player after the start), and when then orphaned, I gave it a home from issue 115.

For those who don’t know, the game has had around 500 game years so far, with another 200 or so to go! I’m not sure, but I think David Balfour is the only original player left, the rest of us having arrived at various stages. With the game long out of print, I don’t suppose anyone is likely to start another Grand Scenario Empires....

Frank has been a subscriber to Ode since the very early days, and has always ‘graced’ the zine with his amazing press (some of which has been extremely good - I think of Ri-Ting, a series started because no-one in the game wrote to him!).

Most people, I think, know that ‘Frank Dashwood’ is a nom-de-plume, in homage to Sir Francis Dashwood (of the Hell Fire Club), and that’s always been fine by me. However, this caused some fun in Ode 63eme. One of the other players was the ever-prickly Allan Gordon, and at some point Stuart Eves happened to mention to Allan about Frank’s name. Allan went over the top, made a great deal of fuss about it and ended up resigning from the game (and the zine). Subsequently, towards the end of the game, Stuart employed some detective work to discover Frank’s real name, and this formed an interesting topic for the game-end statements, and after.

Frank, of course, had the last word. For his following game, he took advantage of his retirement to Cambridge to have his own mail sent to his daughter’s house, whilst his own new address became that of "Ted Duckingham". Well, it amused us at the time!

You have to be a masochist to produce a zine anyway, but for a period of two and a half years I produced two, at fortnightly intervals.

By January 1981, when the zine was little over a year old, the games load was such that I was struggling to keep up the four-weekly frequency. So I moved the second Mercator game, 11eme, to a separate zine,published on the opposite fortnight. Originally it was "Nineteen Men on a Dead Man’s Chest", 19 beiing the number of players in 11eme, and the number in the title varied according to the number of people receiving the zine.

This varied according to the games in it. DMC was very useful for 13eme, a game of 3-season Diplomacy (there were separate two-week deadlines for the build seasons), for which alternate game years appeared in Ode and DMC; I ran this specially to get Mick Bullock playing in Ode! Apart from that, though, DMC was exclusively a Mercator zine, running 16eme (which never appeared in the main zine) and the start of 28eme (both run by Andrew Smith (q.v.)), and the amazing 20eme "Toad", Doug Wakefield’s game with aircraft and submarines. There was also "Dead Man’s Chest 4½", which I never saw, which was a fake readjudication of 11eme by Doug Wakefield, which fooled quite a few players!

By summer 1983 13eme had finished, so DMC only contained guest-GM’d games. Consequently the problem of adjudication time had lessened, and the mountains of press that accompanied "Toad" was lessening, so I folded it back into the main zine. It was an interesting exercise, always duplicated on gold paper; I don’t suppose many today remember it, but I enjoyed doing it at the time.

Unlike many zine editors, I have always preferred running the games to trying to think up interesting reading material for the zine. Thus it was that in 1983 I decided to give up writing editorials and employ a sub-zine editor to do it for me.

Just to make it interesting, I found one who would provide a complete contrast to me. Thus in issue 42 started "Diplodocus", a subzine from Matt Quartermain. Matt’s ‘stream of consciousness’ style, with expletives not deleted and rather raunchy tales of student life, strongly differed from my own rather boring style.

This had the happy effect of fuelling the letter column, with detractors and defenders of "Plod" (as Matt called it) battling it out. As John Piggott put it, "John Marsden, scourge of all that is not wishy-washy, publishes this? In Ode? Really, John, it just doesn’t fit."

So what was all the fuss about? Here’s a sample paragraph:

"And here we go again; I’ve found yet another group of slobs lying around on the grass,listening to some disco rubbish, actually doing revision (gasp), so I’ve brought my typewriter out here and it is now situated here on the green stuff, in the midst of a load of circuit theory and the like. Me being a final year student, they come to me with their problems, which (theoretically) I can help them with. I recently livened up one of their lectures by wandering in and, er, flashing… Well, not quite. I had a balaclava on, and a slogan tied over the crucial bits. The girl to whom the slogan was directed is sitting not two metres away, and still does not know who it was."

