Should we start a Forge 'zine?

[Kester Pelagius]

Greetings All,

Just had a thought while PMing Mr. Holmes.

What with all the wonderful talent here at the Forge- just look at the Iron Game Chef challenge: Tiki Gods, Bloodsongs, galaxy spanning space operas, oh my!- I was wondering, kinda thinking, what if there was a official unoffical Forge 'zine?

Something that everyone could contribute to.  Game news, reviews, articles, newest spins on GNS flavors of the month and, more importantly, something that the IGC winner's game could maybe be published in.

Or something.

Comments?


Kind Regards,

Kester Pelagius

[Walt Freitag]

Hi Kester,

The way I see it, the Forge IS the 'zine.

Or am I missing something implicit in your suggestion? Is there an audience a 'zine could reach that the site cannot? Could something be achieved with a 'zine that the site isn't already achieving? Could contributors participate in a 'zine in ways that they cannot participate in the site?

Apart from those questions, the basic problem I see with the suggestion is already summed up neatly in two words in your post: "official unofficial." To do what you appear to want it to, the 'zine would have to be both. And of course, it cannot possibly be; it's a logical contradiction.

- Walt

[Kester Pelagius]

Greetings Walt,

Hi Kester,

The way I see it, the Forge IS the 'zine.

Or am I missing something implicit in your suggestion? Is there an audience a 'zine could reach that the site cannot? Could something be achieved with a 'zine that the site isn't already achieving? Could contributors participate in a 'zine in ways that they cannot participate in the site?

Apart from those questions, the basic problem I see with the suggestion is already summed up neatly in two words in your post: "official unofficial." To do what you appear to want it to, the 'zine would have to be both. And of course, it cannot possibly be; it's a logical contradiction.

Ah, my vagueness disadvantage strikes again I see.

I mean create a, more or less, "indie gaming" mag, created by the Forge community, perhaps centered out of here as well.  A small press endeavor, probably a bi-monthly PDF, possibly with limited print distro if it takes off.

Or something.

Course with the economy the way it is. . .


Kind Regards,

Kester Pelagius


P.S.  Something with a catchy name like "Indie Scene", "The Forge Chronicle" or, "The Forge Independant"?

[Ron Edwards]

Hello,

Vagueness indeed, especially the "official unofficial" part.

It takes a hell of a lot of time, commitment, credibility, and authority to get something like this going for any more than an issue or two. I can say without fail that I don't have the time.

What I'd suggest is for such a zine to be begun and sustained without a direct relationship with the Forge, and to display merits or features that don't correspond to it. Therefore a friendly relationship between two related endeavors would be a great thing for both.

I like to think that being active at the Forge can help lead a person to (for instance) Places to Go, People to Be, or to the Christian Gamers' list that M.J. was talking about, or to Nathan's Mystic Ages.

Best,
Ron

[Kester Pelagius]

Howdy,

Vagueness indeed, especially the "official unofficial" part.

It's a talent.  ;)

It takes a hell of a lot of time, commitment, credibility, and authority to get something like this going for any more than an issue or two. I can say without fail that I don't have the time.

Hmm, time and commitment are easy obstacles to overcome, but the credibility and authority part may be a task.  Especially for something larger than a fanzine effort.

I mean what would you say constitutes good credibility for someone wishing to start such an endeavor?

What I'd suggest is for such a zine to be begun and sustained without a direct relationship with the Forge, and to display merits or features that don't correspond to it. Therefore a friendly relationship between two related endeavors would be a great thing for both.

Fair enough.

But assuming such a publication did eventually get off the ground, what sort of relationship might you consider (as a representative of the gaming community) having with such a publication?


Kind Regards,

Kester Pelagius

[M. J. Young]

Ron's right about the time and effort.

Several years back, the Christian Gamers Guild decided to do an e-zine, and after much dedicated effort and contributions from a supportive membership, the first issue was published. I think that was 1999. Maybe some of you have seen copies of it. It's called The Way, the Truth, and the Dice, and often copies of the latest issue are printed and passed out at conventions. It's a decent looking PDF.

