Bill Wilkerson Interview: Mustard Seed Café at Highland Square, Akron, Ohio.
Friday August 13th, 2021
By Travis Henry
Photos of Bill from facebook:
I'd gotten in touch with Bill Wilkerson via Lawrence Schick. Schick had told me that "The map was preserved by Bill Wilkerson of Akron who's still active in gaming auction circles - you could contact him."
I was visiting Akron for business anyway (my own RPG was being featured in the Akron newspaper), so I decided to reach out to Bill via facebook, and he graciously agreed to an interview. We met for lunch on the second-floor terrace of the Mustard Seed Café.
The Interview:
Q: Hi Bill. Could you say more about who preserved your Original Known World map?
BW: As for the map, I sold it to Alex Kammer, a serious collector. He designed a small number of modules.* He is current owner of the OKW map. I was digging through boxes. The map was folded over and folded over again. Lawrence and Tom had gifted it to me. I got it out and had it framed. Allan Kammer ended up with a $1500 bid. Frank Mentzer says could've gotten $5000. Allan is a good person to go to for further info. He organizes the Gamehole Con, each November in Madison, Wisconsin. He reframed it in a nicer frame, and displays the map at the convention for all to see.
*[Note: Alex Kammer's work can be found on DriveThruRPG: Gamehole Publishing (and facebook). and the Quests of Doom series by Frog God Games. And his blog.]
BW: Allan Grohe is the person who tried to gather and promote Tom Moldvay's work. Tom died in 2007—too soon. Both Tom and Lawrence were ahead of their time. Both creative geniuses. Both were based in Kent prior to TSR.
[Note: Kent is a university town, located one county east of Akron. Less than 15 minute drive.]
Q: Schick (here) says that he first met Tom Moldvay at the Kent State Science Fiction Club in 1973. Do you remember the club?
BW: Yes, I remember it. The club sponsored the 4D Con at Kent State in 1976. I helped with that; I was a comic book dealer; I manned a table with a friend. A good convention…but, the organizers, maybe it was Tom and Lawrence, brought Harlan Elison as a guest. Harlan wanted $4000 to come and be a speaker and guest. [Note: That's $19,000 in 2021 currency.] They figured we'd do that well. He was great. But the convention didn't make that much money. So what they did for the next 3-to-5 years, was hold a Three Stooges festival twice a year, with a pie fight. Just to make the money to pay off the debt. Maybe Harlan had agreed to a payment plan.
In Akron around that time, there was a really good wargaming group: the Akron Kriegspiel Society.
Q: The Wikipedia article on Moldvay says: "During the 1970s while a student at Kent State University in Ohio, Moldvay was a writer for the science fiction fanzine Infinite Dreams." Do you remember that?
BW: I remember Infinite Dreams magazine. It was digest sized.
Q: Did you attend Kent State?
BW: No. Lawrence attended Kent State. Tom was not attending at the time. Ralph Wagner, the other main player, was at Akron University.
Q: Where did you play? Houses? Kent State campus? When I questioned Lawrence Schick about where the OKW shared campaign was played in Akron and Kent, he replied: "Other than playing in folks' houses, I don't remember locations."
BW: Our routine was to go up to Kent on Friday and play through Sunday evening. Tom and Lawrence lived together in an off-campus house in Kent. We played weekend after weekend. So we ended up with pretty high-level characters!
Q: The DM registry in 1979 DRAGON #22 listed Moldvay with a Kent State address. (See p.26 here.) Tom, Lawrence, and yourself are listed as DMs in Ohio. Could you affirm that?
BW: Since I am listed as a DM, I must have been DMing up in Kent also, though I don't remember that.
Q: Also in the listing: do you recognize the Laurent West from Wadsworth? (A town a few miles west of Akron.)
BW: I don't recognize the name.
Q: Schick says that he and Tom prepped the OKW setting for a couple years, from 1974 (when they got the OD&D boxed set) through 1975, and then opened it up for play in the summer of 1976. Is that when you join in?
BW: Yes, it would've been around then.
Q: Schick says of the Akron/Kent OKW players: "I can't remember any names—only misty faces." Can you identify other players?
BW: The one other regular player besides myself was Ralph Wagner. He'd be a good person to talk with, but he's out of town this week. I wish I could remember others, but like Lawrence said—only misty faces.
