Got these two newsletters from a San Francisco flea market last summer, and was told they had come from the liquidation of a hobby or gaming store an hour or so north of here, in Petaluma. That is all the information I have, leaving it a mystery how these two newsletters made it from Lake Geneva in 1974 to California today.
Both newsletters contain material submitted by Gygax to promote TSR's new gaming system, "Dungeons and Dragons". In the "Great Plains Game Players Newsletter", dated April or May 1974, Gygax contributed a summary narrative of a campaign he refereed, which I assume became the "G" series of modules, titled, "The Giant's Bag: An Account of a 'Wilderness Adventure' in Fantasy Wargaming". The newsletter also ran his cover letter to that article, a very full single page mentioning/promoting several things, but particularly the upcoming GenCon VIII.
The "El Conquistador" magazine of August 1974 ran two Gygax articles - "A Dungeon Adventure" regarding, needless to say, D&D, but also "Postal Brotherhood: or, This Crime Ain't a Federal Offense" about managing a game of "Diplomacy" via US Mail. It's 64 pages long, came out of Chicago, and with around 20 articles on a large variety of games, it is far and away the more upscale of the two zines.
That is probably why for my money, the "Great Plains Game Players Newsletter" (quite the mouthful) is the more interesting publication, with 8-ish articles in approximately 24 pages, and a circulation of 62. "8-ish"? Well, it is a matter of interpretation - for example, is Gygax's contribution one article, or (with the cover letter) two? "Approximately" 24 pages - and how do I know the circulation? Well, stapled into the center of the pamphlet are two foldover 8.5 x11 sheets that don't enter into the page numbering of the newsletter body. One of these two sheets contains a date list of upcoming games and events, mainly around the USD Vermillion (South Dakota) campus, plus cons coming up such as Citiex in Chicago (thrown by the publishers of "El Conquistador", Viking Systems) and GenCon VIII. The other stapled-in sheet has, on one side, a full-page ad for the three new books constituting the Dungeons and Dragons system, and then, on the other side, a complete list, name and addresses, of all 62 people on this newsletter's mailing list. (I puzzled over this for a good while before realizing that one function of the newsletter was to encourage interaction and keep these people in touch with each other.) These subscribers include Dave Arneson, Brian Blume, Ernie and Gary Gygax, Don Kane, Rob Kuntz... people more knowledgeable than me will probably find other notable names here that I didn't know enough to note.
I said that these two magazines had gone from Lake Geneva to California. One was printed in South Dakota and the other in Chicago, so how do I know they were ever in Lake Geneva? I am presuming both magazines are from the same collection, since "El Conquistador" has no postal marks and must have been mailed in an envelope, or maybe received by hand at Citex '74. But the "Great Plains" newsletter bears a mailing label addressed to Don Kane, 542 Sage St, Lake Geneva 53147.
At the time I saw this in a thatch of papers laid out at the flea market - I am familiar with this particular seller, whose team brings in the guts of a different liquidated household or two every week - there's no question it was all passing on to a dumpster in a couple more hours. I was drawn toward the loose papers by a couple of Avalon Hill games nearby, and I admit that the name Don Kane didn't do anything for me when I saw the mailing label. But seeing that somebody in Lake Geneva was the recipient, well - maybe I did drift out of playing D&D around 1986, but the five years before that time certainly etched Lake Geneva, WI permanently in my mind. A little research later led me to understand that Don Kane - with his garage at 542 Sage St still full of D&D boxed sets where he and Gary had been collating and shipping them - would die only a few months after he would have received these two magazines, in February 1975.
I have found just a couple of mentions of either of the two publications online, with the implication that there are either no known copies, or that maybe Wizards of the Coast have one in a vault somewhere. And so... what do y'all think? I know the texts of the Gygax articles have been preserved elsewhere (maybe not that cover letter), so it is not a long-lost discovery at quite *that* level, but these magazines certainly seemed like an interesting find.
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