The downside of the subzine was that Matt was a useless GM, and he was frequently having to issue corrections or be taken issue with by the players. Not surprisingly, his waiting lists didn’t fill.

After eighteen months, Matt’s interest in the hobby waned, and he faded out, passing on the game to Jeremy Tullett, and Ode got back to normal. Livened things up for a while, though!

It is perhaps not surprising that one of Richard Sharp’s few contributions to variant design has a theme of pubs!

Dipsomashy is one of my favourite variants, which has appeared several times, in which supply centres become pubs, which can be closed or opened. Can be quite funny. top

This was my first address in Hastings. 14 East Ascent, St Leonards on Sea, in full, which was where issues 36 to 51 were produced. It was actually only a bedsit, but the house was quite interesting.

East Ascent is part of the old Decimus Burton part of St Leonards, built in the 1830s, and ascends from sea level on one side of the valley central to that area. It is only 50 years from the sea, but I could only just see it by craning my neck out of the window, due to the bulk of a block of flats (Marine Court) shaped like an ocean liner.

This was the peak of Ode’s fortunes, with masses of games, the arguments with Pete Tamlyn, a circulation peaking at over 150, and the zine poll just won. All this I managed to crank out on a creaking duplicator in a small bedsit. Don’t know how I managed it now! I also had quite a lot of Liberal Party stuff to fit in, so I remember it being rather a squash.

Elizabeth Sarah Marsden was born on 18^th August 1993, in time for Ode 149, and has been getting regular mentions in the Oditorial ever since.

A lively and individualistic child, who knows what she wants and from the day she was born has done her best to make sure she got it, which is why sleep was a commodity hard to come by for a while.

She hasn’t taken more than occasional interest in board games so far, preferring role-playing. When I picked her up from the child-minders last night, she emerged on all fours, pretending to be a dog…..

In recent years, the main political content of Ode has been a couple of series of articles on enviromnental themes.

As a geographer, I hold firm views on the state of the world, and it seemed a good subject on which to ponificate. This began in issue 107, with an attack on the record of Japan (every bit as valid an article today), and ran for a couple of years. There was then a break until issue 133, when the Earth Summit prompted me to restart under the heading "The Green Bit". There haven’t been any for a while, however.

Dave’s first game was 1829O4, which began in issue 106 (so we missed the tenth anniversary, Dave!), in which I played and came ignominiously last! That was followed by 1829F7, and then the three Railway Rivals Discovery games.

Dave’s great efficiency has been a boon in running complicated games, and his development of Andrew Poole’s Discovery concept has produced a very interesting game. top

Players with a broader range of zines may have seen this game, which allows players to "gamble" on cup match results, and possibly accumulate large sums. Few, I suspect, know the origins of the game.

It was in fact invented for the 1977/78 season by Bob Howes and run in Lemming Express. The rules were improved the following year, when I played, so, having started Ode in time for the 1979/80 season , I ran it here, and codified the rules.

The game ran in Ode for four seasons, until the task of sending out adjudications in between issues became too much. Only the longest memories (Ken Flowers) remember it in Ode now, but the rules being used elsewhere seem very similar to the ones I drew up, and I don’t get a credit (sob!).

Steve is one of the people without whom Ode would not be what it is today.

Joining us from The Acolyte at issue 60, Steve was then running Diplomacy, Machiavelli, Origins of WW II and Sopwith. Subsequently he specialised in Machiavelli and Origins, for both of which he produced the postal rules.

For many issues Steve was a great help to me, and always ultra reliable. For that, and for introducing such good games to the zine, I shall always be grateful. Steve’s last game finished in issue 179, but I have hopes that he’ll be back one day. top

Once upon a long time ago, I had lots of North American contacts, of whom the Europhile Gary, with his zine Europa Express was proabaly the best. The only one I ever telephoned (from a call box in Manchester!) for a chat, Gary contributed plenty of comments for the letters pages, and was always positive.

