Return of the Fanzine

I've been looking around, and it appears that the RPG fanzine scene is hopping! Okay, maybe fanzines never went completely away, but in the last year, or so, seems to have seen several very good ones have burst on the scene.

On the Traveller front, we have 3 (and 1/2) that have caught my eye. Stellar Reaches has been around for a few years, but it was last year when I started reading them...so it's new to me. Freelance Traveller, the longtime repository on the web for Traveller related content, is now putting out monthly e-zines. A new fanzine I just found recently, coming from Austrailia, is Into The Deep, a fanzine that focuses directly on the Reavers' Deep sector of the official Traveller universe. Then there is the Mongoose house organ, Signs & Portents, although not completely Traveller focused it has articles in almost every monthly issue. I find it interesting that all of the Traveller fanzines are e-zines, pdfs specifically, and free for download. The quality of the content varies from very good to only fair, but I haven't run across a real stinker article in any of these e-zines yet. Anyone interested in Science Fiction generally, space opera in particular...in other words, Traveller role playing should check out all of these e-zines.

Over on the fantasy role playing side, a plethora of print and e-zine magazines are available. Of course, Wizards of the Coast has Dragon and Dungeon as paid subscription e-zines with printed collections occasionally available. Both of these e'zines focus exclusively on 4th edition Dungeon & Dragons, and provide a great deal of content every month. Wolfgang Baur publishes Kobold Quarterly, which also focuses on 4th edition, but not exclusively. You can buy KQ as a pdf or in a print edition. Paizo Publishing publishes Pathfinder, which is the *real* successor to the old Dragon & Dungeon magazines. Troll Lords has a house organ for Castles & Crusades that publishes somewhat infrequently. The "old school" community has Fight On! and Knockspell, both of which publish, more or less, quarterly. Dragonsfoot.org even puts out an e-zine at intervals, too. I'm sure I've missed several!

The fanzines on the fantasy side are mostly commercial ventures that charge for both pdf downloads and print copies of their magazines. Being the cheap skate I am, that limits which ones I "invest" in. I've bought (or in some other way sampled) one each of all the ones I've listed above and have only gone back for multiple issues of Fight On! and Knockspell. I don't know if I would say those two are the cream of the crop, but I can say they match up with what I want from a fantasy gaming magazine. I suggest checking several out and finding which work for you.