John T. Beadles wrote: > > Pete, I need a written history of how Nova started to post on the > "Association of Old Novads" web page. Can you do something for me?Probably, I take it your looking for the story of how Nova was developed from the old GROMETS sub-committee of the SPO? Briefly, GROMETS circa 1981, the year I joined Texas A&M, was the war gaming subcommittee of MSC Recreation. Other subcommittees of the time were ACUI games, Backgammon, Chess, Bridge, Darts, and Pool. May have been some others, I forget. But that's not important. At that time there was two distinct subgroups withing the organization: those primarily players of war games (board games) and those playing fantasy role playing genre.Don Gillman was the GROMETS sub-chair at the time. (GROMETS incidentally, was supposed to stand for Game Replications Of Military-Economics Tactical Situations, but I think they just came up with a name and tried to make up something to fit the acronym) At the end of his term there were several people interested in taking the chair position. It had been agreed by most of the members that it was best to split the fantasy role players and the board gamers into separate subcommittees, but it was unclear who would lead them.
At this time Steve Daniels, a fellow gamer, realized that we were all concerned about SUB-committees, and that no-one had applied for the main Committee chairmanship. So Steve and some other forgettable fellow, (Steve could probably tell you) applied for the Recreation chairman and Steve won. Was kind of neat, since Recreation covered a huge variety of topics (see list of sub-committees) and Steve managed to staff up his committee with four of the most gorgeous females at Texas A&M. They were a lot of fun to work with, but unfortunately that's all I got to do with them. But I digress. Anyway, the various subcommittees each got there own sub chairman appointed by Steve. (I incidentally was his Scheduling Officer, got to learn a whole lot about facilities planning and management, which came to useful benefit later).
Unfortunately, the splitting of the GROMETS into two subcommittees, Gamers and FRP, did not have the expected benefit. If I remember right the chairmen for the subcommittees were Scott Slayden and David "Flash" Benet. Both were adequate as leaders, but I believe both got into academic trouble and had to drop their duties about midway through the year. I believe the Warcon Chairman that year was Nancy Bolland, a University Employee at that time. Warcon turned out pretty good that year, although I think the weather was pretty miserable. (The year before that was the famous Ice-Con of 1982) but the experience during the year was less than optimal. The gamers and FRPer's had split the open gaming rooms, and the FRPer's were making themselves a royal pain in the behind to the MSC Facilities staff. Adding to this misery was the fact that the gamers were having a small turnout, so many times the FRPer's would take over their rooms as well, so the appearance to the MSC staff was both groups were being a pain. (This may not have been entirely the FRPer's fault, as the Gamers at that time gamed in the MSC meeting rooms under the Hotel, and would get to be a little loud, enough to upset the hotel guests) Anyway, the MSC staff was very ornery without any provocation, and you'll remember that they would close the entire MSC complex at 11:00. That means drop security gates and run out anyone in the building. The MSC Facilities staff was pretty ornery without any provocation, and only got worse when they were stirred up.
You'll remember that the policy was to close the MSC at 11:00 pm and run everybody out of the building. You could get, and we had, special permission to stay until 2:00 am. I rememeber many nights gaming that the staff would come by and tell us to leave at 11:00. We would reply that we had permission to use the rooms until 2:00 am. First time this happened the staff officer in charge called up the facilities manager at home about 11:30 and woke him up to ask if we really had permission. Of course he was pissed and said no, and they came back and threw us out. Next day I went and got a written approval to show the staff next time they came by so they wouldn't have an excuse to try that again. So things went ok for the next couple of weeks, they would show up and we would present the reservation form and they left us alone for a while after that. Of course after we quit getting the written form, they started showing up at 11:00 again and telling us to leave. Well, we would respond that we had the room reserved until 2:00, and that person would leave, and his boss would show up and ask us to leave, and we would explain that we had the room reserved and he would get his boss, etc. until the the night foreman herself would come and tell us to leave, and we would say we had the room reserved and she would go away until 2:00, then come back and make sure we left. That went on for a while until I guess they got smart enough to look at the room schedule BEFORE going around and securing the building.
