From the introduction:
Advanced Phantasm Adventures, 4th edition, is a culmination of more than twenty-seven years of work. The first edition of the game started out as an alternative to my Dungeons & Dragons game way back in high school. The game was original, fun, and rich in new ideas and rules. The last time the game was published, to a small set of friends, was in 1999.
In 1987 I had the wonderful opportunity to live and go to school in Japan. During that year I decided to rewrite Phantasm Adventures, into Phantasm Adventures II (2nd Edition). The game also saw print in Japan, after meeting up with some gamers who led me to a Japanese game company. For the next several years I banged out a huge amount of game related material. In 1988 I saw the release of Advanced Phantasm Adventures.
Also during the year, The Black Keep of Serpent Lake appeared (with an official GameScreen). In 1989 I saw the release of the grandiose Misty Island Adventure and the World Guide of Monokan. With great regrets, I lost contact with the Japanese company, Dai Nippon Kaiga, which I believe was ultimately dissolved right after the release of Multiverse in 1991/1992.
Advanced Phantasm Adventures didn’t die. For the next eight years I played and replayed the game, changing this, modifying that. A few versions independent of the original Advanced Phantasm Adventures saw some light, but they simply didn’t work. Finally, in the spring of 2009, more than twentyseven years after the tiny brown book first appeared, APA, is finally coming back. Sure, it’s still homemade, and yes there are probably dozens of typos and grammatical mistakes….that’s Phantasm as much as the elves and the gzol-uk.