Nowadays there is virtually no US postal hobby, and all those contacts have long gone. Oh for the "good old days"!

Stuart Eves had been running a little Gunboat tournament; when that finished he had the idea for a game where all the players would save their correspondence for later analysis. I was one of the players he invited to play, and when he suggested getting an outside "expert" to comment on the moves, I thought of Richard Williams (always good for a few comments). It was an easy step then to offering to print Richard’s comments in Ode.

The reports started in issue 187 and finished recently; Stuart hasn’t yet completed his analysis, but when he has something of it will appear here. The series garnered very little comment, but I think some people liked it.

Casting about one day for an historical variant that would generate interest, I came upon a John Leeder one called "Gesta Danorum", complete with pseudo-historical province names. It was an eight player variant, but comments said that it was unbalanced.

I thought this was probably curable, and made some changes, removing the weakest power (Wales) and some provinces, and adding some rules to weaken the power of the invaders. The resulting Gesta Danorum II has been one of Ode’s firm favourite variants ever since. top

Geoff has been with us almost from the start (issue 3, I think), and is one of the minority never to play Diplomacy.

However, it was not until issue 185 that Geoff became a GM, when I needed a volunteer to take over "Damnation" from the vanished Simon Craddock. Geoff has stamped his style on the game (and, I think, changed some of Simon’s rulings – not that it matters). Unfortunately he has neither computer nor typewriter, so is subject to my misreadings or mis-typings.

Kim Head

Another recent contributor to Ode, Kim’s subzine Life’s Still Rich Pageant first appeared in issue 198, and

continued erratically for the next 18 months. This was after Kim abandoned her zine, Life’s Rich Pageant, and I had helped to rehouse most of the games.

As John Wilman says, Kim in full flow is one of the hobby’s best prose writers, but unfortunately life has not permitted that flow to show itself much. The space is available when it can.

There have been very few occasions when Ode might have folded, but issue 34 was one.

Pete Tamlyn took exception to a rather haughty piece I wrote complaining of the standards of English in the hobby at the time (mainly aimed at a number of younger editors whose grammer and spelling were appalling), and in The Acolyte referrred to me as "this heap of excrement". As it happened, I read this just as I was typing the next issue, and the result was an outbreak of angst, and a cutback in hobby comment. Pete felt it was just a jokey remark, but I was hurt – and still think the term unkind. top

The Ode Intimate Diplomacy Tournament was announced in issue 60, and started in issue 63. It involved 16 players, and the format involved knockout rounds, with each match consisting of two games, with the players taking opposite sides with the same pair of countries. This avoided any problems with one of the countries having an advantage over the other. If one player won one game, and the other won the second (as usually seemed to happen), the margin of victory mattered.

A few weeks after starting the competition I met Caroline, and found I didn’t have time for this sideshow. Consequently four of the players took over as GMs for games on the other side of the draw from them, and Steve Jones, Bob Kendrick, Keith Loveys and Jed Stone ran the first three rounds. Then in issue 123 the final began, and for that I took over again. In a very close fought final, Bob Kendrick defeated Steve Jones by the narrowest of margins. Alas, Bob died soon afterwards.

I must confess that when I started it I did not expect the Tournament to last so long (over 7 years), the main reason being a reluctance to chase up players for orders. Anyway, it was a very good show, but unlikely to be repeated. top

Jonathan Kieran Benjamin Marsden-Broad was born 23^rd September 1998, in time for issue 200 of Ode.

A sweet and relatively quiet baby, and now a real pickle, Jonathan is always pleased to see grandpa, and consequently is bound to get plenty more mentions in Ode! With a clear ability with puzzles aimed at toddlers, he’s bound to be a good games player in the future.

Steve is one of the rocks upon which this zine is built. Steve’s participation and encouragement has always been part of the foundations.

