Carnage by the Lake was a great time for all present this year. We had new players enter the hobby from the broader game convention, two of the rounds had a game that lasted over twelve hours, other games were played, and little sleep was had. At the finale, Jim Yerkey turned the event over to me to be TD for upcoming years... more on its upcoming new & unique structure soon!

Buz Eddy, the omnipresent face of the NADF, elected to step down and pass the considerable task of upholding his legacy to me around the same time that Carnage was ending in November. Since then, I have been increasingly active as I become more comfortable in my role, and I expect that all the necessary tasks that need doing, in order to move the hobby in the positive direction I envision, shall have been delegated successfully by the end of the first quarter of 2005.

Upcoming policy areas that will be addressed include, but are hardly limited to: ratings; masterpoints; other non-rating, non-masterpoint structures that could help promote play; an organizational structure for the NADF, grounded in a charter; corporate sponsorship & relations with Hasbro; increased centralization of web resources for the hobby; improved contact with the international Diplomacy community; tournament scoring systems, their causal bases & some normative considerations surrounding these; volunteer recruitment for the NADF; and returning increasing amounts of postal & e-mail players to the face-to-face hobby. If you would like to be actively involved, all that's required from you is a highly energetic level of motivation; on the new NADF site (www.diplomacyfed.org), information regarding the Minister of Recruitment to contact, for your particular geographic locale, will be shortly forthcoming. And while you're there, be sure to register for the already-active forums!

Thanks for everyone's time & consideration; here's to the New Year for the NADF & hobby in general! :)