I'm doing a seminar on the Old-School Renaissance at Gen Con, and while I've been focused on developments in the retro-clone and rediscovery-through-play scenes, Playing at the World has made me realize that I've been overlooking the contributions of the Acaeum and of collectors in general (which of course overlap with those other scenes in ways I haven't been hip to). I hope you can help me rectify this oversight between now and Saturday when I'm supposed to give this talk!

What's the Acaeum's founding date? A little Googling suggests that it was "new and improved" as of 2003.

Are there other significant dates or texts that deserve to be considered? I'm interested in putting together a timeline of the OSR that I can compare to that of TSR, with things like OSRIC or the Quick Primer for Old School Gaming being the kinds of milestones I've got so far.

Versimilitude wrote:Hi,

I think 5th Nov 2002 is the founding date (10th birthday soon folks - shall we have a party?)

Cheers,
KAL

I'm sure Foulfoot will give the authoritative answer, but I'm almost positive it was earlier than that. I landed here sometime between summer 2000 to summer 2001, as far as I can tell. I had recently bought some rarities which included a first print of Greyhawk, and I was curious about its print runs. When I found the Acaeum, I saw that my first print looked really different than what was listed as a first print here, so I wrote to Foulfoot and exchanged some scans, at which point he updated the listing to include a new "true" first printing of Greyhawk. I also remember providing some related information about the first printing of D&D. I can see that a lot of the same information is still up on those entries today!

Well, one day Mommy Acaeum met Daddy Acaeum, they loved each other very much....and nine months later Baby Acaeum was born!

Mike b.

I began working on the site in earnest in June 1999, and it went live November 19, 1999 (11/19/1999, which I believe has some sort of apocalyptic significance).  The forum is what went online November 4, 2002.  Back in those days it was mostly drugs, booze, and fast women, so I'm glad to see things have matured around here since.

The original plan was to cover Non-TSR D&D as well as Traveller.  Both of those sections were already covered in some depth by other websites, so I removed the placeholders for them.

Four of the previous front-page graphics are below.  The first front page was only around for a month, and was not a graphic at all, just text (I was learning my way).  I don't have a copy of it, but as I recall, it was pretty horrible.

Every update to the site's "What's New" column is here: What's New History

A "State of the Hobby" essay, which covers the evolving landscape of D&D collecting (at least from my perspective), is here:  State of the Hobby

That's about the short of it!

Foul

FoulFoot wrote: Back in those days it was mostly drugs,  booze, and fast women, so I'm glad to see things have matured around here since.

We have definitely matured.  Now we talk about comic books, wine, sports, and slow women (so we can catch them!)     If you don't believe me, just join the Friday night chat a time or two or look at this relatively recent quote:

JasonZavoda wrote:And yet all the chats seem to boil down to talk about women, drinking and sports. We need a virtual bar.

You register for the site, or if already registered you are good. The chat button is listed next to the FAQ button.

http://ntrpgcon.com

Tav_Behemoth wrote:I've been overlooking the contributions of the Acaeum and of collectors in general (which of course overlap with those other scenes in ways I haven't been hip to). I hope you can help me rectify this oversight between now and Saturday when I'm supposed to give this talk!

A few thoughts...

At the root, collectors bring money and curiosity into the mix.  Old games that might have been forgotten are kept in the collective awareness because someone had the available funds to buy a copy and check it out.  "Just" players probably have the core books for a few games that they actively or perhaps hope to play, but not much else.  Those games are most likely in print and/or locally popular.  Collectors have the means and desire to find the gems in the wasteland of forgotten titles.  That keeps those games in occasional conversation, at least in whispers.

Then come ebay, other online sellers, and dedicated discussion forums.  More items that aren't available in one's neighborhood can be learned about and located.  Previously, this had been relegated to ads in periodicals, a few large dealers, and conventions.  Some items are now easy for all to find, some remain elusive at any price.  Tie that in with the beginnings of pdf/ebook/electronic availability of both old and new material (by means legal and less so), and interest is free to grow across the board.  Never had an opportunity to play whatever game in your area?  Now you can find a copy to take a look at and maybe start using.

The landscape today for small press is crowd funding and e-publishing/POD.  Again, I think collectors help a lot here.  A crowd funding project might do quite well selling lots of $20-40 regular copies of a work, but when the deluxe versions that sell for orders of magnitude more get added in, collectors are pretty much the only ones going to afford them, and those big purchases can really fuel a project.  E-publishing is similar - even for inexpensive items, a collector is going to be the first to jump a new product and see if it's interesting, hopefully reviewing it and spreading the word.

The timing of some of these line up pretty well too.  The first commercial pdf was in 1998.  Ebay use explodes between 1997-2000.  FF tells us that the Acaeum starts in 1999, and I'd bet some of the other big sites are from the same era (Dragonsfoot looks to also be 1999 and rpg.net a little earlier - 1996).  And D&D 3E's arrival in 2000 can't be discounted as a factor causing people to look at older gaming ideas.