Steve’s first game that he ran here was 44eme, a Mercator game that started in issue 56 (the first one not to be duplicated); issue 59 saw his picture (along with the rest of the Castlecon attendees) on the cover, and issue 60 saw him bring his games (and Steve Froud) from The Acolyte.

Since then, although Steve has run a few Diplomacy games, the mainstay has been as Ode’s Mercator GM. Steve has now run 8 Mercator games (44eme, 60eme, 65eme, 72eme, 79eme, 90eme, 98eme, and 107eme), taking over when Andrew Smith left off.

If you ever feel like doing something else, Steve, just let me know! In the meantime, I never fail to recognise that Melbourne accent on the phone!

One of those little quirks of Ode that people occasionally ask me about is the ‘date signature’ at the foot of the back page.

This actually goes back to my university days when, after being required to type up a particularly lengthy piece for the Liberal Club, I signed off with "jrm productions ink", in imitation of one of my colleagues, who always initialled his typing. This subsequently became abbreviated to "jrm prod", and has appeared on most of the non-work documents I have typed since. Putting the production date onto copies of Ode has proved very useful when doing historical items like this! top

Postal games-playing is still sufficiently young that not many players have died during a game. One, however, was Bob, who was a player in 94eme, and whose obituary I printed in issue 185. Bob was a subscriber and sometimes a player for many years, an important member of the winning Manorcon teams, and the winner of the Intimate Diplomacy Tournament.

100eme, which has just finished, was announced as a "Bob Kendrick Memorial Game"; I think Bob would have been impressed by the quality of play. top

Graham was one of Ode’s less famous GMs, but none the less worthy of praise. Graham ran three games of 1829 and 1830, starting with an Invitational "all-stars" game of 1829 in issue 104, and following with a couple of 1830s. The second of these started running to independent deadlines, due to Graham’s time constraints, and he quietly retired when it finished in issue 173.

Kim Head’s subzine has received very good reviews since first appearing here in issue 198. Since then there have been several further issues, but sadly it is likely to be some time before LSRP next appears.

Since I persuaded Kim that she ought to continue to write in some form, we live in hopes that more will be forthcoming in due course.

Another of Ode’s former addresses, this was Caroline’s flat when I met her. It was half of the ground floor of a "substantial Victorian detached residence", as the estate agent would put it, with two bedrooms and a huge lounge, situated in a private road inland from St Leonard’s.

Ode continued to be produced from Church Road for a couple of issues after I had effectively moved into Lynwood, but issues 69 to 80 (incorporating our wedding, and subsequently a revival in zine fortunes) were produced from that address.

Lynwood, incidentally, is no more. It was badly damaged in the 1987 hurricane (ten months after we left), and was subsequently demolished to make way for new houses. top

One of Ode’s favourite games, introduced by Steve Froud, who subsequently developed the postal rules. Machiavelli is the only game derived from Diplomacy to be published commercially (although currently out of print).

Steve Froud ran Asti Spumante (orphaned from The Acolyte), Bartolomeo, Cosimo, Doge and Enea), and Mike Pollard then took over with Ariodante, and they have all been very hard fought. Consequently, from stepping in gingerly as a standby, it has become a favourite game of mine.

The first Ode Diplomacy team at Manorcon was in 1988, when Steve Jones, John Wilman, Tony Wheatley, Paul Cook, Mark Nelson, Graham Leach and I came fourth. The following year we slipped to seventh, mainly due to my being eliminated.

The new idea for 1990 came from Steve Jones, and was, I think, the first time it had been tried by anyone. Let’s set up a team of the best face-to-face Diplomacy players, he said, to win the trophy. Worked like a dream, too. The Ode "J" team (which I think was Steve Jones, Paul Cook, Bob Kendrick, Graham Lee, Pete Mason, Tony Wheatley and Richard Williams (whom we welcomed to the zine as a result!)) won by a mile, whilst my second-string "M" team came third. A triumph!

