Fanzines?

xyanthon · Post by **xyanthon** » Wed Oct 25, 2006 4:58 pm

Does anyone know of any great fanzines (either print or electronic) that they could recommend? I do get XRP Old School Gazette, but I was wondering if there were any others out there that you all know of for old school gaming. It doesn't even have to be D&D or fantasy for that matter, just some good fan generated stuff.

T. Foster · Post by **T. Foster** » Wed Oct 25, 2006 5:42 pm

I'm pretty sure rpg fanzines have been driven near to the point of extinction by the internet -- look at an old fanzine from the 70s or 80s and you'll see the exact same kind of material that is now found on websites, forums, blogs, etc. -- new and variant rules, new monsters, spells, and items, arguments about rules and playstyle, essays/rants on adventure design and playstyle, campaign logs, character write-ups, short adventures.

That said, dragonsfoot publishes Footprints a couple-three times a year, and its always worth checking out (especially since its free).

On the paper front, AFAIK Alarums & Excursions is actually still being published, believe it or not. Last issue I saw (maybe 2-3 years ago) didn't seem to have any D&D content, though.

xyanthon · Post by **xyanthon** » Wed Oct 25, 2006 7:05 pm

Ah, I figured the Internet killed off much of the fanzine crowd, however there are some of us that still like that sort of thing. I remember from my punk rock days that fanzines were pretty prevalent and I would imagine they are still in some circles. I didn't know if any diehards out there in the gaming community were still publishing them. The Internet may be nice, but mothing really beats having hardcopy in hand.

JRMapes · Post by **JRMapes** » Wed Oct 25, 2006 8:29 pm

OD&Dities has went away as well. I think the only place you can find it now (issues 1-12) is the old archive here

http://tower.newcenturycomputers.net/oddities.html

xyanthon · Post by **xyanthon** » Wed Oct 25, 2006 8:57 pm

JR,

Thank you. For some reason, I find fanzines to be pretty fascinating stuff.

JRMapes · Post by **JRMapes** » Wed Oct 25, 2006 9:27 pm

the sad thing is that the internet has taken away a number of decent internet based ones jsut the same. Technically this isnt actually true since it was life, etc that got in the way. But it was so easy to start a fanzine online then to only find out about 3rd issue in that-- damn this is still a load of work. So they faded out.

I used to follow a number of print and online horror story fanzines. Now there is about a 7 (american or European*) in existance that I am aware of still in print. Of those only 4 are in english and only 3 are actaully printed here in the states and can be had without outragious wait times and international shipping costs. There were about 25 online zines and about 40 or 50 different print zines back in the 90's (mid 80s to mid 90s on the print side). Now there might be 2 online that are still active. Most have stopped the zines and dissapeared or have stopped the zines and just went to a webforum.

It really has surprised me how quickly the zines have faded away. The internet is the perfect tool for widespread distribution. It really came down to that the "idea" of doing a zine is cool as hell-- keeping it in print, making deadlines, and getting enough articles is damn near impossible unless you have a paid staff and paid writers.

TLG and The Crusader is a fine example of realizing the IDEA is much simpler than meeting what is required in reality.

* I have no clue about Japan or other Asian markets.

Matthew · Post by **Matthew** » Thu Oct 26, 2006 5:33 am

JRMapes wrote:OD&Dities has went away as well. I think the only place you can find it now (issues 1-12) is the old archive here

http://tower.newcenturycomputers.net/oddities.html

You can also find that archive at Dragonsfoot:

http://www.dragonsfoot.org/cd/