I don't know if the title of this post will bring back any memories. In this case, I harken you back to 1983 when John Bambach made his first contribution to Alarums & Excursions #98 in their October issue.
John had the immeasurably vast and equally laudable goal of trying to catalog every magazine and fanzine related to our mutual love - RPGs. In his article he listed 171 magazines and fanzines that he knew of, an impressive number for 1983, or for the ages, for that matter.

I just discovered his A&E article a few hours ago. I post here because I wonder if any of my fellow "uber collectors" know of him or his labor of love.

All info welcome. I will post more of what I know soon.

Wow and yikes! Scope of my collection goal has once again expanded. Thank you for posting this. Great information.

Cheers,
Curt

?

Same here. I have maybe 40 or so zines, but most are UK and some are not on the list.

Another list from A&E 104 and 107:

Tortured Souls ran to two issues, and then the magazine Tortured Souls! was published starting at #1 and running to #12.

Tortured Souls (no exclamation mark) was an A5 black and white photocopied fanzine  with a coloured paper cover, put out by Barrett and Forrest in '84 ish. It ran to two issues. Then they started publishing Tortured Souls! the magazine, A4 full colour with a lot of contributing (although uncredited) authors and artists. A really polished product for the time here in the UK, and it ran for 12 issues. After about issue 6 they joined forces with Hinkling and started putting out the Complete Dungeon Master series. It ran to 4 boxed sets built primarily on the Tortured Souls! compaign environ of Zhalindor. There was going to be a fifth, Deep Water Shallow Graves, but they licensed their product to Games Workshop for Warhammer Fantasy RPG and thus died the careers of Barrett, Forrest and Hinkling in the RPG sphere.

mbassoc2003 wrote in The Scribe of the Elfin Kingdoms:Tortured Souls (no exclamation mark) was an A5 black and white photocopied fanzine  with a coloured paper cover, put out by Barrett and Forrest in '84 ish. It ran to two issues.

More like late 1978, possibly into 1979+ for the second issue.

Neither issue of the A5 Tortured Souls has dating info within it, except that some of the artwork has "78" next to the signatures. Not even circumstantial references to conventions to help out.

The best dating corroboration I found so far is from Demonsblood #1 (1979 Apr) p 12: "TORTURED SOULS sparked briefly into life towards the end of last year, only to disappear again before most people had time to notice it." And The Dungeoneer #10 (1979 Mar/Apr) p 39 shows Tortured Souls available (and with Simon Forrest's address) with 40 p price; note that Tortured Souls #2 has a 45 p cover price, so this could indicate that #2 was not out by the time Simon Forrest provided that info to Judges Guild (which could have been weeks/months prior).

I haven't found mentions yet in any other contemporaneous fanzines, though I have not fully read overlapping Trollcrusher issues.


On the Barrett credit: Tortured Souls #1 credits "John Barrett" for the solo dungeon. This isn't the same person as Basil Barrett, is it? Clearly the solo dungeon from Tortured Souls! #1 (1983, A4) is from the same design lineage as the ones in the A5 fanzines; the instructions even use very similar phrasing.

Guy Fullerton wrote in The Scribe of the Elfin Kingdoms:More like late 1978, possibly into 1979+ for the second issue.

Neither issue of the A5 Tortured Souls has dating info within it, except that some of the artwork has "78" next to the signatures. Not even circumstantial references to conventions to help out.

The best dating corroboration I found so far is from Demonsblood #1 (1979 Apr) p 12: "TORTURED SOULS sparked briefly into life towards the end of last year, only to disappear again before most people had time to notice it." And The Dungeoneer #10 (1979 Mar/Apr) p 39 shows Tortured Souls available (and with Simon Forrest's address) with 40 p price; note that Tortured Souls #2 has a 45 p cover price, so this could indicate that #2 was not out by the time Simon Forrest provided that info to Judges Guild (which could have been weeks/months prior).

I haven't found mentions yet in any other contemporaneous fanzines, though I have not fully read overlapping Trollcrusher issues.

 Thanks for that. Copy and paste to my notes.

Guy Fullerton wrote in The Scribe of the Elfin Kingdoms:On the Barrett credit: Tortured Souls #1 credits "John Barrett" for the solo dungeon. This isn't the same person as Basil Barrett, is it? Clearly the solo dungeon from Tortured Souls! #1 (1983, A4) is from the same design lineage as the ones in the A5 fanzines; the instructions even use very similar phrasing.

A decade or so ago I explored the possibility of publishing TS! as a digital Archive. I got a hold of the original artist who produced much of the distinctive artwork of the time, and had an e-mail exchange with Alan Hinkling and I believe Basil Barrett, sending Basil a PDF copy of the TS zine that I had, as he did not have a copy. It was this exchange that ended the possibility of a digital release of TS!, because some of the IP remains (or did at that time) tied up in some way with GW. I certainly got the impression that John Barrett and Basil Barrett were one and the same person, but maybe big bro/little bro, or first name/middle name, or even father/son in extremis? Who knows. I do seem to recall Mr Barrett posting to the forum in the TS! thread, but whether or not he remains contactable I do not know. Many laptops ago, and his his e-mails to me are either lost or buried in .pst files somewhere.

Incidentally, Mr Hinkling was the provider of the copies of the CDM5 manuscripts that are in the collecting community. Mr Barrett was aware was aware that the CDM5 manuscript portion still existed but had no desire to have a copy, so I presumed he had either his original copy or similar. Mr Hinkling had no interest, but also no objection, to the TS! project. I got the distinct impression that that part of his life had been shelved, was in the past, and he had no inclination to go there again. I can't remember what he was doing at the time, running a pet shop or a model railway shop or something like that I think. As for Mr Barrett, I didn't ask and he didn't volunteer.