Goodbye to Alarums and Excursions APA

[darjr]

A&E the original D&D/RPG fanzine has come to it's conclusion. Wow I never thought I'd see the day.

After five decades of continuous publication, the legendary Alarums & Excursions APA has come to an end. Lee Gold shared so with us, regular contributors, in late March, and then officially in the April issue of A&E (no. 593).

Goodbye to Alarums & Excursions APA

After five decades of continuous publication, the legendary Alarums & Excursions APA has come to an end. Lee Gold shared so with us, re...

attronarch.com

 

[SteveC]

I’ve mentioned it before but I think some of the discussions we’re having right now would have fit in there decades ago! You will be missed.

 

[Reynard]

I’ve mentioned it before but I think some of the discussions we’re having right now would have fit in there decades ago! You will be missed.

Indeed. A&E gets a lot of mention in The Elusive Shift.

 

[Alzrius]

It's humbling to see a major staple of the tabletop RPG world ending. Major props to Lee Gold for keeping such a legendary newsletter going for so long.

 

[RealAlHazred]

Oh man, have they already stopped selling the back issues in PDF? I've picked up a few dozen over time, but I guess I need to scrape together the money to pick them all up. It's a treasure trove of classic gaming. The APAzines basically were the gaming forums of the pre-internet, with heated arguments about the sorts of topics that concerned people back then and have fortunately been decided since then, never to trouble the message boards again: ascending or descending AC, the place of Skills in D&D, whether or not alignment is a good system, what is the best edition of D&D, etc. You know, questions where the answers are settled and no longer trouble online forum discussions.

 

[aramis erak]

Oh man, have they already stopped selling the back issues in PDF? I've picked up a few dozen over time, but I guess I need to scrape together the money to pick them all up. It's a treasure trove of classic gaming. The APAzines basically were the gaming forums of the pre-internet, with heated arguments about the sorts of topics that concerned people back then and have fortunately been decided since then, never to trouble the message boards again: ascending or descending AC, the place of Skills in D&D, whether or not alignment is a good system, what is the best edition of D&D, etc. You know, questions where the answers are settled and no longer trouble online forum discussions.

Usenet predates the public internet by more than a decade.
I know that alt.rec.frp was going strong in spring 1988 when I got to college.
And had several subs - alt.rec.frp.dnd alt.rec.frp.misc
I never even heard of Amateur Press Association until the 1990s... but I had products with Lee Gould credited.
Amazing run, none the less.

 

[Autumnal]

A&E started within a year of D&D being published, in 1974, as non-RPG players in Apa-L, the apa for the LA Science Fantasy Society, got increasingly annoyed at how much space RPG stuff was taking up. A significant fraction of early rec.games.frp regulars had experience in A&E and The Wild Hunt, founded a little after A&E.

 

[RealAlHazred]

I emailed Lee and Barry Gold and, unfortunately, the PDFs are no longer available. Lee is concerned her vision issues would render her unable to ensure the correct URLs are sent for download. I'm sorry her run is ending due to health issues; frankly she deserves better.

 

[Tanek]

I emailed Lee and Barry Gold and, unfortunately, the PDFs are no longer available. Lee is concerned her vision issues would render her unable to ensure the correct URLs are sent for download. I'm sorry her run is ending due to health issues; frankly she deserves better.

That's too bad. I'd been looking at buying a bunch of earlier issues when my finances straightened out. Reading some of this stuff from 40-50 years ago is like a trip trough history. Wish there was some way of preserving it.

I'd also give my left foot to get a hold of old Wild Hunt issues. I have such fond memories of attending MIT gaming conventions in the early to mid 80s and interacting with Mark Swanson, Glenn Blacow, Bob Butler, John Sapienza, et al. Great times.

 

[Doctor Futurity]

Sorry to hear, though also amazed to know it went so long. I subscribed back in the mid eighties and loved every issue, it was in retrospect the very-very-very-slow paper edition of a pre-internet gaming forum for the day, along with all the fanzines we were constantly knocking out.