Harold Buchanan Interviews Ardy and Ryan on the Charles S. Roberts Awards for SDHistCon

hey we're live so much for the 30 second intro right there was no intro that was an intress intro it was a third of a second intro was very brief uh welcome to SD hiscan and uh my honored guest Gary mangle and Ryan Hilman hello thanks for having us Harold I appreciate it thank you yeah look it's um good fun I'm excited that uh you all are here uh Mike is the first guest yet again again to make a comment um no surprises there he seems to be everywhere I wonder is there only one mic or there multiple mics there could be he may have stolen the cloning technology from David Thompson is our working hypothesis actually yes I mean one person cannot play all the games that Mike has so it would be it would be optimal for him to clone himself yeah well congrats Mike good good luck with that technology I hope we can make some money off of it to be honest that'd be optimal too yeah um so we're here to talk about the Charles S Roberts Awards and uh the two of you play a big role in what that award uh system is today so um with that said I'd love to to uh talk a little bit about the history of the Charles S Roberts award before you all were involved and I know that uh you've spent a good deal of time on that so would love to hear uh hear the story what's what what is the history of the Charles S Roberts award so it's it's a little complicated because it was at one point an unofficial name um until Charlie Roberts himself gave his Blessing to use his name but it was unofficially applied to the origins Awards um even prior to that the origins Awards Charles S Roberts awards were started by a fellow named John Mansfield at origins in 1975 um and uh he stepped away I'm not sure at some point I don't we don't have records of this right our our our archives are scampy let me put it that way not uh not that great um at some point however Roger mcgaan became involved and uh and he is our honorary chairman at this point Roger however has been uh extremely and pointedly hands off we're kind of you kind of he's invited as a blanket invite to any meetings that we may have and and I talked to Roger periodically um I asked Roger for help periodically and he is happy to provide it he's very generous with his time uh but he is not officially involved in any way in our actual process yeah I've noted that he's very careful to to avoid any perception of a conflict of interest and I haven't really had that conversation with him but I I feel like that is in fact the the reason yeah so Gary Gary's much more versed on that history than I am I mean I know a lot about the history of the origins and whatnot but uh the actual history of the the wards he's much more verse than I am so I'm learning now as I'm listening to what he's saying so thank you g there was a well no problem there there was a split around 1987 and the the urban legend not confirmed is that that split um occurred based on friction concerning awards given or nominations given to uh Milton Bradley's Fortress America um but I I have a hunch it's more complicated than that but that's kind of something we're still investigating right I don't have every old issue of moves magazine that talks about this stuff for example or fire movement or any of the other periodicals that were around at the time I might well then well we can talk later you've got a lot of stuff too Ryan I do I might have quite a few of them but the origins Awards have continued on obviously and there's been kind of a split because you know there are some people and um some games and whatnot that have made it into the origin awards that aren't even in the Charles S Roberts and including Roger including Roger which is awkward and eventually we're going to have to we're going to that's a question we're going to have to answer but uh but we did not feel quite equipped to deal with it quite yet yeah well it would seem easy to build a consensus on that topic in particular uh yeah extremely yeah yeah there's no no doubt um the the topic of of of understanding the history of our hobby is very interesting to me I talk a lot to Jason Matthews about how are we preserving the history how are we preserving you know just the knowledge of what's happened and and the critical bits of data about what's happened and you know all that takes time and money which is a tiny hobby we just don't have and so so it's a one yet another challenge for all of us yeah interest go I was gonna say in general I don't think we do a very good job of that um we you know Gary stumbles upon things I stumble upon things other people stumble upon things you know a lot of times um what do you do with it you know you know does it end up in the trash does it get preserved someplace and it's a hard thing to do we only have limited space in our houses and no place to store these things and there's no Central repository of information either um I've been lucky enough to um stumble upon some real gems in my time um including uh uh through Jan Roberts I got to see the uh first copy of um of his first game Charles Robert's first game tactics and that was a real gem to see you know but what do you do with that does that go to a museum does that go to somebody's house you know and that's kind of the difficult with that kind of thing and that's not including all the magazines and all the prototypes and everything else that could be out there as well as just the collective knowledge and unfortunately as you all know we are in a hobby where where people pass away and as they do we lose that knowledge so it's good to try to get as you said earlier Herald some of these young people in they can uh start uh taking the mantle and getting some of that knowledge as well um hand it over to them in recent years we've started to see this is a recent development last say last 10 years uh in the role playing space we started to see gaming that type of gaming treated as a topic worthy of