I don't know how often they originally intended to publish. I do know that they're trying to gather articles for their fourth issue now.

It is a tremendous amount of work for volunteers to drum up written articles, edit them, add artwork, do the layout, and convert it all to PDF or HTML. I'm very impressed at the work Places to Go, People to Be has done (I worked with editor Steve Darlington when they published my three-part series on law in imaginary realms, and found his work so professional I persuaded Valdron to get him as editor on Verse Three, Chapter One). If you want to do this, be warned that it's a tremendous amount of work. Meanwhile, I know that the WT&D and PTGPTB are both always interested in good articles, and Gaming Outpost and RPGnet have basically open door policies, and Pyramid Online does take submissions. If you've got articles on indie games, there are plenty of outlets for them. Creating another outlet to compete for the same articles and audience is a time-consuming uphill battle.

More power to you if you decide to do it. I've never refused to write an article for any site or publication that wanted one, so don't think I'm telling you not to do it. I'm just saying that you really don't know what you're promising when you say you've got the time for it. Maybe you should contact some of the people who run those other e-zines and sites, and see what they say on the subject.

--M. J. Young

[Ron Edwards]

Hi Kester,

But assuming such a publication did eventually get off the ground, what sort of relationship might you consider (as a representative of the gaming community) having with such a publication?

I'm a "rep for the gaming community?" Emphatically: not it.

To answer for purposes only of the Forge and its content, as I said, just check out the current relationship between the Forge and any other e-zine. It gets mentioned from time to time in discussions. The people running it are welcome to post links to their articles and issues. The zine's main page is available through the Resource Library. The same more-or-less goes on toward the Forge at the zine. All pretty informal.

Best,
Ron

[Jack Spencer Jr]

Hey, Kester, question for you.

What is the difference between writing an article for this indie rpg 'zine you propose, 'probably a bi-monthly PDF' and then debating the topic in forums, either located on the 'zine's page or another forum like here and composing a post on a topic and then posting it to a forum, like this one, and then debating the topic in the resulting thread? Obviously there would be a difference if we're talking about a hard copy publication, and most likely, unfortunately, the difference would be whether the publisher loses their house or not. (just my opinion there)

[Kester Pelagius]

Greetings Ron,

I'm a "rep for the gaming community?" Emphatically: not it.

Some would likely disagree.  As the main Moderator of this site and author of various articles posted here you have a high profile, and that's not even mentioned the GNS aspect.  You may not represent the gaming community as a whole, but you certainly are a representative for a portion of it.

The Forge is, after all, a community.  And you, Mr. Edwards, are, if not the community's spiritual guru, then certainly that old grandfatherly figure who carries the big rune carved stick that walks through town keeping everyone on the straight and narrow.


Or something. . .   ;-)

To answer for purposes only of the Forge and its content, as I said, just check out the current relationship between the Forge and any other e-zine. It gets mentioned from time to time in discussions. The people running it are welcome to post links to their articles and issues. The zine's main page is available through the Resource Library. The same more-or-less goes on toward the Forge at the zine. All pretty informal.

Fair enough.




Kind Regards,

Kester Pelagius

[Kester Pelagius]

Greetings Jack.

What is the difference between writing an article for this indie rpg 'zine you propose, 'probably a bi-monthly PDF' and then debating the topic in forums, either located on the 'zine's page or another forum like here and composing a post on a topic and then posting it to a forum, like this one, and then debating the topic in the resulting thread?

The difference is that between 'zines like Space Gamer/Dragon Magazine and The Forge/RPGnet.

The comparison to posting in Forums and then debating, while not necessarily invalid, is more or less like the "letters" deptartment in a magazine.  Losts of random noise, not always coherent, but on the boards you don't have a editor to filther through the mail in order to pick and choose the better posts/letters.  Though the moderators could set the board up to require them to first view the posts before everyoen else, the dynamic is different.

Obviously there would be a difference if we're talking about a hard copy publication, and most likely, unfortunately, the difference would be whether the publisher loses their house or not. (just my opinion there)

True, then again nothing ventured nothing gained.

