Thursday, September 15, 2016

Fight On!

Old School Fanzine
With a title inspired by the illustration on the last page of White Box vol. III The Underworld & Wilderness Adventures and a cover subscript that says "for Fantasy Role Playing Campaigns played with Pencil, Paper and Your Imagination" it is evident who the target audience for this publication is. Aimed clearly at those gamers who appreciate the Original Role Playing Game and its simulacrums, each issue includes a selection of creative articles, dungeon designs, rule suggestions, cartoons and art, all reminiscent of the early days of gaming and authored by some of the best talent in the hobby.
No other hobby provides as many creative outlets. You are a performer, designer, illustrator, tactician, and philosopher, while socializing with friends. - taken from "What is a Role-Playing Game, Anyway?" via FO!

Pictured above is issue #2 of Fight On! In this issue we have three nice dungeon style adventures including the well regarded The Darkness Beneath: The Upper Caves and a non-canonical Empire of the Petal Thrones adventure, a wilderness adventure/hexcrawl and two nice maps, one urban, one regional, for the referee to work their own imagination on. Several names appearing in this issue are familiar to me including an interview with Dave Arneson, co-author of my favorite rules, a Random Inn Generator by James Edward Raggi IV, author of Lamentations of the Flame Princess, a generic wilderness map by Robert Conley (Bat in the Attic) with setting and hex descriptions by James Maliszewski (Grognardia), a monster generator by Vincent Baker (Dogs in the Vineyard), a selection of fresh magic items and monsters from the imagination of Jeff Reints (Jeffs Gameblog), some new combat spells from the book of Steve Marsh and some insight into the First Dungeon Adventure penned by Greg "The Great Svenny" Svenson.
In the earliest days of the hobby, back when "The Great Svenny" was making his mark around Castle Blackmoor, amateur publications, including fanzines, were a great way to network with other like-minded hobbyists, share creative ideas and gain recognition in the fledgling hobby by writing a good article or submitting some good art. In those days the fanzine was a paper product mailed to you. Today the internet serves a lot of that same purpose, but I still like holding a paper product in my hands. Fortunately others do also, and it is still possible to order printed copies of such publications through online print-on-demand publishers.  

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