2012 Q1

What's the deadline?
so I can have some Ex! News Bytes done

I'm prepping a bigger paper for Q2:
"Playing Hungry: Hunger Games in Eclipse Phase"
That's right! I'm bringing Panem to our favorite setting, as an extrasolar colony. I'm not talking about the 74th Hunger Games and subsequent Quarter Quell, nor talking about Katniss, Peeta, Gale, Haymish, Prim, Rue and the rest, but more about the origin of Panem, about Presidents Snow and Coin, and how they can be interpreted in the game.

So, a happy new year, and may the odds be forever in your favor!

Thank you thank you thank you to all of you for keeping this afloat while I was checked out at the beginning of this quarter. I got a one-two punch at the end of the year (all good stuff, but it was a lot of major life upheaval). I'm going to spend this even working on edits for everything in the queue to get us some progress for Iss 5.

I'll scrounge some stuff up.

I've got about 5 half hone articles on the desktop that I should be able to turn into something.

At this point I'm not honestly sure we'll make Q1. Between a late start on things and honestly thin article selection it might be worthwhile to hold off on Q1 and go to a two-a-year schedule instead? In which case it would be a Q2/Q4 (April/Sept) release.

Before making that call I'd like to hear from others in this project. What do we need to do to pull this zine together for the long haul?

I'd love to hear what the three-part piece is. Work-work and school-work always trumph hobby-work as far as I'm concerned, so no worries there.

I think this year we do need to really get the momentum issues sorted out on this work or call it. We're not seeing the uptick I was hoping to see at this point. It strikes me that the rate of editing, while not necessarily the fastest or promptest - is at least minimally sufficient. More would be better but we're just not getting new blood in our contributors. We're short on material to edit.

So the question becomes: what can be done to get articles / art / momentum to a reliable point.

Is there a slice of audience we're not reaching?

Is there a better intake / review method that we should use to get content in?

Should we be proactively approaching potential authors to pull material, if so - who and in what venue - and how to keep that from becoming an accidental 'gatekeeper' preventing direct submissions? (And should certainly not be just one person doing the canvassing.)

I must admit I have no ideas on the matter. Will think on it, but I can't seem to be able to add anything new. Sorry.

I'm always happy to write articles. My problem is getting that initial seed I can check through the forums again for what people say they'd like to see.

I'm running a game IRL which jumps back and forth between EP and other settings and has some cool stuff I could pull in, but they tend to get a little ... extreme (for instance, there's a character who is moving backwards in time, so the first time the PC encounters him is the last time he encounters the PC). But if we're open to being a little softer on the side of science fiction, going into the realm of bonkers, I'd be happy to write them up.

It is extremely brain-bending to try and run, and thinking on it, I don't know how I'd help another GM try. I'll put up something else I was working on, however.

Unfortunately, a lot of our setting ended up using magic (since it was an offshoot of Shadowrun). Hmm ... maybe I need to write an alternate setting? I'll consider.

Thank you for the quick feedback on that, before I started writing I'll leave it open, and if people want me to take a hand to introducing some basic magic rules, I'll give it a go.