The Unseen Servant forums

This forum is exactly what the title says -- it's all about ideas.

Here we can talk about upcoming themes, upcoming supplements, article ideas, and the like. A large part of this is encouragement for new and existing authors. Getting started at writing can be difficult. It gets easier with practice, and it helps to talk with people who have done it. It also helps to talk about ideas to flesh them out a bit before writing anything.

Most successful authors say work from an outline ... and discussion is a good way to build them!

That said, there are things to keep in mind:

• The team is all volunteer. We are doing this in spare time around family and job responsibilities.
• We are not doing this for profit. It's a hobby and we intend to keep it that way.
• This is not the place for editing -- please do not post articles. Articles should be emailed to submissions@and-mag.com

Hey Bryan & Ron > if I have an idea for a small town or shop or even an adventure, can I use a specific D&D setting (like Greyhawk or Forgotten Realms), or should my submission be setting generic?

hedgeknight wrote:Hey Bryan & Ron > if I have an idea for a small town or shop or even an adventure, can I use a specific D&D setting (like Greyhawk or Forgotten Realms), or should my submission be setting generic?

Good question, Gary.


After reading through the 'Guidelines' topic, specifically the "Adventures" section: Does/would & ever consider larger works? I've been itching (for a long time!) to create a mega-dungeon of my own, but that would obviously take more than 8 pages. But, one level of the dungeon by itself would probably fit into this 1-8 page limit. Would it be possible to release one level of the dungeon per issue? And does any included map(s) count towards this page limit?


P.S. Welcome, Bryan!

Surely! Check here: & Publishing Modules and here:
Castle Triskelion Megadungeon.

Plus there are other downloads. The only issues with the "other than & Magazine" publications is manpower. We do them, we can get them done, but sometimes it may take some time.
The plusses though, are we have a cartographer to help with maps, and a small, but ever-expanding, crew of artists led by our Director Del Tiegler my favorite Del cover is Issue 8, Urban Adventures:
Click the picture for a larger version.

Thanks for asking guys!
--Ron--

rredmond wrote:Surely! Check here: & Publishing Modules and here:
Castle Triskelion Megadungeon.

What are the odds you guys are already working on a mega-dungeon? Well, it's good to know it might be possible at some future time.

Thanks, Ron.

dmw71 wrote:What are the odds you guys are already working on a mega-dungeon?

By the way, I will be checking it out.

Megadungeon is a tenet of "old school D&D" thus, whether or not we adventure in one, & Publishing embraces the concept.

hedgeknight wrote:Hey Bryan & Ron > if I have an idea for a small town or shop or even an adventure, can I use a specific D&D setting (like Greyhawk or Forgotten Realms), or should my submission be setting generic?

As long as a work is original and does not reproduce a significant part of copyrighted material, it's fine.

Note: We generally publish under "fair use" not the Open Gaming License. The only material that has been published under OGL is a few articles by Stuart Marshall. For him it makes sense to do so as he's the project lead for OSRIC 2.

dmw71 wrote:Does/would & ever consider larger works? I've been itching (for a long time!) to create a mega-dungeon of my own, but that would obviously take more than 8 pages. But, one level of the dungeon by itself would probably fit into this 1-8 page limit. Would it be possible to release one level of the dungeon per issue? And does any included map(s) count towards this page limit

Thanks for the welcome!

The length of articles has been discussed repeatedly within the & team. I'm going to go into detail, if you feel your eyes glazing over, skip to the next post!

We currently have a hard page limit of 100 on our magazine. We have consistently published a 92 - 100 page magazine for a number of issues, and realize that every time we hit a new high, it becomes the expected benchmark. While we currently have sufficient material, labor is a big issue. (more on this in a bit) So we stick to 100 pages.

One of our original team members works in the publishing industry. He strongly cautioned us about publishing lengthy articles, and after researching (e.g., reading fanzines) I agree. Long articles lose people's attention, and with a 100 page limit, a 10 page article is already 10% of the magazine.

So ... as a general rule, we try to top articles at 8 pages, with 12 being a rare stretch. I *think* we've done 16 pages, but in hindsight it wasn't a good choice.

Labor? Every article is touched by at least 3 primary editors, plus we have 2 proofing editors who do detailed work. Total page count of the magazine is an issue, but the page count of the articles is more of a factor. The longer the article, the more consistency checking is required. Ask Hedgeknight about L5 ... we edited 300 pages of Len Lakofka's work. The consistency checking took 6+ months with 3 of us doing it.

That is NOT a criticism of Len -- the work was so massive that no one could keep everything consistent. But we beat it into shape!

As far as handling larger works -- as Ron said, it's a matter of manpower. The editorial team currently has at least 6 supplements in the pipeline, and we may have as many as 4 behind that. Andrew Hamilton & I have a campaign mini-setting that has been in limbo for 4 years 'cuz we don't have time to get back to it. And this doesn't include the Castle Triskelion ... I have 2 segments to layout as soon as I13 is out the door.

*IF* you have something that is like 99% of the way, we can *probably* publish it ... but like Ron said, we can't promise time frames!

Welcome winemaker! I'm a beermaker myself. Sounds like an exciting addition to US!

Nice to see another RTPer on here, BTW.

I make beer occasionally. Looking for a recipe for chocolate peanutbutter porter. American Brewmaster doesn't have one.

winemaker81 wrote: Ask Hedgeknight about L5 ... we edited 300 pages of Len Lakofka's work. The consistency checking took 6+ months with 3 of us doing it. That is NOT a criticism of Len -- the work was so massive that no one could keep everything consistent. But we beat it into shape!

Gah! L5! You mentioned L5...I think I just shat myself.

That was a monster editing chore but chock full of gaming goodness. And if you need help with your other projects...can't believe I'm gonna say this...I am available to help edit some more.
Just be gentle...

hedgeknight wrote:Gah! L5! You mentioned L5...I think I just shat myself.

That was a monster editing chore but chock full of gaming goodness. And if you need help with your other projects...can't believe I'm gonna say this...I am available to help edit some more.
Just be gentle...

Len is working on L6 ....