Of course, the next year we were targeted and Steve’s team (designated "Y") dropped to 6^th, even beaten by one place by my "Z" team. So in 1992 we weren’t fancied, and managed to sneak in another win (I can’t find a list of the team, but certainly Steve Jones, Bob Kendrick, Paul Barker and I were there). Alas, in 1993 we slipped down to 10^th, as other "superteams" took over, and the following year I found so many of my players had been poached that I didn’t enter a team, and haven’t done since. It was fun while it lasted, though.

Maps appeared in the zine as soon as photocopying started with issue 56. Initially I only did maps for two games, 42eme (an all-winners game) and 37eme (Seismic Diplomacy, to show the map changes).

The pull-out map section, with maps for most games, started in issue 79, and hasn’t changed much since. One of these days I’ll find time to computerise it….

Not surprisingly, after 12½ years, people think of Ode as a Kent zine, but it actually started in Manchester, at my two-roomed flat in Withington. I moved there in 1977 and my kindly landlady put up with me there for four eventful years, which of course included starting Ode and cranking the first 20 issues off on the duplicator I managed to pick up from somewhere. It looked quite unchanged recently.

I think it would be reasonable to say that Ode has established itself as the most important zine for Mercator anywhere. Certainly I am sure that more games of the variant have been played here than anywhere else.

Mercator was first played postally in 1974, and Stuart Dagger pointed out in a letter in issue 35 that a fifth of them were still playing in Ode. Some of those players are still playing today.

The first game here was Gummi VII, orphaned into issue 3; from then until last year there was never a time when there was not at least one Mercator game running (and at one time there were three). Most of the games have been run by Andrew Smith and Steve Jones, but both Doug Wakefield and I have also run games. There has also been a considerable number of articles on Mercator strategy and tactics, which I must gather together one day. Most notable of these was:

During the quietest period of Ode’s history, between issues 60 and 79, the zine was enlivened by Steve Jones’ monumental work on the opening tactics for all 17 countries in Mercator Mark XIV. Full of useful advice, the articles were pulled together into booklet format by Stuart Dagger, and copies are still available from me.

This was an admirable attempt to spread the word of Mercator more widely, and was run by Steve Jones starting in issue 92. Unfortunately only one of the players continued playing Mercator afterwards, so it wasn’t a big success!

Probably the strangest zine game ever, in that it started at a "house con" at Ron Rayner’s house in north London on the 21^st August 1982 but didn’t finish, so the players agreed to continue in Ode. Two-thirds of the game was played before it came here, and it took some time to organise all the players to subscribe and get orders in. The result was a three-way draw between Gary Piper, Tom Goff and Steve Jones.

Once upon a time, a long time ago now, any notable issue of Ode would be incomplete without a Diplomacy article from Mike Close.

The first was "Guidelines for Beginners", published in issue 10, and after that there was roughly one a year for some time. A quick trawl through has failed to find one since issue 100, but they were always eagerly awaited for their common sense and quality of writing. top

Either side of issue 100, you could hardly move in Ode for the Nelsons – Mark with his forthright opinions in the letter column, James with lengthy articles on variants. Between them they made a major contribution to the zine for about eighteen months, and then they just faded away.

was someone else who had a very dominant presence in the zine, in his case in the early days after starting in 5eme. John’s letters quickly became a major feature of the zine, along with his habit of winning most of his games. Eventually he became bored with Diplomacy and disappeared, returned with an Acolyte orphan and dropped out. How ignominious.

In Ode 9, I had five pages of long letters devoted to the subject of the situation in Northern Ireland. The subject had started in issue 6 with some comments from an American, Michael Mills, and had quickly got out of hand, with some forthright views being expressed. Although some of the comments were rather angry ones, I felt that no-one’s mind was being changed, and so after seven issues I stopped it, and have never since encouraged heavy discussion of political issues in Ode. I just don’t think it is appropriate. top

Ode started, of course, because I took over the duties of the vacant "Orphan’s Secretary" for the National Games Club and, with the approval of leading editors, started rehousing games. As it became clear that the NGC was defunct (it was only being held together by Richard Sharp, and he was out of action), I decided that the role needed a title. I therefore styled myself "Orphan Games Rehouser", or OGRe, introducing the title in issue 8. Nobody objected, so it stuck.