Q: Did your group have a name?
BW: Ralph Wagner calls our gaming group: "The Crazy Crazy Wilkersonians." He's a hoot.
Q: Would you say that your CCW group is a direct continuation of the Original Known World group?
BW: Yes.
Q: Do you remember what adventures you played in the OKW?
BW: We did play most of the early modules. Tomb of Horrors: TPK.
I recall that Tom and Larry ran adventures in the Republic of Darokin. And that Tom ran us through Dante's Inferno.
Q: Through the entire Nine Circles of Dante's Hell?
BW: Yes.
As for Lawrence, I remember him running an adventure which began like this:
"You find yourself chained to the wall in a room. You have no spell components. No armor. No nothing."
So we remembered which spells don't require components.
Basically, the gods decided to show the PCs they were too full of themselves: "You know what? You're not all that."
We played pretty loose. Let's go with the flow. If a player came up with something, they let it happen. Because it made the adventure more fun. Tom Moldvay is the best DM I've ever known. Larry is good—Tom is even better.
"Next in line" (for best DM): Karington Hess. Karington was formerly the general manager and gamemaster at The Malted Meeple, a game-pub in nearby Hudson. Moved away to Virginia; now runs games online. He's my current DM on Discord. [See: Open Heart Games: Twitch link and facebook.]
Tom and Lawrence and Kerrington Hess—all three of them were flexible, and ready to go with it.
We also played Boot Hill...gunslingers. Ralph played a snake oil salesman.
Q: Do you remember a Valley of the Thunder Lizards, which was reportedly a prototype of the Isle of Dread?
BW: I do remember Tom did a miniatures adventure with dinosaurs. Us versus the dinosaurs. Used his regular miniatures rules, but changed to fit dinosaur attacks.
Q: Could you say more about his miniatures rules?
BW: Tom's fantasy miniatures rules were very good. He painted the most fabulous miniatures. An exceptional miniatures painter. We'd come in, and all the minis would be done, ready for play. A centaur army. A spider army. Tom did an amazing job with fantasy miniatures using the KW as a base.
Q: Besides the OKW map, do you have any other documents from that time, such as character sheets?
BW: I feel fortunate to still have the OKW material after all these years.
[Bill points to a brown kraft paper folder/organizer containing multiple slotted sections. He pulls out several stacks of paper. They appear to be mostly typewritten photocopies. Some of the pages I recognize from the partial scans which Lawrence Schick posted awhile back. But some of the documents are totally new to me. Such as Bill's own personal notes which fill out the countries of the OKW. These are Bill's campaign planning notes from the 1976-1979 era, where he sketched out his own campaign to be set in the OKW.]
BW: As far as I recall, my own Known World campaign notes didn't get beyond the planning stage.
TH: Even though your campaign didn't take off, as one of three co-DMs of the Original Known World, these are valuable records of D&D history. Would you mind if I tried to get you in touch with the D&D historians Jon Peterson or Shannon Appelcline, to see if they'd be interested in reporting on and sharing these materials in some way?
BW: Yes. I'd be willing to ship my folder to them for them to scan and share.
[Update 9/15: I did contact Peterson on Sept. 11, 2021, and Appelcline on 9/15, but haven't heard back yet.
Update 9/16: Appelcline responded: "Hey Travis, Thanks for the email. I'd be delighted to scan and share Bill's material, and to talk with him about it after I see what's there."]
[Another find: Bill's Character Sheets from the OKW campaign. I took a few notes, but there's much more to see.]
BW: I had a magic-user team, named "Baskin & Robbins."
[Character Sheet notes:]
Baskin: MU/Thief. LG. 170 hit points. Origin: Thyatis. 2 billion gold pieces. [Bill: "Remember, in those days, gold equaled XP."]
Psionics: Body Equilibrium 1/day. Energy Control 1/day. Matter Warping 1/week.
Robbins MU. 11th level. [Bill: "Robbins Met his demise."]
Moldvay & Schick's character sheets have slots for "Skills" (e.g. "Rulership"), "Social Level", and Psionics.
Baskin has spell slots for up to 15th Level spells.
1st level spells: 15
2nd level spells: 15
etc.
9th level spells: 15
10th level spells: 12
11th level spells: 8
12th level spells: 6
13th level spells: 4
14th level spells: 2
15th level spells: 1
[Note: However, in the list of actual spells known, there are no spells listed beyond the typical OD&D spell levels.]