historiography and we really haven't seen that yet in war gaming which is interesting because War gaming is the older hobby populated by an a demographic that I would presume SK skews older right but we've seen wonderful scholarly level works by like playing at the World by John Peterson which talks about the early history of Dungeons and Dragons and its Evolution from wargaming there's like the first half of the book talks about wargaming uh we really haven't seen an equivalent thing I have high hopes for Mark Herman's book that's coming out from GMT soon yeah I well I I have high hopes and have uh have read through it it's it it's it's something different it's it's excellent but something different right um you know we may have to just charge ourselves to spend some time Gathering a history and putting it into some sort of book or Tome um and and it's a little bit of topic um but but you know there is a gentleman at um Stanford University that works with Library he was at the last SD hison in San Diego and he's trying to reach out to some of the great uh designers in our part of the Hobby and and pull together some of the history and uh I connected him with Mark uh Herman I connected him with John Butterfield and then of course Jason Matthews and uh so you know that could really be a promising opportunity of a well-funded entity if they're really interested in capturing some of our history to to have a place to keep it and uh make it accessible so and I think that's some of the stuff that we're looking to get to with the with the with the csrs because you know at this point we we are not an official nonprofit entity and we are moving towards that uh uh spot so that that we can raise some money and then be able to do things like that you know preserving the history of even the awards themselves which is or or have Awards like a physical thing that we send out to people that'd be great yes yeah the um I I was helping John Hill's uh daughter resolve some of his uh his assets after his passing um a few years ago and she said is there anything you want and I said well not really and and then I thought about it and she said um you know he's got a CIA badge which you like the CIA badge and I said no I don't that's a little too personal that might be illegal for you to have it in effect that's right that's right well I could I mean if I put if I cut out a picture and put my face on it I think it's okay um I would I would advise Consulting a practicing attorney on this topic all right so not just you and Ryan but a prac yeah no no not not an attorney and not your attorney well we'll do and since I haven't taken any action uh but I did um I did uh ask her I said are there any dice around that he played with and uh she sent me a box of his dice which is that's awesome very cool right and if I had my fingertips I'd show them to you I'll show them to you another time but um you know it's little stuff like that that that I'm excited to have but I'm also you know like gez it would be nice right what if we had Richard Berg's Dice and John D Dice and you know I have a pair of one of the the prize of my dice collection is a pair of percentile dice that were rolled by Gary G in my presence so wow wow did and he he couldn't catch you after you grab them well they were my dice so you know Gary was he wasn't stealing them okay all right would you track them down and say here roll my dice real quickly no this happened at Gen Con he ran a a demo of dangerous Journeys ironically enough that I participated in okay well all right so we've already created one project which is we've got to figure out how to document the history of the Hobby and some sort of uh written form that uh that allows us to share it with the future right so uh so that's that's project one let's move on to uh the project two you know thinking back through the history and talking to some of the the great designers that we both we all know that that that were involved at the early days got csrs early um there was a a very different sort of voting processes right there was some sort of um not really a committee but and I don't know that it was a union but some sort of trade group that would vote on these right uh early on and um and then you know the the people would vote the people would nominate you all have have changed the iteration um to something that seems very manageable but um how do you think about uh the history and and as you went through adjusting it to what it is now um did you feel encumbered by the history of the award and how it was selected no uh I mean the original process at least in 1975 was a literal paper ballot that they passed out and then collected at Origins and then they tallied the votes up and announced the winners on Saturday night or something like that so that was like the original structure one of the CH of course as we probably all know there was a Charles S Roberts Awards Hiatus between 2014 and 2018 no awards were awarded in that time until Tim toe stepped forward and took over uh in and began to operate the process again in 2019 um but one of the things that didn't happen to get done for what reason during that period was it you know a an ironclad process and and while I won't describe our current process as Ironclad um at least there's a process and we have disclosed that process so we have not to the extent we'd like necessarily but we you know there's better transparency now people have have an idea of how that process works and I'm also not going to claim that that process is currently uh absolutely plaws and airtight obviously it's not and we you know every year we we learned something new we learn uh some something that went wrong that we feel like we need to address you yourself Harold pointed out a problem with the new Charter that we created for the 2022 Awards and and he you said hey this is going to be a terminology here's going to be a problem and you were right it was a problem so so we have to work we we worked