Of course there was a funny incident that happenned during this period of time that may have help bring some resolution to the room scheduling fiasco. There were 3 members of the FRP organization that were studying in the main lounge on evening, not a Friday, and they got moved out by the MSC staff as they closed up at 11:00. I remember one of the individuals was David "Flash" Bennet, Steve Daniels could probably tell you who the other two were, since he got called on the carpet by his advisor for what happened next. Seems these three people went to President Vandiver's house (which is on the campus) and knocked on his door at 12:00 or thereabouts until he answered the door in his robe. They told him they had been kicked out of the MSC and asked him if he they could use his living room to study in. Of course he said no, but by the middle of the next day things were stirred up in the SPO, and Steve and the adviser, Charlie Waters I think, had a personal meeting with Jim Reynolds, Director of the MSC. Talk about your black marks! Of course the story that went around was that they were gaming in the MSC, which wasn't the case, but still served denigrate our committees in the eyes of the MSC Staff and Council. But it seems a little strange that we didn't seem to have as many problems with getting run out at 11:00 after that.
Warcon did pretty well that year, we made a good profit, but the draw was lower than had been expected. It was decided that the Convention could be maybe better run by a committee of three rather than one, so Steve Daniels, John Haight and Nancy Bolland agreed to chair the convention next year. The rest of the year went by rather uneventfully, but here was a movement to split the Wargame groups into their own committee, on the idea that the wargamers were stiffling the Recreation Committee, (which was responsible for ACU-I tournaments as well). This did not pass that year, and I applied for the Recreation chair of the next year. I was the only candidate and it seemed I would be a shoe in. I went to the MSC Spring retreat and all, only to find out that I was denied the position. That meant that the council had picked NO-ONE over me. Talk about an ego adjustment! In retrospect, however, I think I could have been a little more tactful in the interview session. Seems one of the standard questions was something like, "What is Leadership?" and I replied with something like the peculiar ability to inspire by example. and made some joke about "kicking down Jim Reynold's door if necessary". they laughed at the time, but I believe that remark was what got me struck from the chairmanship. I understand that the vote was very close and Mr. Reynolds was one of the dissenting opinions. Anyways, it was a valuble lesson in learning how to not let my alligator mouth overload my hummingbird ass.
Well after a summer break and some time to re-adjust, I came back in '83 and we found that the Gamers committee had been given official committee status, and thus was born MSC Nova. Many people have wondered why the name Nova was selected, and if it stood for anything. The official line was that Nova stood for new, and the gamers were trying to make a break with the bad relations an instances of the past and start out with a clean reputation. What actually happened, if I remember right, Steve Daniels, then Recreation Chairman, was putting the petition together for establishing the wargamers as a separate committee, as he and another fellow (NOT ME!) were drafting this petition, they consumed a quantity of beer to keep their energy up, and when came time to put a nme to the proposed committee, one of them said "How about Nova?". They both agreed it that was the name and submitted the petition the next day.
(It has also been noted that Cephied Variables are stars which are sometimes bright, while Novas are stars that explode violently. Hm... - jtb)
While most of the committee members were not impressed with the name and wanted it changed, I advocated there had been to much dissention already and that it was time quit changing and move forward. The name stuck. Upon receiving committeeship, Nova received responsibility for promoting all games, except the ACUI ones, which still belonged to Recreation. If I remember right, no one was selected and the advisor had to cover the ACUI requirements that year. Anyway I applied for the new committee's chairmanship and made it. As a new committee, we were assigned to one of the new advisors, Shiela Michalski. A young graduate student at A&M, Sheila had no experience whatsoever with the SPO or advising, but turned out to be the best advisor and a good friend for NOVA for the next 3 years.
You will remember how I, you (jtb?) and someone else from our committee went in to Sheila's office and introduced ourselves and explained who we were and what we intended to accomplish. I' m sure she had quite a start, as we looked like reject mercennaries at that time. We established good relations, and I started off the committee with some good help. We got some new members, ran some game demos that drew well, and generally kept a pretty good relation in the SPO that year. Then there was WARCON.
(I don't think that was me. I recall getting accidentally sucked into the security position for Warcon. At that time I hadn't done much with Nova, other than gaming with Pete. Plus, I don't think we had started playing paintball so we wern't wearing camo yet. - jtb)
About November I realized that noone had done any work on Warcon for that year. John Haight had dropped out, Steve Daniels had taken a GPR lickin' and was concentrating on studies, and Nancy Bolland had also dropped out. I went to ask her if she would run the con that year and she said "Get thee away from me SATAN!" So, with no one experienced with Warcon to run it that year, I added its duties to myself and tried to pull that together. Overall, I guess it went well, but at the time I felt like it was a disaster. Trying to get people to work together, get their scenarios done on time, get dealers room arranged, contact game companies for promotional stuff, work out the petty personal differences, and still maintain a passing GPR was alittle more than I could handle. I was still under the delusion I wanted to be and aerospace engineer, and was getting my but kicked in Calculus and ME201.