Q: Did you play other characters besides Baskin and Robbins?
BW: My other PCs were Serian Skull-Face, a Fighter/Thief. And "Blessyoumyson", a Cleric. His name was all one word: Blessyoumyson. The names aren't very creative.
TH: Aw, zany names are a time-honored D&D tradition, like Melf the Elf (Luke Gygax's PC) and Boinger the Halfling (from John Eric Holmes' campaign).
[Note: I meant to follow up by asking more stories and traits of these Serian and Blessyoumyson, but I forgot to ask.]
[Another document: the big list of deities of the OKW. This was referred to in Mishler's Schick interview.]
BW: Larry & Tom had a lot to do with Deities & Demigods. The "100 Gods Table" predated Deities & Demigods.
[Another document: A big typewritten list of characters from existing fiction and mythology, who visited the OKW, which served as the prototype for DRAGON magazine's "Giants of the Earth" articles]:
BW: Sol of All Weapons from Piers Anthony's Battle Circle was one of my favorites. Also, the King of Cats.
[Of the many characters, I jotted down a couple:]
Conan: F25/T9
Hiawatha: F25/Monk 9
Q: Tom & Lawrence intended the OKW to be a shared-world campaign, used by multiple DMs across the Akron-Kent-Cleveland area. Did they succeed in bringing in other DMs and gaming groups?
BW: Tom and Lawrence rotated DMing. I don't remember other DMs. I'm sure there were. I tried.
Q: Was there a Known World group in Cleveland?
BW: I don't recall any offshoots in Cleveland.
There was a convention in Cleveland. I remember Harold Johnson was a guest. [link to Wikipedia bio]
Later, I worked with Harold for a number of years at GENCON, where I manned the cash register at the auction. I did it for 12 years, though not the last two years. I like Harold a lot. A hoot.
Q: What did you call the world back then? Did you call it "the Known World?"
BW: Yes, back then it was called the Known World. The Gazetteers were based on our original Known World. I sure would like to have the Gazetteers again. Those were really good.
Q: What was it like when Lawrence (in 1979) and Tom (in 1980) were offered jobs with TSR?
BW: Lawrence is the smartest man I know. "Off the charts smarts."
Tom was creative and approachable.
Together, they were like: "TSR hasn't done any of this. So let's do it. We want to run this. We need this stuff. So we can make this happen."
All of this was their resume for TSR. The OKW as a ready-made world setting. They were like: "Here's what we've done." TSR was like "Great! Wow, this is all done and ready to go. All we have to do is publish it."
Q: Did you keep playing after the co-DMs left Akron for Lake Geneva?
BW: Yes, we kept playing after Larry and Tom left. After Lawrence left, Tom was the only DM during 1979. The group continued after Tom left in 1980. In the 1980s, I was the main DM of our group. Ralph didn't like to DM.
In 1980 there was Neo Con I, at the University of Akron. Four or five of us organized it. We invited Tom and Jim Ward. They came.
In the 80s, we mostly played at a friend's house. We gradually tapered down from playing three full days straight. For a few years we only played till Sunday morning. Then our sessions shortened from Friday to Saturday mid-day. Now, we play Saturday evenings. We only play boardgames now.
I was a terrible DM. Players took advantage of me. For example, when I DM'ed the Temple of Elemental Evil, halfway through I stopped, because the PCs were more evil than the denizens of the temple!
During the 1980 to 2000 era, we played 1st edition. I didn't like 2nd edition. 3.0 was pretty good. 4e: forget that!—I don’t want to play a video game!
I still play 5e on Discord and Roll20.
The friend who hosted our play during much of this time was Diane Peske. She did artwork for the Neo Con convention book.* Her house was good because it was a big open place to play. Some played D&D in the living room, while others played boardgames in the kitchen. She passed from cancer. We then met at other places. We still play boardgames to this day. Nowadays, the CCW (Crazy Crazy Wilkersonians) are strictly boardgamers.
*[Note: A web-search turns up that Diane Peske and Bill Wilkerson are both listed as playtesters for at least the first and third Lords of Creation adventures: The Horn of Roland and Omegakron, a post-apocalyptic version of the city of Akron! And Diane Peske is credited for the maps of Omegakron.]