to address that problem with the charter changes which were otherwise relatively minor uh for the 2023 Awards and I'm sure we will end up making some adjustments for next year as well yeah I mean the the first step when Gary got involved and and and I got involved as well was is was just to get out on Awards I mean it was critical at that time that uh we get out some sort of awards that first year um so we really didn't have any time to really think about you know what the process was going to be or how it was going to work because it was already in place and we just had to get an award out um and then the following year we were then able to take a look at and determine you know what do we want to do how do we want to change things and it's not a in stone type thing I mean it's something that we constantly reevaluate every year and determine you know what would be good changes to make and we did make some changes this year and there are some things that worked really well and there was a couple things that that didn't work so well and we'll probably make some additional changes going into next year again um I mean hopefully we'll get to the point where we have you know one solid thing but we don't want to be so inflexible that we can't change with the times yeah one of the things that we've had to be aware of too is is you know the the wargaming hobby is different here in 2024 for example than it was in 1977 or 1987 or 1997 um these communities and these spaces continue to evolve and we have to uh be able to address the wargaming Hobby and Community as it is and not how we would like it to be in some idealized perfect utopian world yeah it seems like as you as you set up a mechanism to to to for nominations and for selection you have to balance um Fair reasonable accurate processes with with your ability to execute on them right I mean it just it we can't design the perfect system um and and and if it and if it were perfect it might be unmanageable so you the uh I think you you guys have done an admirable job of of molding a system in that's that you can execute on and and there are things about it that I that I don't like and and I know that there are things others don't like but I think it's a nice balance of all factors so uh so kudos to you guys for for the progress well thanks Harold and I mean that that has been a consideration right we we'd like to have as as solid a process as possible um but we also have a pro have to have a process that we can actually execute I mean some some wonderful ideas have been put forth in various venues uh for example that are just not something we can actually execute um so we're going to continue to try to move ourselves forward I mean when I stepped in it it kind of halfway through the process for 2021 not not even halfway I mean we had the votes had been cast at that point let me put it that way but there was like H how do we do this right I mean we don't have it written down about ex the exact I mean we had uh you know there was a charter um that kind of laid out broad policy but it didn't tell us how to do this step one step two step three we didn't have step anything we had we had nothing to work with so it the the top immediate priority was to establish a process and we knew even at the time every and we'd all agree and Ry will back me up on this that we knew it was not going to unfold flawlessly and it and it didn't um but we have continued to make improvements since then I am generally pleased with with where we are with the caveat that you know there's there's still room to grow there's always got to be room for improvement but as Ryan said we'd like to get to a process a point where where we don't have to continue making you know process tweaks every year we have a process and I'm sure we'll continue to evolve um but a process that we are functionally happy with yeah I mean just to just to give one small example and I know Gary will back me up on this um in that uh First full year um we we had come up with certain categories and um you know what not we had our list of where things could be nominated and and some of them we knew were end up working really well and then there was somewhere we had some some issues and and one of the big issues is where do we fit all the uh games that are more political more social uh in nature um and are not so much the K kinetic Warfare type games and so we created a new category for th those particular games and I think that worked out very well this year we had some very good nominations and a good well I can't say the winners yet but I'm sure we have a great winner as well we have a fantast we have fantastic winners in all categories and yeah that was obviously something that we were going to need to address and I didn't feel like we were in a place to address it for that first full year um and but obviously it was something that we had to get to in in the next year and I'm I'm comfortable with the way that decision has landed and how it has evolved this year um we have had some issues this year um that was not one of them I think that was completely smooth there's always going to be as you know uh issues from from various sides I mean we've we've had people that have complained and and been concerned about the fact that um these awards are no longer war game awards that they're going to non war games which I I mean okay don't quite understand okay I mean if you count the nominees and tell and then tell give me a list of which ones aren't war games that are nominated in any category other than political social or economic war games then then your concerns will be noted and we will talk them through well we've had had those concerns and then we've had the other concerns on the other side that says we haven't uh included enough uh games that are are more what we call I guess more French games that are not quite as we said that kinetic Warfare type game um I mean you know Harold I mean you've you've designed a coin game