Encounter Magazine

A new and most enjoyable (nominally) quarterly PDF fanzine has appeared over the last year by the name of Encounter, edited and laid out by Jesse Walker. It's up to 3 issues so far, the most recent having been published in September 2010; apparently the 4th issue has been delayed owing to various real-life hiccups, but is on its way. The tagline is "A fanzine dedicated to the classic D&D Game!", and the content is thus compatible with games like Labyrinth Lord, Swords & Wizardry, OSRIC and so forth as well as D&D.

Each issue is short compared to some other gaming magazines; just 28 pages each, including the covers. But they're 28 quality pages, easy on the eye and full of good nutritious meat. The layout is clean and professional, the cover graphics (see above) are both evocative and of good quality, and interior illustration is a mix of public domain art and some decent images by Jesse Walker and others. The content presented thus far has been both entertaining and useful, and I'm looking forward to seeing what's in store in issue #4.

Personally, I'd like to see the format extended to 32 pages and the font size enlarged a bit, but that's because I print them at digest-size so everything is shrunk down from the original size.

Encounter is available free to download from www.encountermagazine.au2.com, and if you have even the slightest interest in old-school D&D-style gaming, I recommend it highly.