BW: When 5e came out, I played Adventurers League at The Malted Meeple in Hudson, with Karington Hess as DM, till he moved away. There are also game nights at Great Oaks Tavern in Wadsworth.
Q: Did you play the Isle of Dread? (1980)
BW: Yes, I played. I don't remember who I played it with.
Q: Did you ever think of applying to TSR? Did you publish anything?
BW: Yes, I thought about it. I wasn't creative enough. I'm not a self-starter—I have to work at it. Jim Ward is a good example: prolific designer and writer. 3000 words per day. That kind of stuff is not how I am.
Tom was generous—he acknowledged "Bill & Ralph" in the Basic Rulebook. All we did was play. We were the two most steady players.
See the acknowledgements in 1981 Moldvay Basic Rulebook:
I submitted a dungeon to DRAGON magazine, which wasn't published. It contained a monster which was extremely similar to Lolth, which pre-dated Lolth. Who can say, but I've wondered if my submission was somehow an influence on the creation of Lolth.
I submitted an entry in an early 1980s "dungeon design" context. Tom helped me. My creation: ice sharks. An icy area frozen over. You see fins knifing through the ice. I still have the entry somewhere at home.
[Interviewer's Note: I'm not sure I took these notes right; whether it was one submission or two separate ones.]
BW: I was slated to write the fourth adventure in Tom Moldvay's Lords of Creation RPG [published by Avalon Hill 1983-1984 (link to Wikipedia article)]. I still have the complete manuscript in a folder.*
*[Note: is that The Towers of Illium?]
Q: Tom's death in 2007. How close were you?
BW: I miss Tom a lot.
In later life, Tom lived by himself at a few different locations in Akron; the longest at Balch Street. Tom was living at Balch Street when he died, and a few days passed before he was discovered. Tom never married. His family held a private funeral.
Ralph and I had a private memorial at Ralph's house, where we enacted a "Viking funeral." We set a miniature wooden viking boat afloat in a bowl of water, and set it aflame with a candle, while we sounded a viking chant. The Vikings with Tony Curtis [1958 film] was a favorite. So we did it. He meant so much to us.
Tom was a good man.
Q: Could you tell us more about yourself, outside of gaming?
BW: I attend the United Church of Christ in Akron. I sing baritone in the choir. Our conductor is Tom DeFrange, who is a composer in his own right. You can hear his works at Catacomb Composers (link to site).
My own career has been in retail. I was district manager for Waldenbooks and Walden Software, for thirteen stores in seven states. I later worked as a pizza delivery driver, making good money. I decided I didn't want to manage other people, and only wanted to be responsible for myself.
Q: Anything else you'd like to share?
BW: Tom and Lawrence's legacy: they taught us to play D&D. I firmly believe that they are to thank for all the fun we've had playing through these decades. It's been a pleasure to follow Lawrence's career on facebook. He's got a lot of irons in the fire.
Travis, it was a pleasure meeting with you and sharing my memories, shaky though they might be.
[TH: As we were leaving, Bill asked if he could keep the print-offs I'd made of Schick's 2015 article on the OKW, and James Mishler's follow-up interviews with Schick:]
https://www.blackgate.com/2015/02/07/the-known-world-dd-setting-a-secret-history/
http://adventuresingaming2.blogspot.com/search/label/Lawrence%20Schick
You can see my other interviews with D&D designers at the Vaults of Pandius, the WotC-designated Official Mystara Fansite:
http://pandius.com/shenry.html
http://pandius.com/q_and_a.html
After I posted the interview, Bill graciously passed along a note from Ralph Wagner, another key player in the Original Known World campaign. I post it here for all to enjoy: another window into the Original Known World group.
I include some explanatory footnotes to help our international readership who might not be familiar with American pop culture, and due to my own unfamiliarity with some facets of that era, such as the plastic figure makers and Western films.
