randomluck wrote in Community View on Copies of Newsletters and Fanzines:With recent auctions of issues of Domesday Book, Random Events, Owl and Weasel, Cymry, etc...of which I won none I was wondering if there was a way to get digital copies or photocopies or something of these and similar newsletters and fanzines. Or does the community really frown upon this? I'm fine with them having a giant 'NOT ORIGINAL' watermark across the pages or even being just the text of the documents. I'd really like to read through these items from the early history of D&D. I'm also interested in getting my hands on originals, but that seems like it may be a bit out of my reach for the time being.cheers,Mike
increment wrote in Community View on Copies of Newsletters and Fanzines:I don't think any issues of zines like Alarums or the Wild Hunt are in serious danger of disappearing entirely from the historical record. Let alone Domesday Books, or Random Events, or Owl & Weasel. Cymry, okay, I'll grant that might be in danger of being forgotten, but not for want of being scanned. There was a period of hysteria, I gather, when people doubted whether or not all the DBs survived. It has since been amply demonstrated that any such fears were unfounded.To the broader question of whether or not there is an easy way to get digital copies or photocopies of these zines, I've pointed out several times that various research libraries hold some copies of these fanzines: like UC Riverside, or Bowling Green State University, and these are places where scholars who need them for historical reasons can access them without undue difficulty. But I don't think it's likely that scans of any of the zines listed above will become available in a commercial sense, due to a host of intellectual property concerns that surround them.
Badmike wrote in Community View on Copies of Newsletters and Fanzines:Someone who is reading through the first 20 or so issues of The Dragon might be inspired to be the next Matt Finch, Michael Curtis or, heaven help us, Jon Peterson.
increment wrote in Community View on Copies of Newsletters and Fanzines:I don't think any issues of zines like Alarums or the Wild Hunt are in serious danger of disappearing entirely from the historical record. Let alone Domesday Books, or Random Events, or Owl & Weasel. Cymry, okay, I'll grant that might be in danger of being forgotten, but not for want of being scanned. There was a period of hysteria, I gather, when people doubted whether or not all the DBs survived. It has since been amply demonstrated that any such fears were unfounded.
increment wrote in Community View on Copies of Newsletters and Fanzines:To the broader question of whether or not there is an easy way to get digital copies or photocopies of these zines, I've pointed out several times that various research libraries hold some copies of these fanzines: like UC Riverside, or Bowling Green State University, and these are places where scholars who need them for historical reasons can access them without undue difficulty.
Badmike wrote in Community View on Copies of Newsletters and Fanzines:In the end I agree there is probably no legal way to make this possible. I'd love to know, however, that someone behind the scenes has digitized this mess for future generations, even if commercial availability is a pipe dream.
faro wrote in Community View on Copies of Newsletters and Fanzines:The non-availability of the more difficult material was probably more of an inspiration to Jon, I suspect.
faro wrote in Community View on Copies of Newsletters and Fanzines:Anyhow; one could argue quite easily that it's more important to make the contents of Jon's book freely available than all those newsletters/'zines.
faro wrote in Community View on Copies of Newsletters and Fanzines:Fragmentation and de-contextualization of primary material (mss., etc.) has always been more problematic than the challenges of gathering "published" material back together, no matter how small scale publication may have been.
faro wrote in Community View on Copies of Newsletters and Fanzines:increment wrote in Community View on Copies of Newsletters and Fanzines:To the broader question of whether or not there is an easy way to get digital copies or photocopies of these zines, I've pointed out several times that various research libraries hold some copies of these fanzines: like UC Riverside, or Bowling Green State University, and these are places where scholars who need them for historical reasons can access them without undue difficulty.Setting aside finances (which much of this thread is still inevitably about), geography was/is hugely in your favor there.
increment wrote in Community View on Copies of Newsletters and Fanzines:You can rest assured that several someones behind the scenes have digitized, and are continuing to digitize, this mess.
