Hi folks, I'm David DeBoe, mostly known as "Issachar" online.  I've been a part of the staff at the fanzine The Hall of Fire for about a year and a half now.

I hadn't heard a thing about Other Minds until someone posted an announcement on the Decipher message boards that OM #1 had been released.  I've only had time to take a quick look at it (paying the most attention to the article on mapping Arda), and it looks really, really good.  The material is well written and thorough and of great interest to readers of Tolkien's work.  I'm so happy that someone decided to create a successor to Other Hands, and to do it with obvious skill and care.  Thanks for your hard work!  I look forward to reading the issue more closely later.

You went to some pains to be exceptionally courteous and to assert that OM does not intend to step on the toes of other Tolkien fan publications out there like The Hall of Fire.  For my part, you needn't have worried.  It's great to have more people contributing to the lives of Tolkien hobbyists.  And HOF is rather limited in its scope, as you observed: it's specific to the CODA system and most of its articles are not scholarly.  (This is partly because of the difficulty of maintaining a monthly release schedule, I think -- there's just not much time to commit to genuine Tolkien research.)

Anyway, enough blah blah blah from me.  The very best wishes to Other Minds and the people who make it happen.  Now do it again!

Thank you very much for you kind words, it is greatly appreciated.

As you stated, it takes some time to take a more scholarly approach to releases, so our next release will not be until February 1st, 2008. We've received a number of emails begging for us to immediately go to a quarterly cycle rather than waiting so long. We have a lot of work to do before the next issue. We're consulting (waiting for replies) with various lawyers at the Gnu foundation and EFF (Electronic Frontier Foundation) on how to best protect OM from the dark forces. We're also looking into establishing the magazine as a legal non-profit so that we could make available print issues (at cost) for the many who are begging for a hard copy instead of just a PDF. We also are very much in need of more art contributions for the upcoming issues. We are hoping that the word will get around from Issue #1 and give us plenty of content before the next issues, to make all future issues well rounded. The plan is for the 3rd issue to come out t MerpCon IV, and then after that finally be on a quarterly release cycle. Thank you again for your wonderful compliments, and keep up the great efforts on your end, we're all part of the same community spreading the dream of extending Tolkien's works as he stated he wanted as well in the "Other Minds and Hands" quote.

Cheers!

Other Minds Founder.

Hi!

I am Rick Hebert from Louisiana, and have been a gamer since the 70's.

But it has been only withing the last three or four years since I
discovered Hawke's MERP.COM that my literary horizons have expanded
regarding the works of JRR Tolkien.

And I missed out on Other Hands during it's hey-day, but I have
obtained copies of the numerous publications. What a huge wealth of
material there was out there that I had no clue existed!

Well I just learned of this place a few days ago in the merp.com
email and created an account. I have read several articles in OM v1 and
I must say, Hawke's article "Opinion" gave me some insight as to the
specter that haunts and thwarts creativity in regards to Tolkien's work.

And also the article "The Battle over Role Playing Gaming" was of particular interest to me because after I left the Navy in 81', I was struggling to find a gaming group in bible thumping south Louisiana, and just when I seemed to assemble a group of three people, the movie "Mazes and Monsters" came out and I lost two players.

I also thoroughly enjoyed reading Nevill Percy's "On Barrow Wights".

That article for me is johnny-on-the-spot, for I was contemplating
an encounter with a Barrow Wight in an upcoming adventure campaign.

Thanks and well done!

Thank you so much for your great comments!

I kept much of my personal experiences (though obviously not opinion) out of both essays. I have lots of personal anecdotes to tie in with

the development of the essays. Maybe I should post those in the upcoming magazine "Letters/Forum" section?

Would you also consider sending your comments to be published in the next issue in the "Letters" section?

Thanks again for your kind statements.

-Hawe