Thanks Dave!
What a great idea to post here! Thanks, too, to all of you that have already visited our Yahoo! site! I hope you like what you see there, and decide to join us as full members in the project. The OSFMapa Journal is a really cool piece of work, and if you are a serious fan of old school minis, you will enjoy reading what our members have written there...
Please bear with me folks as I attempt to explain what the OSFMapa is all about...
The Old School Fantasy Miniatures Amateur Press Alliance (OSFMapa) is an APA.
An "APA" is an "Amateur Press Association", and they are groups of enthusiastic, like-minded fans that produce an "APAzine" (magazine) composed of articles written by the APA members about their particular field of interest. If you've never heard of APAs before, please take a moment and Google it. There's an excellent article about APAs on Wikipedia (
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amateur_press_association) that explains what they are, how they work, and their long and illustrious history…
Basically, we're a bunch of serious old school miniatures fans that write articles about our miniatures obsessions, which we distribute to all of our members through our Journal compiled 3 times a year.
I've been a member of the CFAAPA (The Comics and Fantasy Art APA) for the past 7 years, and the ERBapa (The Edgar Rice Burroughs APA) for the past 3 years. The experience of participating in these 2 APAs has been very rewarding to me, and I started the OSFMapa to try and create a similar forum for fans of old fantasy miniatures. We started last September, and have just produced our first Journal (the cover of which Dave posted above).
This is a very young hobby, and there is a great deal of study and documentation to be done. We've all had similar experiences when we've found a previously unknown mini, and gone through the process of trying to ID the piece. It's very exciting when you find that rare figure that you've never even seen before! Many of the pieces I collect were never pictured in catalogs or ads, and finding conclusive evidence that my newly found figure is one of those "missing links" is collecting Nirvana…Id'ing figures and the "hunt" is not the only thing it's all about. It's also about the painting, the sculptors, the history, the games, the nostalgia, and all the other things we think about when we think about old fantasy minis. I'm a big fan of the Lost Minis Wiki, and I'm sure you are as well. It's creation was a blessing in our hobby, and it's indespensible as a resource for us all. The OSFMapa will prove to be an excellent companion to the LMW as it focuses a lot more on the who's, when's, and why's of fantasy miniatures as we delve into the history of the hobby.
If you would like to know more about the OSFMapa, please follow the link to our private Yahoo! group site (
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/OSFMapa/) where you can find an introductory FAQ, our rules, and our submission guidelines. You can also access the message base where many questions have already been answered.
Of course, I'll be glad to answer any questions about the OSFMapa you post here as well, and I can send you any of our documents (the FAQ, Rules, guidelines) via email as well.
Thanks for your interest in the OSFMapa. I hope you will join us!
Best,
Scott Burnley
CM OSFMapa
20 February 2007, 05:40:49 PM