The hardest part of 'zines is organising contributors (a lesson learnt from the early days of the Realms eZine). So I'd not saddle yourself with a release schedule, I'd go with making sure you had a set of articles first.

Saying that, what I think'd be cool is making the contribution process part of the promotion. So have a contributors thread here and then promo'd it all over t'web.

-Matt

Realms Publishing

One way to do it - and I am not saying it's the only one - is the Norwegian zine Imagonem:
http://imagonem.net/index.php

Be advised most copy is in Norwegian, in case you're wondering what suddenly happened to your literacy skills.

An "issue" of Imagonem is merely a set of articles, 1, 3 or more, posted on the website, so it's actually more a news site than a zine.

Imagonem is high quality, but has got serious analytic articles as well as crazyness, comics, interviews and more (they landed an interview with madman RPGPundit not long ago).

I edit a magazine in real life, so I am more than aware of the troubles of getting copy in for deadlines or getting copy in at all.

But a handful of articles, however they are presented, every two months is probably a good place to start.

Per

I'll happily contribute! Whether that's insane scrawlings about dice mechanics or some sort of well-reasoned essay on writing a horror game, well you'll have to wait and see.

I second Matt's comment about saddling ourselves with a release schedule, and Per's about creating ourselves a collection of articles, then just releasing them whenever we have enough.

We can host it here as part of our blog function, or create a new "zine" tab, then bundle them into a pdf or print them out for a rough and ready print zine to sell/hand out at cons.

I would be happy to provide articles on mechanical considerations in games as well as reviews. How about articles relating to how to start your own imprint as well?

Cheers
Iain

Lead Developer Mob Justice RPG

Check out my home brew games like 'Reel Adventures'

Count me in for some cover art and design, maybe an article or two on art direction from a freelance artist's perspective, (ook keep forgetting I'm publishing a game in like 2 weeks so I guess I'm a publisher too lol)provided I can battle a space in the schedule.

Jon Hodgson
www.jonhodgson.net

>How about articles relating to how to start your >own imprint as well?

When you work out how to do that, let me know :-p

>ook keep forgetting I'm publishing a game in like >2 weeks so I guess I'm a publisher too lol

Ooh is George's Children about to come out?

If I can get an hour or two to polish up the final art, and if jim can lay it out like a demon then yup, we're kinda on schedule for imminent release...

Jon Hodgson
www.jonhodgson.net

A game full of Jon Hodgson artwork sounds awesome!

Can we have an explicit focus or goal for the zine please. Are we aiming for gamers, storygamers or baseline humans?

I'd like to see an emphasis on play. I don't think we'd be doing anyone any favours by giving advice on publishing - there are lots of other places, namely The Forge. Ron has sold more games than the CE combined.

Reviews are nice but how can we ensure fairness? Mutualism spills over far too easily into nepotism. Who'd dare to criticise Mortal Coil? Not me ;)

If we want to get into mechanics we need a strong theoretical backing otherwise we'll end up chasing our tails. I don't completely agree with The Big Model (though it's the best one out there) so I have my own variant theories I work from.

I'd also like to be able to recommend the Zine to non-gaming friends knowing they will find enjoy it.

A complete mini game and scenario (or play variant) for at least one of our products every issue would be good.

They're me first thoughts anyway!

+++
JoE
+++

Prince of Darkness Games
Rock N' Role-Play....

Mini games sound good. I would like to be able to recommend it to non-gmaing people but I think we need to consider our main audience as gamers, casual and more hard core.

We can present this more gamer orientated information in a friendly approachable fashion, avoiding jargon and encouraging a community to develop around the zine.

More thoughts as they come

Cheers

Iain

Lead Developer Mob Justice RPG

Check out my home brew games like 'Reel Adventures'

Yes, I like the focus on play. I think that a good comparison is the Sons of Kryos podcast. They are explicitly about play and really keep to that and do it well.

So, let's keep the momentum going here. Jon has kindly volunteered his services, as has Per, who has a wealth of experience of the RPG scene both here and in Denmark. I think he could bring some really good stuff into our efforts.

If we are going to focus on play, we need to think what areas of play, what do we want to talk about? What kind of stuff do we wnat to see in there? How do we make it accessible?

