Press [Chaosium] "Roleplaying fandom is a powerful thing": RPG Historian Shannon Applecline looks at the important role of zines sustaining Glorantha

[Michael O'Brien]

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"Roleplaying fandom is a powerful thing" - RPG Historian Shannon Applecline's latest Designers and Dragons column looks at the important impact and influence fanzines have had sustaining the long existence of Glorantha, setting of the RuneQuest roleplaying game. Shannon has created a detailed timeline showing the zines that have been part of this, from the very beginning through to today (a short excerpt of the timeline shown above).

Indeed, fanzines were the first place Glorantha was written about for a general audience, even predating RuneQuest, with Greg Stafford and Steve Perrin writing for Alarums & Excursions (1975-Present), The Wild Hunt (1976-1995), and The Lords of Chaos (1977-1981).

But, as Shannon's article describes, "If ever there was a fannish organization that helped support its game through hard times, that was the fandom of Tales of the Reaching Moon". Over its thirteen year run (1989-2002), Tales of the Reaching Moon helped engender "a Golden Age... that was almost entirely due to RuneQuest fandom—plus a brief Renaissance of RuneQuest material from Avalon Hill in 1992-1994, but that too was supported by RuneQuest fandom."

Today, the Jonstown Compendium offers fandom a new channel for creativity - Shannon notes that to date, 430 titles have been released for the Jonstown Compendium, 64 of them with print-on-demand (POD) options: "a shelf of just the print books from the Jonstown Compendium is at least three times the size of a the print RuneQuest books released by Chaosium in the same time period." A new golden age for Gloranthan fandom!

• Read Shannon's full Designers and Dragons article here.
• Shannon has also written more about Tales of the Reaching Moon and its important influence in The Moon Files, a publication produced as a fundraiser for THE KRAKEN convention.