Photos of Ralph from facebook:
Well, I am Ralph Wagner, my son Adam Wagner and daughter-in-law, Lindsey Wagner, were given the task of taking of preserving, as Adam put it, “The Holy Grail of Nerddom”—the original world map. It was in a notebook that pulled out. But, I remembered Tom taking it off his front room mantel and showing us where “we” (our party) were and that we were to pacify an area. I think that it was clipped to a piece of cardboard at that time, before it was put into a book. The map was about 40 years old, that had been colored with colored pen from the 70’s. Matching those colors was hard. It had holes and missing pieces, it was brittle short-use xerox paper. It would've been too much, but we had Lindsey! Adam and Lindsey have a small graphics company—they print and install vinyl. Lindsey is the primo “weeder.” She pulled very small parts of the vinyl out to make the negative and positive of the print make a picture. She fixed the very puzzling missing parts. Next ,what glue to use? We decided to use my favorite glue that I use on framing prints. Regular “tube glue” for school. It's tacky and doesn't dry real fast, so it can be moved sparingly. A lot of very careful picking up and putting down. Finding a correct backboard was easy, but the plastic to cover the map was a tough and had to be special ordered. Adam is used to laying out vinyl jobs and he did a great job laying out the map. He cut and built the frame and supervised the plastic mounting. Our job was to make the map presentable, which we did! Our names were on the back of the frame which was probably discarded but I have pictures of the process—so many that my son got mad!
I met all of the D&D guys through my neighborhood friend Punkin O’Toole. Who met the guys through school (Kenmore area in Akron, Ohio), and at the bus station when they were going to N.Y. for a big comic book convention. The N.Y. people dubbed them the “Rubber Babies”.* I didn’t make the con because I was out of comics, but into plastic toy soldiers. They were younger than me, but were very smart—too smart. O’Toole never missed a spelling word; Steve Kazar took advanced, advanced math, as did his nerd pal Bill Ruth. These guys who never got less than an "A" except Gym. Most of there guys didn’t have fathers, and I taught them sports if they wanted to learn, which most didn’t. Bill Ruth could play the piano and organ both—and at the same time! They were very backward around people. Just picture The Big Bang guys in high school.*
*[Akron is known as "The Rubber Capital of the World" due to the presence of four major tire company headquarters.
The Big Bang Theory television show.]
Lawrence and I were collecting Marx Playsets* from the 60’s. I found out that the company went out of business and had auctioned off a lot of their old stock and some of it was being sold out of an old school in Erie, Pennsylvania. We set out with as much money as we could beg borrow or steal in my old Rambler Ambassador (a car so ugly Hugh Hefner couldn’t have picked up a girl in it). This place had every thing Marx had made for about twenty years—plus their toys that bought to spy on the other toy companies. Lawrence bought every known different dinosaur set! I bought as much as I could of everything. The trunk was full, and so was the back seat. Lawrence was opening up the sets in the passenger seat as I drove home. Ha! The smell of those sets being opened is still one of the best aromas ever! At home I was opening the Wyatt Earp set and realized this town was to scale! We could have a role playing with it!
Bill Wilkerson was interested, but I would need rules. I finally found some at a convention of posters comics and war gaming in Kent. You could see everything in ten minutes! But I did get some rules—Boot Hill from TSR. The art was fanzine, and the rules were hard to follow.* Bill Wilkerson made them work by adding the reaction roll from D&D. To get a reaction from a non-player or anyone, just roll two D6s, add any modifiers you think—a pip or two plus or minus (this should be declared for debate). 2 is the worst reaction, and the character would do harm or act irrational. 12, the character would greet the other character as a long lost pal, and would do anything for them! So Bill and I had the town all set up. My character, the Sheriff, is walking down the street, and Bill’s character is my Deputy on the other side of the street. Suddenly I realize there is a non-player character standing in the middle of the street. Who is this guy Bill? “I don’t know! I didn’t roll him up” says Bill. So we used the reaction dice. I asked if the Sheriff knew who the stranger was. And was he was wanted? A 12! Yes! He is wanted! Does he know I know he is wanted! 11! Wow! Bill and I agree he has to draw and fire on me. We quickly roll him up and he is faster than my Sheriff and fires and hits my character! I fire back and miss! Bill’s Deputy fires hits and kill the stranger! Wow! the game works! Thanks to Bill's intervention of the reaction roll!