It may not be overt, or even have been intentional, but I think collectors are responsible for a lot of the groundwork that led to the OSR coming to be, and continue to help keep it moving forward (by looking backward).

I left the question open-ended because I dunno! Even in the history I know pretty well, it's a matter of individual interpretation to say "Quick Primer for Old-School Gaming" marks a milestone in the OSR and not highlight any number of other noteworthy events. So I'm hoping others will suggest similar milestones, or at least critique my attempts at such. The Acaeum seems like a good choice because it's a community resource for information gathering & sharing. I wonder if the Gygax and Arneson estate auctions might also qualify as significant points where the sum total of knowledge available increases?

If you were going to talk about the history of collecting, I would also focus on the impact that the internet itself, primarily the emergence of AOL, had on the hobby.  Up until the internet became ubiquitous, the only source I knew of for collectible material was Zocchi, who used to run the full page ads in Dragon magazine looking to buy or sell D&D and RPG stuff, and the classifieds in Polyhedron magazine.  I think you definitely have to look on the rise of AOL as a significant milestone in the collecting annals, for several reasons.  First because it allowed people across the globe who were interested in games or collecting to communicate with each other; Second, because the first organized game buying, selling and trading of significance happened on AOL Marketplace; and third, TSR had a "portal" operating exclusively on AOL with a forum where you could download items, talk to people who worked at TSR, play Neverwinter Nights, and more.  

In the early 90's, the AOL marketplace began to emerge as THE spot to buy, sell and trade gaming stuff.  I first got online back in 1992 and was immediately drawn to the AOL marketplace to find rare items. I had just acquired Heroic Worlds which I can say was a book that changed my life through it's listings of gaming items I had never even heard of! Back in these days, it cost nothing to post a ad in the AOL marketplace.  I don't know the exact category but I believe it was "Games".  The only organized, legitimate sources were Michael Cox (Dragonstrove), Titan Games (not Marcus King but the guy who owned Titan before that), "Estra Zo" (a guy from Austin, TX whose name escapes me), Jason Zavoda, and then myself when I started systematically selling with a list of items in late 1994 (Edit: Actually I first started selling online early summer 1994).  Prodigy also had a marketplace but with the rise of AOL it's marketplace began to overtake Prodigy for sheer volume of posts.  

Remember no one had websites back then.  You basically posted a list of items you wanted to sell, with prices, and someone would email you, you'd discuss shipping, they would send you a check or money order, and you would mail them their items.  It was all based on trust and reputation.  The marketplace would often work in your favor since sometimes there would be listed something pretty valuable at a low price, or want to trade you a white box for a bunch of giant series modules. The only "price guide" out there was Zocchi's list of what he would pay for items, which everyone agreed was way out of whack. Titan Games, Dragonstrove and Jason's listings were the most professional (Titan and Jason actually had physical locations, while Michael Cox worked a lot of conventions in the Northeast), while Estra Zo and I were just guys who first started listing extra material for sales.  It was really a huge community and I know at one point I was making 100's of sales a month and one year I believe my income tax was paid on something like 60k.  I assume that guys like Jason, Michael, etc were making more.  

One other online site of note, "Afterglow" (Matthias Bock) started a list of non-TSR collectibles that was somewhat essential for collectors, I used to refer to his webpage quite often for more detailed descriptions of items than Heroic Worlds. That was one of the first "fan" sites I remember going up.

I don't know what year AOL shut down their marketplace, or when rpgmarketplace.net took over, but at a certain point rpgmarketplace.net became THE spot for buying, selling and trading RPGs, and all the internet sellers switched there.  Noble Knight Games was someone who first became big on rpgmarketplace.net, I still have somewhere an email he sent to me asking for information about how I ran my business, where I bought my stuff, how I decided what to price items, etc.  

Of course when Ebay came it changed the entire hobby again.  

BTW, TSR having a portal on AOL was very important to the hobby. It was really the first place D&D fanatics could get together and chat together in "real time" besides conventions like Gencon.  Frank Mentzer was a guy who would regularly pop up in chats and share knowledge, for one, as "extsr".  I remember one of the reasons I got a better computer at the time with a modem was because TSR released "Ivid the Undying" as a download ONLY available at the site, I spent something like six hours one night downloading it!!!  

Jason Zavoda or Mark Shipley might have more information, those are two guys I remember from the old days who I talked to back on AOL, there are more I probably have forgotten.

Mike B.

Badmike wrote:The only organized, legitimate sources were Michael Cox (Dragonstrove), Titan Games (not Marcus King but the guy who owned Titan before that), "Estra Zo" (a guy from Austin, TX whose name escapes me), Jason Zavoda, and then myself when I started systematically selling with a list of items in late 1994 (Edit: Actually I first started selling online early summer 1994).

Was it Quincy Koziel (sp?) of Titan Games? He was my favorite dealer for selling my games to, & there was also Sages Guild. I have my suspicions as to whom Estra Zo might be.