Рольдік ойындарға арналған "Alarums and Excursions" журналы

Tabletop role playing game ALA periodical

Alarums and Excursions (A&E) is an amateur press association (APA) started in June 1975 by Lee Gold; publication continues to the present day. It was one of the first publications to focus solely on role playing games.

In 1964, Bruce Pelz of the Los Angeles Science Fiction Society (LASFS) began a weekly amateur press association named APA L. In 1974, with the publication of Dungeons & Dragons by TSR, Inc., articles and comments about the new roleplaying game began to fill the pages of APA L, a development to which Pelz objected. Lee Gold took note of this and started a new APA, Alarums and Excursions (the title taken from an Elizabethan drama stage direction that moved soldiers across a stage), to focus entirely on roleplaying games, attracting such material away from APA L. The first issue appeared in June 1975. In addition to removing roleplaying games discussion out of APA L, the initial aim of the publication was to prevent roleplaying games from becoming so divergent that people from different cities could not participate in games together. The June 2017 issue of Alarums and Excursions was number 500, with a color cover drawn by Lee Moyer and printed by Rob Heinsoo.

In the February 1976 issue of Strategic Review (Issue 6), Gary Gygax complimented the new APA, calling it "an excellent source of ideas, inspirations and fun." Although Gygax felt some of the contributors were "woefully lacking in background", and the quality of printing varied dramatically from issue to issue, he concluded, "For all of its faults, it is far and away the best D&D 'zine, and well worth reading. See for yourself why it rates a Major Triumph." In the June 1981 edition of Dragon (Issue #50), Dave Nalle reviewed Alarums and Excursions after its 63rd issue (November 1980), and although he found the writing style "a bit stuffy", with a "tendency for the writers to pat each other on the back", he still called it "the top APA publication This is a very well run APA and features many of the leading thinkers in fantasy gaming."