Interest Check: Planewalker Publications down the line.

For sure - I'd be happy to pitch in as best I'm able.

There's my updated only when I feel like writing something thread about the Humanoid Cultures of Sigil, which could certainly fill space.

Well, I actually have an issue of the LSE about 80% complete, but I have not worked on it for months, as I have not received more than a mere dram of submissions. I am willing to revive it, or send what I have along, if there is once again interest...

I'm wondering if something more like a journal or a magazine would work here, rather than a newspaper format.

On the topic of the second one (not to derail, but), in one of my pen and paper games I'm currently playing a fey of ambiguous, unknown age. Though she has stated on numerous occasions that she is incredibly old and predates the current pantheon of the world, her knowledge of past events that fall without her spectrum of interests (ie herself) is more or less nil and she's far more likely to 'spin a tale' than explain anything in a rational or approachable way.

When I play her, I do a monotone and then raise or lower my voice arbitrarily while speaking, to put emphasis on words or phrases that have no reason to be emphasized. This gives her a sense of otherness. She has little comprehension of this human language she's using to communicate with you, and feels no need to learn how it actually works.

I'd love to see two projects: Fiendish Codex III & Book of Neutrality

Fiendish Codex III

Book of Neutrality

I generally intend to submit my stuff as RTF articles once I've finished it, which will still be some time, esoecially since I eventually intend to include artwork of Cryonax and Frigidora, and maybe an updated (from crappy 1E art) Frigidarch drawing.
I intend to submit all my Paraelemental Ice stuff as a single or series (of chapters) of cleaned up and organized articles.
In addition, all the treasure stuff I've been working on for some time will be submitted as a single article.
The Elemental culture and physiology stuff will be another article of its own.
Then finally, I'll submit the misc. inner planar stuff, including a planewalker version of Crystalle.

I would love to do this and get started on it. The other site that I work with does a quarterly as well, so I have worked out the workflow and overall approach to get something like this up and running.

I'm currently running a game this evening, but I will catch up on the thread and make suggestions on what I think would be a good approach to the project soon as I get home

The Book of Neutrality should also include the Elemental Planes, since the Elemental Lords are concerned with maintaining true neutrality. Also, there was a race before the Rilmani that created the libraries they own, which figured into one of the 2E Planescape modules.
The "demiplane" of time should also be covered, along with some of the time deities, including Irunean from the Violet Dawn setting (I'll cover the fluff part of that along with Rip, since we're the only ones familiar with the setting) Irunean is an Outlands power, and originally the entire Avadnian pantheon including Temulea *save the adopted Elemental Lords* shared the same divine realm, which is located towards the Limbo side *the site that Temulea chose*. Aside from maintaining temporal and general balance, Irunean is burdened with the task of keeping The Void (demiplane Temulea created to destroy all he created) in check wiuth the help of Ptah and Celestian.

Also, I think the Fiendish Codex III should instread be about the Yugoloths, *which wouldn't be complete without the Gehreleths/Demdands* the remaining major fiendish race not covered yet. As such, it would cover the planes of Gehenna, Gray Waste, AND Carceri. I'll probably submit quite a bit of fluff to that (and a little bit of crunch-- I still need to develop a Daemonic clerical domain, I just haven't created the unique Yugolothish spells yet, of which there should be 2 or 3.) I also still need to create a fornicoloth; (what? That's no worse than nycoloth or echinoloth!) female yugoloth masters of disguise who fraternize with generals *mostly balors and pit fiends* in order to recover military and other secrets. (Basically, they're the yugoloth answer to succubi and erinyes, though they'd be a bit more powerful than those two since their purpose is to sleep with planar generals rather than tempt mortals. Their physical combat prowess will still suck of course. I actually considered having them possess mokumegame daggers of planar substances with both cold iron and silver effects, but I can't find any hardmetal special materials with properties of silver, and pandemonic silver isn't exactly a choice metal for someone who wants to be a stealthy assassin and sneak thief. *Mokumegame is a japanese process of marbling precious metals, though supposedly some damascened steels possessed such marbling as well. I intended that the forging of such planar mokumegame items were a secret known only to the 'loths. I do not think that making a mokumegame weapon from both a hard metal and a soft metal would be feasible. )

As promised - my more in depth response...

I think the thing that the LSE found limiting was that it was by it's nature an in-character newspaper. It is of limited use to GMs and PCs who aren't set in Sigil *and* using the paper in their games. It really shot itself in the foot on this.

Switching up to a Dragon-like mag, where some of the articles have authorial voice in-character, but where the material provided is useful to a wide selection of gamers: locations, scenarios, NPCs, gear etc, would almost certainly be more successful in the long run than the LSE's format. It would probably be best as it's own thing instead of appropriating the LSE name though. We can have a poll on good name choices for this thing once we nail down what this thing is going to be.

From previous experience - quarterly release is a good target (making the target for this project, Jan 1st).

If we have a leadership core (other than just me, one person leadership tends to be a bottleneck) to lead the 'zine project to completion - we certainly have the ability to do it. I'd be completely in favor.

I'd also love to see larger supplemental material / books - things like Dan's Desire and the Dead adventure for example. I've got a host of old files, half finished works and the like. But I think those projects might be best spun off into their own threads so we don't get confused on this one.

@sciborg2 - 30ish pages in a quarter is very doable and probably your top limit truth be told but art is probably your biggest bottleneck point. Always is for the work on the Eye for Eclipse Phase. ( http://www.firewall-darkcast.com/theeye since you asked sci)

@zimrazim - I think a mag format is where it's at for this one.

@anetra - careful what you wish for. You're likely to get jumped for art in these circles.

Re: the book ideas - we may want to spin those off into their own threads for authors to get started on them. Or spin the mag concept into it's own to get started on. Basically so we can avoid crosstalking over each other and loosing ideas.

What we did for the Eye (EP's fanzine):

We set up a workflow queue, allowing anyone to put in article, and allowing people to volunteer as editors. Articles are approved for release after three votes up-voting it as peer reviewed.

Art requests are created for the article by author or editor, and are listed in a separate request list for artists to fullfil.

Once art is gathered, and text is gathered - layout kicks in. The layout crew for the Eye is really one guy who's working on this as a resume builder - he arranges the articles into a PDF.

The PDF is then released on the site, and articles released on the web at the same time as a collection for a choice of formats to read it in.

This was all in Drupal, so we can do the same thing here.

What we needed to get it going:

A good handful of dedicated people from the start. You've got me sci, and probably a few others once this solidifies.
Internal momentum of writers and artists.
Tech savvy.
Layout guy.

I think we have everything we need to pull this off in spades. If anyone has any wizard like powers with layout design - step forward.

I think the best thing is to offer "crunch" for more than one system: 3e, 4e, and Pathfinder, probably. I think we can probably rustle up some volunteers to make sure we support the systems this community is using, as everyone involved in the project is going to want to create something they can use.

I'm willing to help with Pathfinder conversions.

Presuming you're imagining potential multiple-system support for articles involving mechanics: what if each quarterly were accompanied by system-specific appendices including all of the mechanics available from that particular issue? Which is not to say that there shouldn't be mechanics in the quarterly at all - any article involving mechanics could include them for a single system, which could potentially make the quarterly itself feel more inclusive (that is, a scant bit of Dragon Age stuff wouldn't feel overwhelmed by more comprehensive 4E or PF coverage, for instance).

As word/page count goes, I feel like an upper limit is as important to keep in mind as a lower one. (Obviously a number of the articles you described are actually several smaller things, so it's less a worry there.)

Sorry - I suspect I was writing while you were creating the new thread.