A Note on Sources

Fanzines are notoriously difficult resources to work with. They often lack clear dates, operating on irregular schedules that mask their lapses by stubbornly attesting their “official” publication date or sometimes eliding it entirely. It is not always clear who wrote a given piece of text in a zine, given unconventional layouts or confusing attributions. Zines do not always have consistent page numbering schemes, a trait they share in common with early self-published role-playing products, which often shared a publication process. The same zine can even feature slightly differently titles across issues at the whim of its publisher.

Editorially, zines also present some challenges. Quotations from zines and related amateur publications here try to stay close the original, and although some spelling errors have been tacitly repaired, the grammar is true to the original, and there will be no [sic] warnings. Wherever there is emphasis in quotes, it is copied here from the original, though emphasis is also sometimes discarded for readability.

It is common in this literature to see abbreviations for key terms. “DM” for dungeon master is pervasive, and used equivalently with “GM” for gamesmaster. The community of the day knew well abbreviations for such game properties as armor class (AC), gold pieces (GP), and class names like magic-user (MU) or fighting-man (FM). “RP” signifies role-playing, and “FRP” fantasy role-playing.

The following fanzines are referenced in the text. Note that designations like “quarterly” or “monthly” refer to the intended production schedule; in reality, zines rarely appeared like clockwork.