Subsequently I resigned in issue 35, after the "Heap of Excrement" episode, and handed over to Nick Kinzett, who did an excellent job for several years. Peter Sullivan then took over for some time, and when he decided to give up, at the end of 1992, I offered to take over again.

However, the job is a much easier one than it used to be, because editors no longer seem to give up and disappear the way they used to. There hasn’t been a meaty fold for a long time now!

As a result of this role, most of the early growth of the zine, and a lesser patch in the early 90s, was due to the taking in of players in orphaned games – a very successful policy, if inclined to cause a lot of work on occasion.

People often ask me, "Why did you call the zine "Ode"? The main answer to that is simply that I wanted a short name, because I felt that too many zines at the time had excessively long ones. There was also my strange intention to put on the front cover an "Odd Ode", but this lasted one issue. The response to the piece of doggerel I created for issue 1 was so critical that I never tried again! Consequently it may seem odd now, but everyone is used to it…

It started as a one-page spacefiller in Issue 130, the idea of reviewing the issue of Ode 100 issues previously.

I don’t know why I carried on, apart from my own interest, because it generated very little comment, but the feature appeared in most issues until issue 200, at which point it had run out of steam, so I laid it quietly to rest. top

Politics has often featured in Ode, particularly in the earlier days when I was most actively involved. I suppose that newer readers may not be aware that I have always been mixed up with the Liberal Democrats (and the Liberal Party before that), and at one time was organising elections at a county level.

In practice, I have mostly not foisted my political views on readers, other than in the two series of articles on "green" issues (q.v.), except sometimes when elections are round the corner. On the other hand, those elections have always had a major effect on the amount of time I have to spend on the zine; for many years it was guaranteed that I would have less time to do anything interesting between February and April. In recent years that hasn’t applied the same way, but it could again soon!

Mike joined us at issue 59 from The Acolyte, but remained no more than an active player until issue 137, when he

unveiled a game of his invention, "Spymaster" (q.v.). Mike subsequently ran the playtest game (and the Gming was a success, even if the game was less so).

When that finished, Steve Froud was retiring from running games and I needed someone to run the next Machiavelli game. Mike volunteered, and has done very well as our resident Machiavelli expert ever since.

Once upon a time, Ode had lots of press in its Diplomacy games. In Ode 7, for example, four games had five pages of press between them, and soon after that I took over "Ijim", a press variant game, which usually had 2-3 pages of the stuff, mostly episodes of serials devoted to insulting me!

After that, with the noble exception of Frank Dashwood, the tradition declined, and nowadays anything more than brief messages is very rare. A pity, I reckon. top

In issue 41, I bemoaned my lack of time and asked for a volunteer sub-editor. Rather to my surprise, Matt came forward. A new subscriber, just starting his first (and only) Diplomacy game, and a student at Brunel University, he seemed worth a try, and was completely different to me. Too different, and "Diplodocus" (q.v.) gained a very bad reception, particularly from the ‘old guard’.

In typical student fashion, Matt faded away once he left university, and I haven’t heard of him for years.

At the end of 1986, Caroline accepted a new job in Kent at two months’ notice, so we needed to move quickly.

Fortunately, Kent County Council had an estate of police houses (mostly empty) on the outskirts of Maidstone, and so we were able to rent one for a year. Because a lot of the houses were empty, it was quiet, and although not very convenient it served the purpose.

1987, of course, was the year of the hurricane. The year when Katherine woke us to say that the lights didn’t work, and I looked out of the window and said, "you know the tree across the road – it’s across the road!" Add to that snow in January and flooded railway tunnels and it was a year of weather.

Queen Elizabeth Square is not the same now. The houses opposite, and the police skid pan and driving school behind them, have gone, replaced by a large Safeway. It won’t be as peaceful any more.