Perhaps, like Mr. Edwards said, what a idea/project like this needs is someone with the "credibility, and authority" and respect of the gaming community to generate interest in such an endeavor. . .  or at the very least someone willing to jump in head first and just do it.  Hmm.




Kind Regards,

Kester Pelagius

[Jack Spencer Jr]

The difference is that between 'zines like Space Gamer/Dragon Magazine and The Forge/RPGnet.

The comparison to posting in Forums and then debating, while not necessarily invalid, is more or less like the "letters" deptartment in a magazine.  Losts of random noise, not always coherent, but on the boards you don't have a editor to filther through the mail in order to pick and choose the better posts/letters.  Though the moderators could set the board up to require them to first view the posts before everyoen else, the dynamic is different.

Hmm, OK

Rather than being a discouraging word by pointing out that Wizards had to sell its periodical division IIUC and that even Rosie O'Donnell couldn't save the flagging McCall's when it was renamed Rosie Magazine.

Damn, I guess I did anyway. But then there's probably more to both stories than people no buy mag'zines.

In any case, my best advise is start small, grasshopper. Maybe a "best of the Forge" is not the worst idea inthe world. Someone would have to go through the forums and find threads of exceptional quality and relavence and thus make it easier to look up certain thread which conatian certain concepts.

[clehrich]

Just a couple suggestions, if you want to do a "best of the Forge" thing.

1. Publish in hard copy.  I for one see no advantage in having two copies of the Forge around on the web.  I could, however, see the point in having a slim volume of essays and dialogic discussions to peruse at my leisure.

2. Pick a list of, say 15 important posters whom you think everyone respects.  Invite them, over the course of a couple of weeks or so, to send you links to really important, interesting, and seminal threads.  Do NOT do this publicly: you're not looking for "most popular" threads, but "best" threads.

3. Come up with a similar list of your own, while they're working.

4. Sit down and read all those threads, line by line.  Restructure the list into categories, such as GNS, Stance, GM technique, etc.

5. Put up this list, with all links, in categorized order, here on the Forge.  Give a couple of lines of explanatory text before each link, saying what the thread is and why it's included.

6. Solicit further thread suggestions.

7. Invite people to help you break down each thread into 1 or 2 (rarely 3) important authors, the people who really made the thread as important and influential as it ended up being.

8. For each thread, now contact the relevant author(s), and ask their advice.  The ideal thing is to have the relevant author(s) work up a revised, polished, corrected text of their final thinking on the subject.  If the thread ended with two or more major approaches, it would be great for them to put together a dialogic essay, in which they go back and forth in a more formal vein than we usually do here on the Forge.  Do NOT simply reproduce the online text, which necessarily includes a lot of static.  You want the best of the best, not the Forge on paper.  You will need to be very patient and helpful here, as you're asking authors to do a fair amount of work for no pay.  You want them to see this as an opportunity to make a careful, thoughtful restatement on subjects about which they were constitutive of the whole discourse; this is an honor, and it should be clearly so.  You do not want them to look at this as you trying to get them to do all the work for you.

9. Revise and polish these things grammatically, and send them back as proofs, in PDF, for redlining and final corrections.

10. Put it together with table of contents, editorial comments, a reference to each original thread written out (i.e. where to log on and find the original text), and ideally an index.  If you're going to index, don't just do a concordance, a list of where words appear done by computer.  You need a proper subject index; see the 60-page essay in the Chicago Manual of Style for how to do this.  It's a lot of work, but makes a volume infinitely more useful and accessible.

11. Get a 30-word max. author description for each contributor, and have a page in the front or back that gives all of these, in alphabetical order.

12. NOW go try to find a publisher.  You want somebody who's done work in the gaming industry, but who is willing to do a fairly traditional sort of book (probably no art, for example, which will keep the price down).  Submit formal proposals to lots of seemingly appropriate publishers (bear in mind the SciFi/Fantasy publishers who have done game-related novels).