you know is that is that a fringe game don't be calling my game a fringe game Ryan I I'm not calling a fringe game I believe there are there are is fringe depicted somewhere in the games model oh yeah like on the outfits of the uniforms um but um I mean I'm sure there are some people out there who would say that that's not truly a war game oh I could name them if you'd like and that they should not be that should not be up for an award well go ahead please continue I I'm just I'm just saying I mean so so how do you please you know both sides of that and it's really a balancing act that we've been trying to pursue and I think we've been doing a pretty good job of that so far yeah well I continue to say only somewhat factiously that as long as everybody is mad probably doing something correctly okay it's so true and and and you know to be honest it's not about making trying to make as many people happy as possible it's about determining what the purpose of the award is right what so so what is what is it going to be and now that we we agree that it's going to be that we're not going to agree with everybody but but if you all agree you're the committee that matters then then let everybody know inform transparent and then charge forward and if people want you know an award for a hex encounter game involving the East front and that it doesn't fall within at least happily within whatever your conduct is then they can make their own award well that's true and and it has been my position and you know this was obvious to me I didn't have to think very hard at all to come to this conclusion that that officially you could take this as an official statement the Charles S Roberts awards are delighted that there are other Awards in the wargaming and conflict simulation space and we are happy to help support those uh those initiatives as well uh different awards are going to award different things that is completely natural I mean if you look at movies you've got the the uh The Screen Actors Guild Awards which is handed out by The Screen Actors Guild and the Academy Awards which is handed out by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and there's a bunch of public Awards too that just are just public votes um we are the kind of award we are and we are happy to acknowledge and support and help out where we can other Awards with different goals that happen to overlap into our space yeah I think you know the I I couldn't agree more right I think we need more Awards and and I love the idea I I mean I use Awards is recognition for kind of games that I should be playing that I haven't played they they draw my attention um and so there are a lot of reasons to have Awards and to draw attention to the games but um you know I I I think the the reason the obvious reason that you all get so much attention is there's just such a wonderful history behind the Charles S Roberts yeah I think that's really important to remember I mean if you're a brand new award you you don't have that obligation you know to hold up to I mean we're talking since 1975 as you said earlier so we really do have a history um that we have to honor you know and an individual we have to honor and as you as you mentioned I think offline but I'll just say it again we're very fortunate to have Charles S Robert's daughter Joanne yeah Joanne has been a an absolute Delight to have involved in our process and and since we don't have Charlie anymore we've got Joanne yeah and it's great that uh that she's invested and involved and you know I've seen herh defend the award to you know to to detractors so um I love I love seeing that I'm glad that that she's visible and we should do what we can to protect her and encourage her continued involvement it's fantastic you know just to say this everybody's entitled to their opinion right I we I am not personally and I think Ryan and Robert and Joanna and the other people involved are not wounded by criticism um criticism is a is an opportunity for us to identify process and and and and Target problems that we have so everybody everybody I I am delighted to to you know to to hear those things but you know it's there there is there's a difference obviously between helpful criticism and unhelpful criticism but you know even the unhelpful people are still entitled to their opinions I I agree I mean I I I any type of criticism is fine I mean as long as it's focused I mean obviously personal tax are not what we want to handle or deal with but I mean that would be an example of unhelpful criticism very unhelpful Gary is ugly for example was not helpful no yeah it may be true it's just absolutely Gary come on what a mug out that guy he's got that face for radio face for radio exactly yeah well you know it's uh it's it's um one one of the one of the things in the hobby with the need for volunteer help that we all have in our endeavors you know I I love to see somebody with a criticism a proposed solution and the willingness to spend some time to help me fix it it's a criticism without a solution or time to help fix it is in this where we stand now is useless to me one of our challenges going forward is going to be how do we uh do we improve engagement um with the general public with the wider board gaming hobby right I think that's critical to give us visibility which is not to say that we want necessarily people who are totally uninvested in WarGames voting in our process right not not that that doesn't happen now of course it does yeah but we'd like to increase engagement with uh with the public with the broader board Gaming Community with war Gamers um and with the Publishers and purveyors and designers of War games yeah and one of one of my big uh goals and I know Gary probably shares this as well is that um I do want to uh reach that International audience more both by having more individuals involved on the actual board nominating committee and advisory committees but also more games um from um International sources and