Once upon a very long time ago, Ode had a regular Puzzles Page, initially hosted by brother Allan, and then later by me, with puzzles mostly from Ken Flowers. That lasted about 18 months, and since then there have been occasional contributions of quizzes, but the level of response has always been so low as to deter repetition. I don’t discourage it, really! top

Railway Rivals first appeared in Ode in issue 9, with RO121X – the ‘X’ designation because it was on a map of my devising, entitled Liverpool and Manchester. It was deemed a relative failure, and was never played again.

Since then there have been, by a quick count, 56 standard games of Railway Rivals in the zine, most of them run by me or by David Watts, who arrived in issue 82 after handing over RGR to the late Anne Nock, and has been sharing the load ever since. In the early days I had difficulty filling waiting lists (the subscribers were a purist Diplomacy lot then), but in more recent years RR lists have been the most popular and I could easily have been overloaded.

The "Discovery Variant" of Railway Rivals was invented by Andrew Poole and the first draft of the rules appeared in Ode 135. The game started in issue 142 and proceeded rather slowly, with various rules amendments along the way.

The concept was taken up by various others (without reference to Andrew), but it was the winner of that first game, Dave Erridge, who has since run two games, with rules developed from Andrew’s original. Definitely an Ode success.

Another rules playtest, launched in issue 148, was the Joint Lines variant, with rules permitting players to build lines jointly and then both continue from the end of the joint line. Tested on a crowded China map, I thought it went rather well, but nothing has been seen of the variant since.

Routemaster is, in my opinion, the best game played in Ode that never came to anything.

The game was invented by Andrew Poole, originally as a Railway Rivals variant, but it became a game of its own. Mooted in issue 98, the rules appeared in issue 125. A gamestart followed, and the game continued, slowly, for a couple of years before reaching a sort of conclusion.

Basically it was a game of bus route creation and running, on a map of the East Midlands, with complex rules for the generation of income from routes, depending on the number of other players in the hexes the route ran through and on through connections. Dave Erridge and I, especially, enjoyed playing it, but it was horrendous to rum. Basically it needs a Gming program, and noone had time to write one. Perhaps I’ll get round to it one day! top

Seismic Diplomacy is another game, in this case a Diplomacy variant, which became a feature of Ode. The rules first appeared in issue 21, and were translated by me from French; the original appeared in a French zine, Vortigern.

A variant that involves changing the shape of the map by altering the provinces’ boundaries, it has proved to be great fun and strategically challenging; I’ll revive it one day.

Andrew was Ode’s first outside GM, starting in 1981 with 16eme, an invitational Mercator game, and continuing with three other Mercators until he retired at issue 91.

Andrew was always efficient and helpful, and made very few errors, and thus showed me the value of outside GMs – look where that has led!

Much of Andrew’s work appeared in Dead Man’s Chest (q.v.), and was therefore not immediately apparent to everyone, but I was always very appreciative.

Keith gets a mention here because he contributed a series of articles to Ode entitled "Keith Smith’s Blasts from the Past", reliving significant events in hobby history. They appeared between issues 62 and 66, and thus enlivened a quiet period in the zine’s history.

Sonnet was an occasional subzine in Ode, run by Andrew Poole, devoted to Diplomacy variants, which he started when he folded his ‘variants discussion’ zine. As such, the content was limited to discussion of variants in general, and publicising ones that Andrew wanted to include.

Until I checked, I thought there were quite a few appearances of Sonnet. In fact, it only appeared 6 times, the first being in issue 32 (April 1982), and the last in issue 75 (May 86) – less than twice a year. I was always pleased to see it, but Andrew wasn’t forthcoming very often! Subsequently he returned with "Limerick Junction", devoted to the Routemaster game (q.v.).

Someone claimed that this game had never appeared in Ode. Not true – Steve Froud was running a game "Ereador" orphaned from The Acolyte, which ran in Ode from issue 60 until issue 77. Neither Steve nor anyone else wanted to open a waiting list for another.