Also, as John Haight was running Dealers Room, there was a problem with distance, as he was now in Houston. He also had a lot of ideas to implement to improve draw of the con, like getting table covers for the Dealer's Room from the local Beer Distributor, but a lot of those ideas bordered on upsetting our tenuous position with the Council, as well as not going over with the rest of the con staff. I don't remember all the problems, but he aforementioned table covers took a lot of politicing to get approved as they carried the Miller Beer logo on them. Also the mailout was a nightmare, as Sheila wanted me to sign all 2000 invitation letters myself. Plus there was a limitted amount of people willing to help sort and mail. I wound up having to go over to the post office and resort about 500 or so of the letters that had not been properly sorted.
Anyway, Warcon came together and went on as scheduled. I put on my business suit and played the professional con chariman. I seem to rmember wondering what we had accomplished in the previous 2 months of planning because nothing seemed to be organized. I think the scheduling was conducted Thursday night before the con and was under constant revision throughout. The MSC staff tried to drop the gates at 11:00, after I had informed them I had written permission to keep them open until 2:00, and then they tried to kick us out of all the rooms we had reserved for 24 hours.
One of the ideas the Haight had come up with was to solicit games from manufacturers in exchange for advertising space in our program book, tournament sponsorship, etc. and one of the nice things we recieved for that was 2 complete sets of the "LOST WORLDS" Fantasy combat books. That was a retail value of about $200. These were some of the nicer prizes available for our tournaments, and on Saturday night, as I was getting ready to hand the prizes to the tournament directors, I found that the entire box, with both sets had dissappeared sometime that evening in a headquarters room full of about 20 con staff, who had been gaming there all evening. That really shot my respect for a lot of our "members". This also lead to a policy of not gaming in the headquarters, which I think has never been enforced. Also, one of the hardest things I did after the Con was to write the manufacturer of those games and tell them what happened.
(That always bothered me, too, especially since I was security. Of course, my main duties were making sure the Dealers Room doors were locked and walking around to make sure nobody was beating the daylights out of anybody else. - jtb)
Except for that instance however, security was good, I think yourself and Mike Aldefer were in charge of that end. And at the end of the Con, most of the contestants went away very happy. The tournaments had been good and I was very generous in giving out prizes. The con staff, who didn't receive much, were a little miffed that all the merchandise that we had received was given out to the guests and not much was given to the staff, but I think it worked out better that way. Attendance was dismal, somewhere around a 100 paying guests. I think that being generous to the guests helped in attendance in subsequent years. At the time I was very concerned that I was about to have run the first Warcon that lost money. As it turned out, when all the receipts had been counted, we broke about even, a profit of something like $5.00.
At the end of the Con, we had two portraits left from Vicki Wheeler, a fantasy artist who had bartered portraits for dealer table space. I had one of the portraits done of myself, with a great big screw driven through me, because that's the way I felt. That portrait still hangs proudly in my house. I think the other one was given to John Beadles for overseeing security. What did you do with yours?
(After about a dozen moves, it's still packed away, but I do still have it. I'll have to find it and scan it. - jtb)
There was a postmortem of course, and we established some good guidelines for the next Warcon, which Herb Finkel was to chair. The rest of the year went pretty smoothly, and Kelly Miller ran for the Chair and got the position. The last thing of that year was finding out during Finals Week that the meeting rooms under the MSC Hotel were being converted to offices. These were the only rooms that could be reserved for all night use. No one in the SPO was aware of the change, and I wrote a complaint letter to the Battalion, just before leaving that semester. As it turned out, even since the semester was over, the MSC Facilities agreed to allow 24 hour access to other rooms in the MSC the next semester.
The next year Kelly Miller chaired the Nova committee, and he talked me into doing the Warcon again. As far as the committtee goes, we did very well that year, and Nova started to enjoy some respect in the SPO, which it maintained for some years. Kelly was very good at handling the SPO, committee and MSC politics, and really improved the committees standing. As far as Warcon, I chaired the con, but did not do much more than direct or request things be done. Kelly had things organized so that the con staff actually got things done before Warcon that year, so pretty much all I did was direct. You (jtb) ran the Dealer's room that year, and probably remember more about how that con went than I do.
That's about all that happened in the early years. I'm sure I have left out somethings, if you like maybe I can write up some instances from those olden days and send them to you as I remember them. God, I thought I would never forget those times! I must be getting older, I'm sure not getting any richer.