mbassoc2003 wrote in Community View on Copies of Newsletters and Fanzines:increment wrote in Community View on Copies of Newsletters and Fanzines:You can rest assured that several someones behind the scenes have digitized, and are continuing to digitize, this mess.Indeed. I recognise a need to digitise and archive the rarities, in the same way some see themselves as providing the service of gathering, protecting and preserving the rarities, so that they are not lost to the world. Whether we, as a community believe we are best placed to perform such a digitising and preservation function is another matter, and one for debate. I would imagine we, as a community, are eminently capable and well placed to make such decisions.Both questions however are a world away from distributing and making said products available to others. Whilst I recognise a need to digitise and preserve, I do question whether there is any need to pass said information around. As a society we preserve many antiquities, and we collectively pool funds and build buildings to display these to our children. But we do not all have a need to spread free copies of these treasures to every household in the country.
Invincible Overlord wrote in Community View on Copies of Newsletters and Fanzines:Mike,Is it a question of hoarding, or making sure the Domesday Books don't turn into another "TSR Belt Buckle" issue?That would be my only concern with such a valued item.
Badmike wrote in Community View on Copies of Newsletters and Fanzines: And the analogy is flawed, while I can book a trip to the Louvre to see the Mona Lisa, or Bowling Green University to study a manuscript of Dashiel Hammet, it's doubtful whether I can have the same access to a set of Domesday books.
Badmike wrote in Community View on Copies of Newsletters and Fanzines:The undercurrent, however, was that the masses "shouldn't" have access to these rulesets...I've always been fuzzy on the exact reasons but again it has to do with the Dead Sea Scrolls scholars ideas of protecting "sacred" knowledge from the unwashed masses.
increment wrote in Community View on Copies of Newsletters and Fanzines:You won't find anything about Chainmail or fantasy in the DB until after that book saw print - but you would have read about it in Wargamer's Newsletter before.
increment wrote in Community View on Copies of Newsletters and Fanzines:I bring this up because I think the mystique, and the absurd valuation, of the DB makes it seem like it is "sacred" knowledge. Actually, the knowledge you need to understand how D&D came together resides overwhelmingly outside the DB, in thousands of other fanzines, letters, and docs which are not nearly so famous nor valuable. Processing that information gives you the narrative. It's not glamorous work, there is no mystique to it. But to be clear - there's no cabal of scholars jealously dominating that material, it is there for anyone to take and is not much of a subject of critical interest among academics.
increment wrote in Community View on Copies of Newsletters and Fanzines:I maintain that the Panzerfaust where the LGTSA rules originally appeared is more important historically than DB#5, and well, I've been saying for years that if you want a cheap copy of those rules just as they appear in DB #5, you can get it in a Spartan International Monthly reprint. You won't find anything about Chainmail or fantasy in the DB until after that book saw print - but you would have read about it in Wargamer's Newsletter before. And afterwards, if you wanted to read important Chainmail revisions between 1st and 2nd edition, you'd find those printed in the International Wargamer, not the DB.I bring this up because I think the mystique, and the absurd valuation, of the DB makes it seem like it is "sacred" knowledge. Actually, the knowledge you need to understand how D&D came together resides overwhelmingly outside the DB, in thousands of other fanzines, letters, and docs which are not nearly so famous nor valuable. Processing that information gives you the narrative. It's not glamorous work, there is no mystique to it. But to be clear - there's no cabal of scholars jealously dominating that material, it is there for anyone to take and is not much of a subject of critical interest among academics.The rights situation of many of these documents will keep them from ever being reproduced in whole as "licensed" PDFs or what have you - for example, in case this is not common knowledge, the DBs contain tons of copyrighted material that the producers of the zine did not have the rights to. Like most draft material and ephemera, the surviving physical copies will all make their way into libraries and university collections as more of the people holding the documents (myself included) perish or otherwise decide to get rid of them. If you are someone with the scholarly interest to wade through thousands (in my case, more than ten thousand) of these zines, there are already some remarkable collections out there in the academy, and there will be more. And at this point, the chance we'll lose any published work forever is vanishingly small.
rmeints wrote in Community View on Copies of Newsletters and Fanzines:I, for one, would certainly like to find back issues of the Wild Hunt. I only have a few of the issues. I'm also searching around online for an article index as well, which would be a great start.