*[Boot Hill 1st Edition, 1975]
The real test is to take it to Tom and Lawrence! They were the guys we had to impress. To get those guys to decide to play this “Boot Hill” instead of D&D was a stretch! Tom got right into the game but Lawrence brought out a singing cowboy (Pecos Bill Disney figure).* That was a pain! So my character killed him! This wasn’t D&D! Characters got killed and stacked up like cordwood. Nobody cared! But soon, thanks to an events chart I made (to move things along and start situations) the stage [stagecoach] came in with a lot of interesting people who interacted with our rolled-up characters (due to the reaction dice and our storytelling ability). The bank got robbed, Indians raided the town, etc., etc. Steve Kasar tried to test the game once by bringing in a woman Sheriff! Well OK! The town was attacked by Mexican Banditos. Kazar’s woman was in trouble because no one wanted to face the gang! So Steve challenged the head Bandito (El Lobo, the Wolf) to a knife fight! We all laughed! I started to roll but Kazar stopped me: “I roll first! She is greased-lighting fast!” “Wow, Ok.” Steve’s woman hit El Lobo in the groin with a fatal wound! My stomach hurt for two days because “the Gang” didn’t kill the Sheriff! They rolled a 12 when I asked should we run!
*[Pecos Bill from the 1948 Disney film Melody Time.]
All this helped Moldvay to familiarize himself with the game so when he went to TSR he could step into a Boot Hill game designer.* I (with a lot of help from Lawrence) wrote a article for “The Dragon”: “Boot Hill, Sure But What Scale?”.*
*[Moldvay is credited as author or co-author of:
Boot Hill Referee's Screen and Mini-Module ("Shootout in Northfield") (1981)
BH1: Mad Hill Mesa (1981)
BH2: Lost Conquistador Mine (1982)]
*Ralph Wagner's article: THE DRAGON magazine #30, October 1979, p.18.]
When I first played D&D, Lawrence told me that Tom had a game I would love! Because I collected figures and had just got a copy of “Chainmail” (through the mail)! Tom heard about D&D through a guy he met at “The Society for Creative Anachronism.” These people would dress as knights and beat the crap each other with wooden swords and carried wooden shields. I wish we had Tom’s—it was a green-colored kite shield. Tom told me he would load up on aspirins before and after a fight. This was in the very early days of us playing D&D. We had only Airfix HO-scale figures: “Robin Hood,”* “Sheriff of Nottingham,”* and “Ancient Britons”*; and two Tarzan mules* as placeholder figures. Lawrence would go to the grocery store and get rubber monsters out of the gumball machines. Marx dinos* would suffice for dragons. Tom had a reel-to-reel tape recorder that he used to record the games because as he told me “some might be the begins of a good story.” He used a big album cover to hide his work and act as a shield. Some of the stuff I remember: Our players were Steve Kazar, Lawrence, Bill Wilkerson, me, and a real nerdy electronics guy that lived in the house, and Gordon. Lawrence has a brother Gordon; he liked sports and even played in high school. They used to argue during the games (after all, they were brothers). Once we were playing at Bill Wilkerson's house (“The Big Pink”—really it was painted pink) and the boys had a discussion about a magic sword. We were all a little nervous because each player's group of characters were call on to fight a dragon out in the open, with no place to run! My guy “Big Steve” caught a lighting bolt from a “Blue” dragon (Marx dino)! But my guys survived and we killed “Big Blue”! Another adventure Lawrence was running, each group was in a boat and somehow Gordon’s ship's Captain (that had been hired, and was very important to the ship's movement, but had average hit points) got in a fight because bad guys stormed the boat. “Well,” said Gordon “did he get hit?” All Lawrence said was: “Taste Club!” and his Captain was dead! Man, Gordon was not happy! But Gordon was the winner of the big kill-off of high-level characters; only to be taken up to heaven by Tom's “police figure”: “Bask” [Bast] or Bastet.* She was a figure about three times as big as our figures—a half-naked lady with a Leopard. “That’s it. That's all. I win.” said Gordon. I felt bad too. My characters got killed without even having a chance to fight. That was the last time I played D&D with Tom. He went to TSR after that. I played other games with him, a great “Major Dundee” game with 54mm figures. But never played D&D with him; not that I was mad, we just didn’t play anymore.
*[Airfix Robin Hood playset (1964)
Airfix Sheriff of Nottingham playset (1964)
Airfix Ancient Britons playset (1969)
?Marx Pack Mules
Marx Dinosaurs (1955-1961)
Bastet, ancient Egyptian cat-headed goddess (Wikipedia article)
Major Dundee (1965) Western film (Wikipedia article)]
P.S. It's the Zany Zany Wilkersains.