being able to honor more individuals from um all over the world and I think we've done a pretty good job at that especially with Europe we have done a less awesome job uh intersecting engaging with the substantial wargaming communities and publication scenes in East Asia for example yeah yeah and I you know with South China Sea I've gotten a lot of exposure to to Gamers War gamers in China right and uh really quite extraordinary what's going on there a lot of games that that we just don't we don't see and have visibility into as a matter of fact we we'd like to grow SD hison into a you know around the earth sort of event where we can get uh some some glimpses into what's going on in those in the Philippines and in uh in Vietnam and China and uh other other places so I always knew your ultimate goal was world domination Herold it is it well Universal okay yeah that's fine too you got to get with El musk on the the letter go there I he I hear he's got a rocket he does have some some Rockets from what I understand well um so there's a committee now that plays an important role on in in U selecting uh nominating nominating I guess is probably the way to say it and and perhaps the debate over what categories and and uh how to structure the awards um what what's the process of um of attracting the best and the brightest and making sure that you have coverage of all of the vast things that we do as a as a group I mean that's never going to be airtight uh essentially the process now after I mean I think it was obvious to folks in like 209 2020 that there were some irregularities in the process that folks were not generally comfortable with and I'm not even talking here about that game is not a war game and that kind of stuff I'm talking about this game won a map award and there's no map in the Box this game won an award and was nominated at least and it had released like 7 years earlier um so we what we needed was some kind of process that democratizes the nomination process so it's not just Garry's making the decisions because because no we won't be doing that um and at the same time gives us some degree of governance and curation about what exactly gets nominated and a great deal of attention is paid inside our process to making sure that that games um that are up for an award for that year are actually released in that year for example that was an obvious thing that uh that was that was coming up before that we were pretty uncomfortable with um so that is uh we we take suggestions from the board as to who might uh might be deserving of a a spot on the nominating committee and then we send out a bunch of emails and of course that that you know that develops exactly as you'd expect where some people just don't get back to us um but then we form a nominating committee and that nominating committee has a couple of meetings and a nomination process in which Ryan has been absolutely invaluable I'd be actually probably deceased by this point if I had to do all that work um and then at the end we have a ballot that goes out to the entire nominating committee and that ballot determines what nominees actually get to be nominees and what games do not quite make the cut as great games as they might be not every game can become a nominee for example well that it brings up an interesting question we have um we had some discussion uh on I guess it was BGG perhaps um I don't really follow consim World forums but uh wouldn't be surprised if it was there as well but there was a very popular World War II solo game that uh was not nominated but seemed to be very popular and there were questions about that and uh just wanted to give you the chance to to talk about that and and and what what it what it means well the gaming question I mean we we might as well not be koyi because everybody will figure it out uh was Mike grella's uh solitary game and and it was very warmly received it is by all accounts I haven't played it personally so I can't speak to it but it is by all accounts an outstanding game and ultimately at the end of the day in in the couple of categories in which it was part of the process right it was on the nominating committee's list of games to be considered and at the end of the day it just didn't get the votes um it's just a bit of a hard luck story for for Mike and and his game that is by all accounts outstanding uh and I'm we were pleased to observe that that it has gotten recognition elsewhere yeah yeah it will and and it'll certainly have is having good commercial success too so you know I don't think say I was gonna say that's a it's a it's a good example though of of you know the the learning process yes you know because we we didn't just say and tune it out and say you know we don't want to hear it you know it didn't get nomin don't don't talk to us this this is the way it is you know we learned from that process and looked and evaluated our our the way we did things and then we can take that going forward and say well do we want to do we need to make an appropriate change that you know may allow uh for certain games to come in and maybe we do votes a little differently moving forward I mean there's a lot of things we can learn from from even an experience like that yeah I think I think one of the other questions that comes out of that is the composition of the board right is is that of that committee um is it a committee that sees enough uh stuff and and you know I don't I'm not that's not an accusation that's just a question and I I don't know how you create a committee that sees enough it's a tough challenge without a 200 person committee which would obviously be completely unmanageable right we we have uh gone out of our way and I think we've we've done a good job but there's always room for improvement of creating nominating committees with a diverse array of voices I do not want to populate a committee with everybody who just nods their head to whatever Gary oryan says that would be a incredibly