Spymaster was a game of secret information, involving the seven powers of the Diplomacy board, which Mike Pollard invented, and playtested in Ode from issue 137. It didn’t prove terribly wonderful, and Mike hasn’t mentioned it since.

Enlivening the serious discussion of writing styles, and assorted insults, flying around in 1982, was the question of whether stale fish could spring. I can’t find how it started – an aside of mine, probably, but it got rather carried away.....

Always a contentious issue. Initially, following the normal practice of British GMs at the time, Ode did not use standbys. In 1982 (issue 37) I did a statistical analysis which showed that games in zines that used standbys had more dropouts than ones in zines that did not.

Yet within two years I had changed my mind, and with effect from the current House Rules (1984) I had introduced them, in strictly regulated circumstances. The reason was simple, that games could be completely ruined by dropouts; in this is was largely persuaded by subscribers. In practice, very few standbys have been used in Ode, simply because regular publication discourages them.

Shortly after going over to photocopied production, I imposed a standard layout on the zine in issue 60, and it’s been much the same ever since. Such consistency!

Jed has been involved in Ode since 1984, as well as running games himself – initially through his "Postal Games Club". From issue 62, however, he ran one game ("Maze Race") as an Ode GM, with progress reports in the zine. Never since, however! top

Steve answered a plea from me for an 1830 GM when I had a demand for games but noone to run them (my own attempts having proved a disaster!, and my 1829 GMs unwilling to take on the (then) new game), and has been filling the gap in his extremely efficient way ever since issue 160. So far he has run 3 1830s, 2 of 1856, 2 of 1841 and 1835, 1870 and 1826. Sounds like a lot of hard work, to me!

This was the name given to Ode 20eme by its GM, Doug Wakefield. It really was a toad to adjudicate; a Mercator game with additional aircraft and submarine units, but Doug managed it very well.

Ode 42eme was the highest rated game ever (up to that point – it may have been exceeded since), and involved Rob Chapman, David Phillips, Mike Close, Tom Tweedy, Cliff Kennedy, Richard Walkerdine and Nigel Quinn. Brilliant play, only two NMRs, masses of diplomacy, and a draw between Chapman, Close and Walkerdine.

Jeremy became an Ode GM in issue 53, taking over the games run by the disappearing Matt Quartermain (q.v.) and putting them on an even keel. He ran a couple of Diplomacy games for me after that, but left when they finished in issue 77. Now Diplomacy GM for Cut & Thrust, of course. top

Ode has always featured Diplomacy variants, ever since 4eme (Youngstown) and Gummi VII (Mercator), which were the first to appear in issue 3. Since then there have only been a few issues without at least one variant game.

Mercator (q.v.) has always been the mainstay, but there has usually been a ‘map-change’ variant (such as Seismic) and a ‘light-hearted’ variant (such as Vain Rats or Dipsomashy) running at the same time. Despite the proclaimed death of variants, we still manage to run a few.

The Ode letter column has included some strange subjects over the years, but the argument that raged between issues 101 and 106 over the rules of the UK Variant Bank must be the most obscure. In essence, Mark Nelson (custodian, and inventor of several variants himself) argued that the designer of a variant had copyright and was entitled to refuse to allow anyone to play one of his variants; others argued that in an amateur hobby that was too legalistic. The discussion faded away without anything being decided, and the UKVB has been through many hands since.

In an article in Ode 191, the death of Diplomacy variants was authoritatively proclaimed. However, it doesn’t seem to be entirely true... top

W is for Doug Wakefield

Adam (whose brother David played in numerous Diplomacy games) ran a single game of "Confrontation" between issues 90 and 109. It wasn’t a great success. top

Ever since, Ode has tended to not do very well in the Poll, mainly because other editors do not vote it highly on account of the relative lack of reading matter. So long as the zine is successfully running games, I don’t care – and dissections of the voting methodologies were a mainstay of the letter column for many years! top