Eamon Adventurer's Guild Newsletter
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The Eamon Adventurer's Guild Newsletter is a quarterly newsletter edited by Tom Zuchowski and published by the Eamon Adventurer's Guild that ran for 55 issues from June 1988 to January 2004. The newsletter was the successor to the NEUC's Eamon Adventurer's Log which ran from 1984 to 1989.
History
NEUC founder and president John Nelson, with frequent help from his friend and co-editor Bob Davis, published 12 issues of the original club newsletter, the Eamon Adventurer's Log, between early 1984 and late 1987, a period of great growth and activity in the Eamon community during which roughly 110 new adventures were added to the club's catalog. Running the club and the newsletter was a time-consuming task that Nelson said often took 20-30 hours each week, but by 1987 his available time had begun to dwindle due to other obligations, and this combined with Davis's permanent departure and Nelson's growing interest in IBM machines instead of Apples prompted him to consider reorganizing the club.
In 1988 Nelson announced in an "interim letter" to all current and former club members that he was giving up producing a newsletter for Apple-based Eamon and was handing the management of it over to adventure author and club volunteer Tom Zuchowski. Nelson stated his intention to continue the NEUC and the Log newsletter as vehicles for his new IBM-based Eamon-PC system and published one more PC-focused issue in April 1989. Zuchowski meanwhile launched the new Eamon Adventurer's Guild, the premiere issue of which was published in June 1988.
In his first editorial Zuchowski described the newsletter's goals:
This newsletter has two main purposes. The first is to provide a source of information about existing Eamon adventures. This includes reviewing and rating them, and providing information on program bugs and their fixes. The second purpose is to provide a forum for Eamon fanciers to exchange ideas and to give and receive assistance in the writing of Eamon adventures.
In keeping with these goals, Zuchowski revamped the adventure rating system to make it more streamlined and useful, and created an "update service" for users to trade in older versions of adventures for revised copies from the club. He also announced that the EAG would no longer directly sell Eamon adventures but instead work with various distributors and public-domain software houses to ensure their Eamon libraries stayed up-to-date. Zuchowski explained this decision as necessary to avoid doing "too much with too little manpower", a trap he felt Nelson had fallen into.
Zuchowski kept the newsletter to a consistent quarterly schedule, publishing in March, June, September, and December.
Content
Every issue begins with an introduction by Zuchowski (variously titled "Editorial", "News and Stuff", "News and Opinions", etc.) that gives a summary of recent events and news of interest to the reader, including club activity, Apple developments, updates regarding GEnie and Delphi, book and TV show recommendations, and various other topics. Every issue ends with the latest list of official Eamon adventures, sometimes with a separate list showing just the ProDOS-based adventures.
The body of each newsletter consists of a variety of columns and features:
- Adventure Reviews (published in 50 issues) gives short summaries of adventures and assesses them on their quality and difficulty. The newsletters include a total of 226 reviews, most written by Zuchowski, which cover the great majority of the Eamon corpus.
- Dungeon Designs (33 issues) gives advice and tips for writing good adventures, often with code examples for various features or effects.
- Bugs 'n' Fixes (31 issues) identifies problems that have been found in adventures, utilities, and other programs, and describes how to correct them by editing the BASIC code. The column covers hundreds of fixes to over 120 programs.
- Eamon Walk-Through (22 issues) gives step-by-step instructions on how to complete adventures.
- Annual Financial Report (12 issues) gives an accounting of the club's income, expenses, and balance. Starting in 1990 Zuchowski included the report in the first issue of each year (usually March).
- Terminological Inexactitudes (7 issues), a humorous column of made-up news "not to be confused with actual facts".
- Eamon Lore (6 issues) explores in detail a fun topic like monsters or weapons.
Every issue also includes general information about the newsletter itself, the cost to subscribe, and how to purchase back issues.
Issues
| Issue | # | Contents | New adventures | Reviews | Bug fixes |
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| June 1988 | 1 |
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| September 1988 | 2 |
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| December 1988 | 3 |
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| March 1989 | 4 |
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| June 1989 | 5 |
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| September 1989 | 6 |
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| December 1989 | 7 |
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| March 1990 | 8 |
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| June 1990 | 9 |
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| September 1990 | 10 |
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| December 1990 | 11 |
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| March 1991 | 12 |
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| June 1991 | 13 |
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| September 1991 | 14 |
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| December 1991 | 15 |
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| March 1992 | 16 |
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| June 1992 | 17 |
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| September 1992 | 18 |
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| December 1992 | 19 |
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| March 1993 | 20 |
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| June 1993 | 21 |
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| September 1993 | 22 |
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| December 1993 | 23 |
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| March 1994 | 24 |
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| June 1994 | 25 |
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| September 1994 | 26 |
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| December 1994 | 27 |
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| March 1995 | 28 |
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| June 1995 | 29 |
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| September 1995 | 30 |
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| December 1995 | 31 |
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| March 1996 | 32 |
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| June 1996 | 33 |
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| September 1996 | 34 |
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| December 1996 | 35 |
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| March 1997 | 36 |
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| June 1997 | 37 |
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| September 1997 | 38 |
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| December 1997 | 39 |
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| March 1998 | 40 |
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| June 1998 | 41 |
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| September 1998 | 42 |
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| December 1998 | 43 |
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| March 1999 | 44 |
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| June 1999 | 45 |
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| September 1999 | 46 |
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| December 1999 | 47 |
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| March 2000 | 48 |
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| June 2000 | 49 |
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| September 2000 | 50 |
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| December 2000 | 51 |
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| January 2001 | 52 |
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| October 2001 | 53 |
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| February 2003 | 54 |
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| January 2004 | 55 |
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External links
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