unhelpful committee um so we've got a little bit you know some there's definitely some areas where we'd like to improve from a technical standpoint uh one of the things we'll probably do and this will be in the charter um is or at least in the nominating committee rules uh I think we'll probably move to some kind of ranked Choice ballot for that final nominating committee ballot I think that would work out better and that would res uh result in fewer ties at either the top or bottom of the ballot um and that will eliminate some of the Oddities that we saw with the nominating committee uh results this year in terms of categories that that had either less or more than five which is our Target for nominees we're not committed to five there doesn't have to be five um but in some cases you know there were there were Oddball pileups at the bottom of the ballot that we uh we'd rather be able to address via the the wishes of the people on the nominating committee rather than you know us making the decisions at the end of the process yeah do you um do you all talk about numbers of ballots number of votes number of um board members all of those things can I ask questions about that so the members of the board are listed um on our website the Charles S Roberts awards.com and we do announce the me the names of the N both a nominating committee and the Hall of Fame jury each year um we have never the Charles and I had did have a conversation with Roger about this the Charles S Roberts Awards have never announced a number of ballots cast I think I'd like to move in that direction and the in the service of transparency what I can tell you is that we had about 20% more ballots cast this year than last year and last year had about eight or nine as I recall percent uh more ballots cast than the previous year um the balloting process that we're using is through Google forms which does have some limitations um it is not possible using that platform for us to for completely forbid somebody from casting multiple ballots without requiring uh the voters to sign into Google meaning they need to have a Google account and we didn't want to restrict it in that way so that's that's why the constant admonitions from me saying please only vote once that hasn't been a huge problem um we we have had to kind of screen that I think last year we had like a half a dozen duplicate ballots cast and we combined those where we could we had more than that this year but we had more ballot cast this year too I mean the the board definitely does go over all those numbers and and receives a report back from Gary as regards the number of ballots of our cast and and people that participated and all that kind of stuff so we can make those decisions going forward but I'm in complete with agreement with Gary that I think we need to really consider moving uh even further forward with transparency on that and getting that out to the public and what that probably sounds like is you know some point after the process is completed right now we're really focused on on completing the 2023 Awards which should be announced very soon oh very soon very soon and you could blame either myself or Dan but it's really my fault that that you won't see it this weekend actually we're we're really close weend would be very soon it would be very soon but we're not going to make it quite that soon can you give us a window uh we would are uh officially no our uh I hope to have the announcements next weekend the announcements be made public next weekend body's watching so you can tell me whatever you want so uh if you uh if there are any issues we don't make that date please send your complaints to haral Buchanan gmail.com good I'm glad you have that memorized the um there's another thing I wanted to talk about is related to categories it might be interesting to hear your thoughts and and how we Define some of these things there a magazine category and and um you know my my interest in magazines is that that I think a magazine is not just a recap either a game or a recap of the history around a game but would also have some relevance to the culture of what we all do and uh and and there are rich histories of that in moves magazine and fire and movement and other magazines right that that weren't just company uh Canon and and so I'm interested in in um first of all you know kind of it seems like in the past we have magazines that are excellent magazines but they have games in history and they don't touch probably intentionally don't touch the culture and and then the other question is a little Wilder and and maybe nonsensical but are things like you know the the standouts to me are something like players Aid right the work that they do would seem to be a magazine by any definition after 1970 um so um how do you think about it uh you the Charles S Roberts definition of magazine well this is something we have had Fairly extensive discussions about and it's a it's a valid question and you know print is dying as a medium right maybe not books but magazines and newspapers definitely and War gaming is one of the few places where print magazines retain some degree of relevance so we in have every intention unless the landscape changes dramatic in a way we would rather not see um we absolutely intend to maintain a category 4 print magazines uh but one of the things that was attempted back in the 201 uh 18 2019 era was to kind of have have categories that encapsulated uh some of those uh things like commentary uh we were not happy with the way those categories were structured at the time so in the name of efficiency and and because we couldn't come up with good formulations for those categories without having six categories for those things um which again turns us turns it into a a where there's really a lot of categories and and and more than we felt we could handle um so don't be shocked to see us address this although I don't have a concrete answer for you right now because that will be