Lets keep this going!

edit: I'd also suggest that if we produce this as a PDF or whatever, we have hyprlinks in each article saying "Discuss this here.." inking to an appropriate part of these forums.

Cheers
Malcolm

Contested Ground Studios

Actual play is one of the hardest things to convey in roleplaying, yet it is the core of what we do. So yes, a focus on actual play, both how to describe it and how to make people understand HOW you play a game. Design, play, rinse, repeat.

Joe asked WHO the intended readers are. I'd like to repeat that question.

Also, did you all read Matt Snyder's excellent e-zine Daedalus? Though sometimes a it on the heavy side with looong articles, there were gems here and there, and the writers certainly were not afraid of using words such as "profound".

Per

Daedalus is my benchmark for 'zines too. Though I rather like Push's marginalia thing.

I think the target audience is the smallpress-inquisitive existing gamer.

I envision something where I could give it to Joe Q Gamer, and say, "if you like this, you'll like our stuff".

-Matt

Realms Publishing

I'm in quite an interesting situation when it comes to actual play - I've played (and have done for the past year) with a group of utter non-gamers. I think that would be an interesting perspective to give when it comes to actual play, and the assumptions that we often make about gamers.

As for more general things, I'm not sure. Our own play experiences, how we play, how we started playing. Then we can throw into that how we can apply that to others, how to introduce games to non-gamers, or non-story-gamers?

I think hyperlinks are key. We can link to articles as well as discussions. Good call.

Really strong, creative use of hyperlinks should be a breeze for game designers like you guys - its a pathway choice mechanic, if you like. You could break ground if you used them to the max, and have a neat "selling" point to boot.

A non-linear magazine could be neato.

Jon Hodgson
www.jonhodgson.net

I think that could be done really quite elegantly with little effort. You could provide a pdf copy for people too, but the main zine could simply be a series of hyperlinked pages. And the beauty of that would be that each successive zine would lock in smoothly with the previous ones.

I'm unsure how/who to pitch it to. Gamers, first and foremost, but not necessarily in a typical gamer zine fashion.

As Joe said, it would be nice for non-gamers to be able to pick it up too and understand, although I'm unsure how we'd actually captivate their interest with it, for the same reasons that I can pick up and read a car magazine, but it wouldn't interest me to do so or read.

If we want non-gamers to pick this up we should include a mini-game introducing the RPG concept in each zine. I really think though we should use this zine to inform gamers of what we are doing and get them intersted in the independent scene.

There are still a lot of gamers who do not know anything about the independent rpg scene in the UK and I think that is where we should start. You all know my feelings on getting non-gamers into our hobby, but for now I think we should concentrate on the gamers

If I can fit it in my bag, I will be bringing my laptop to spodley to muck about with podcasting which we could use as a support item for the zine.

Cheers

Iain

Lead Developer Mob Justice RPG

Check out my home brew games like 'Reel Adventures'

>You all know my feelings on getting non-gamers >into our hobby, but for now I think we should >concentrate on the gamers

I don't think I've heard them Iain! Why don't you start a thread about it?

>If I can fit it in my bag, I will be bringing my >laptop to spodley to muck about with podcasting >which we could use as a support item for the zine.

Or we could integrate the podcast with the zine, perhaps linking an article/transcript to it, or referring to articles/discussions in the zine in the podcast. After all, if we're going to go for a truly dynamic, fully-hyperlinked zine, why not integrate audio into it too?

I don't have time to be doing this, but hey, that's being your own boss. The power of skive is mine. If you guys like these at all let me know and I'll pass on big files. Heck I could throw a cd out of the studio window and it would land in Malc's garden, now I know where he lives.

I realise not all games use dice etc etc. But hey. And I wasn't sure if there's a "the" in Collective Endeavour. Enough talk - some gratis graphics that could maybe have something to do with a zine, if such a thing should come to pass...

poster
alt colours

Jon Hodgson
www.jonhodgson.net

That second one really reminds me of Nobilis.

"Never mind the bird in the helmet. Real gamers use DICE!"

Tim Gray
Silver Branch Games
www.silverbranch.co.uk

Excellent work Jon! Those are beautiful! Whilst I prefer the cream coloured die, red is definitely more our colour.