This process will produce a really wonderful (to me, anyway) book.  But it's going to be a hell of a lot of work.  If you go through a relatively big publisher, it could well sell through retailers all over the place.  Who published Robin's Laws, for example?  That's the kind of thing you want here.

Not to be a naysayer, but I think a quickie collection will be more work than it's worth, and I for one probably wouldn't buy it -- what for?  A really impressive collected edition thing would, IMO, do wonders for the Forge and its reputation, and probably be good for the gaming industry.  But again, somebody's going to have to do an amazing amount of work.

Note: If you actually want to do this, please let me know.  I've done some stuff like this, and while I don't have the time to do the whole thing, I can give a fair amount of advice and help along the way.

Chris

[Matt Snyder]

The comparison to posting in Forums and then debating, while not necessarily invalid, is more or less like the "letters" deptartment in a magazine.

This is certainly not wrong, but misses the larger picture in the analogy. The difference between a 'zine and, say, the Forge is interactivity, authority and decentralization of content vs. editorial oversight.

The Forge (the forums, at least) is more like an organism or a community (a small town, perhaps). It is interactive. A 'zine is more like, well, a magazine or newpaper which reports and editorializes about a topic, which might actually be a community. It is driven by more top-down, centralized authority.

That I've considered in the past and am considering again in part from this thread of doing my own 'zine will likely be the death of me. I've really wanted to do an indie 'zine, and I'm sorry (and partly to blame) that RPGevolutions didn't work last fall. I think my skill sets, as a journalist and game designer, would help be a natural fit.

Of course, it's lots of hard work and requires vision, time and effort. I've even gone so far as to write up some story/content ideas, a rough mission statement, and the sketches of a business plan. Now, I've just got to be crazy enough to do it. I want to call my zine "Daedalus" and I'd release it as PDF and possibly HTML as well. That is, HTML for online reading, PDF for download. Frequency would be either bi-monthly or quarterly.

The mission statement/tagline would be something like:

"An independent editorial workshop for the Role-playing hobby"

Or, with a bit more tongue in cheek: "All the hobby that's fit to play." (see New York Times).  Emphasis in either case on the hobby, which I'm overtly distinguishing (though not separating) from the industry.

All of this is brainstorming on my part. I'm curious to see if there's any feedback regarding this, but it'd still come down to sizing the beast up and determining whether I have the time and wherewithal to pull it off.

It would be Forge-related only in that I'm a member of this community, and I'd seek content from the community and its members, as well as content from other sources.

[Kester Pelagius]

Greetings clehrich,

Just a couple suggestions, if you want to do a "best of the Forge" thing.

Not what I meant but, you know, this isn't a bad idea either.

Course it would probably be one hellacious mountain of work to do. . .

Glad you volunteered.

What do you mean *nuh-uh*, it was *your* idea Hoss!  ;-)


Seriously, I mean more of a "Indie Orientated" 'zine.  Something for reviews of indie and small press games, be they RPGs or RPG board/computer games, and maybe even have a game in every other issue.  Something along the lines of the old wargamming 'zines of yesteryear, you know, only for RPGs?


Kind Regards,

Kester Pelagius

[Kester Pelagius]

Greetings Jack,

Wow, this is getting depressing.

Rather than being a discouraging word by pointing out that Wizards had to sell its periodical division IIUC and that even Rosie O'Donnell couldn't save the flagging McCall's when it was renamed Rosie Magazine.

Damn, I guess I did anyway. But then there's probably more to both stories than people no buy mag'zines.

In any case, my best advise is start small, grasshopper. Maybe a "best of the Forge" is not the worst idea inthe world. Someone would have to go through the forums and find threads of exceptional quality and relavence and thus make it easier to look up certain thread which conatian certain concepts.

Hmm, sounds almost like I'd be better off starting a publishing house and specialising in collections of. . . things and stuff.  Or something.

Well it does look rather overcast here.

*Mumbles something about grabbing a raincoat and going looking for gold at the end of rainbows*   ;)

So, Jack, what would move you to buy a mag about the hobby?

What do *you* want to see in a 'zine?



Kind Regards,

Kester Pelagius