one of the things that we discuss moving into the 20124 awards process is how do we handle digital uh commentary on wargaming right uh digital magazines YouTube channels blogs articles that might appear we had a very very unstructured process before where you would have blog posts and YouTube videos and scholarly articles that were printed in DOD journals all lumped into the same category um and that felt very wrong like we were compar comparing apples oranges and uh 88 millimeter anti-tank anti-aircraft guns all in the same category yeah I think the uh it's a really difficult thing to deal with I mean when you're trying to give an award just just to a magazine itself okay let's just take a pure uh written paper magazine okay does the does the award go to the magazine as a whole does the award go to as a magazine only if it has a game and then that entirety does the award go just to the game and then within a certain calegory or does the award go to articles within that particular magazine and that's been done differently over the past just five years Alone um so that's been a real challenge there and and even we have changed a little bit here and there um so we're constantly looking at that and trying to figure that out and then as you said do you have these digital entities as something completely separate in a separate category or do they then roll into um one category with the other magazines um I mean you know Harold you're involved with the quite a few of those yourself and um what you are doing is very much often bluring those lines and so I think that's a really interesting question to get into it's not one I really thought about previously but it's it's making me think about it going forward as we're looking at how do we do the awards next year I think I've said this publicly but I I was really hoping that somebody some enterprising individual would would create and curate and run a set of wargaming media awards that would cover things like YouTube channels and blog posts and BGG reviews and stuff like that that so that the csrs uh wouldn't need to handle them but no uh nobody has uh seen fit to do that yet yeah and and we had to focus on what we focused on because we had to to take something that was well frankly about to fall apart NE make sure it wasn't going to fall apart and then and then make sure it was on solid footing and if we had got away from the core focus and got into all these other things best blog best podcast but it it just would have been untenable going forward and so we had to make sure we had the basics done and then we can look at other things yeah I I hear you and I one of the one of the questions it raises in my head is what what is the purpose of the Charles S Roberts Award right and and and it you know something I can't answer and would be great if if Mr Roberts were available right to talk through this because life has changed um and we have a small number of of these 1950s magazines that talk about have a game in them and talk about history and all wonderful right and if that's the definition of what we do the Charles S Roberts award I don't mean to say we but then then we're we're good but if it's but if the purpose of the Charles S Roberts award is to Encompass the culture around the games that we play then there's a broader responsibility to make sure that it's not just the 1950s definition of magazines I I would love to have that conversation with Charles S Roberts I mean don't forget that even he and his life uh changed his Focus dramatically yeah I mean he obviously was the inator that we think of um but he moved on you know he he he got rid of the company he moved on and he was mostly focused on his other Hobbies like trains and things um so you know I I would love to know what he thinks of some of this and I think that's definitely something we need to be thinking about and focusing on looking forward um but at the same time the world has changed as you said and so we need to be cognizant of that and and be making an awards that is um not a 1950s award that is 21st century award it is important I I really want to make sure that I say this though um it's as important as it is and it's critically important for to recognize the state of the wargaming hobby today with what we're trying to accomplish um it's equally important for us to recognize the Legacy and history of the Charles S Roberts Awards and of Charles S Roberts right the csrs are not going to get away from recognizing excellence and hex encounter war games that is not an objective we have we we are committed to retaining um recognition of excellence in the hex encounter traditional war game Space right but we also have to recognize that that's not the entirety of our space anymore and it frankly hasn't been since the late 1970s so uh we we need to recognize the realities of the hobby that we're actually in I would be remiss in my duties if I didn't end it on that tie raade Gary so thank you for was that that was exceptionally mild as tie raids go I got tell you it's still a TI rate so well done love it it's what we all showed up for and we also got a closing comment there from from the great Mark Herman who has a wall dedicated to all of the csrs he has one yeah we might we might in future have Mark Herman Awards in fact yeah yeah good well let him know I've had that discussion with him um it is uh and I'm a two-time Charles S Roberts Award winner so I have a vested interest in uh in maintaining the history and and and carry around the great honor that comes with this auster award and the history associated with it so uh thank you guys for all you do I know it's hard and uh and and you know it's death by a thousand beasting but uh keep fighting the good fight and let us all know how we can help and uh thanks for thanks for talking to me today Harold it's been an absolute pleasure and we're happy to uh have had this conversation yeah was wonderful thank you so much see you in 15 minutes yep take care