A Little Dice Music

A Little Dice Music

A net APA (Amateur Press Association) for roleplaying games published in PDF.

Individual contributions can be up to 5,000 words. The deadline is 100,000 words or the first of the month prior to the month of publication. Art can be included, but reduce the maximum size of the contribution by 600 words for each full page of art. (This may change as I work things out.

Format is a 72 point inner margin and 36 point outer, upper, and lower margins. Each page to include a header displaying page number plus either the apazine title (even numbered pages) or “A Little Dice Music” and issue month and number (odd numbered pages). Have more stuff to work out before I can present information on the size of art.

A Little Dice Music will be a monthly publication available to the general public. Contributing is free and contributors get a free copy of the issue they contributed to, and the month after. Price for non-contributors will be $7.95.

The minimum contribution is one page of material, about 600 words. (Maybe more, I have to look into that.) Short filler bits that add up to a page of material qualify as a contribution.

Art is also needed. Cover art for certain. Interior art as well. Illustrations and incidental pieces for example. I would prefer black and white line art for covers and interior. Shading should be kept to a minimum.

A Little Dice Music will include a table of contents, an introduction to the month’s theme, contributor and subscriber information, and contact information for yours truly plus the contributors..

Each issue will have a theme. #1 (the December issue) will have a Christmas/Hannukkah/Winter Solstice/Winter Festival theme. The deadline is November 1st.

Send your contribution in plain text. Not Mac text, Windows text, Unix text, or even Linux text, plain text. I will format (and may even edit or proof) your deathless prose, adding art and filler material as available and required to round your contribution out to an even number of pages.

Religion and politics allowed, but no profanity. If you must insult another contributor try to do it with a little flair.

A Little Dice Music is for writings on rpg theory and practice, variant rules, new classes/vocations/templates/etc., or interesting stuff you run across. A Little Dice Music is not for feuds, flame wars, pornography, or gibberish. Nota Bene: I will reject contributions so poorly written as to be unreadable, or with so many mistakes in spelling and/or grammar as to be incomprehensible. No l33t speak.

Things to do include contacting RPGNow and E23 about making this thing available through them. (I’m reluctant to use DTRPG considering the whole DRM thing), and figuring out how many words can fit into a page.

Finally, be sure to include special formatting instructions with your contribution. -b- for bolding, -i- for italics, and -u- for underlining for example. Tables should be set off by a -table- tag, while side bars and boxes are set off by -side bar- and -box- tags respectively. Be sure to ‘close’ your tags when the pertinent section is done.

Why am I doing this? Rise money for a new computer, share with others in the RPG community, showcase the work of others, and (most important of all), to keep myself busy and out of trouble.

Remember, November 1st or 100,000 words is the deadline for the 1st issue. The theme is Winter holidays/celebrations/observances. Hope you can join me.

Getting Organized

Yeah, the previous post is a bit disorganized, so I'm redoing the announcement.

What: A Little Dice Music, an APA for the discussion of roleplaying games.

What is an APA?

APA stands for amateur press association, which originally showcased printing technique. These days it refers to a magazine that compiles APAzines into monthly, bimonthly, or quarterly mailings.

What is an APAzine?

An APAzine is a personal periodical meant for inclusion in an APA. It is a way for the author to express himself and/or comment on the APAzines appearing in the previous issue of the APA.

A Little Dice Music is a way for the contributors to present RPG material, and to comment on what others have contributed in a more structered venue than a bulletin board, but less formal than a professional publication. It is also a way for contributors to showcase their writing and/or art.

Contributing an APAzine and Cost to Contribute

An APAzine must be at least 500 words in length. About a page. The maximum length is 20,000 words. Enough for a sizable esasy, write-up, whatever. The APA itself will have no more than 200,000 words at its largest. Include a zine title by all means. A table of contents is allowed, but will cut into word count, so keep track of it.

A contribution should be sent in as a text file. I can handle .doc etc, but it'll all get changed over to AppleWorks anyway, so your formatting et al will be lost.

Send as an email attachment, unless other arrangements have been made.

Since I have no printing costs to consider I am not charging contributors to contribute. Were this a print publication then contributors would be charged $2.00 US a page to defray the cost of printing.

Contributing Art

I need cover art, I need interior illustrations. In either case I'm looking for clean black and white line art. Cover art should have room for APA title, month and year, and issue number. If at all possible send art that adresses that month's theme.

For interior art I'm looking for full page, half page, quarter page, and eighth page art. In the case of half page and quarter page art the piece can either by oriented horizontally or vertically. You are welcome to include art with your APAzine, along with instructions on how to include said art.

Copyright

All contributions will be copyright their respective contributor. With the exception of any third-party OGC, which remains their copyright. All contributions will be published with permission. A Little Dice Music makes no claim regarding any contribution.

Language, Spelling, and Grammar

A Little Dice Music is an English language publication, so contributions must be in English. If English is not your native language then I heartily recommend taking extra care with your APAzine. If English is your native language then I especially recommend taking extra care with your APAzine. Exhibiting a poor command of the language, native speaker or no, puts you in a poor light, and that you don't need.

Use standard American or British spelling. No l33t sp3ak.

Use standard grammar. In addition, no profanity or obscenity. I reserve the right to determine obscenity.

Any contribution that blatantly violates these rules will not be included in the APA.

Feuds, Flamewars, and Trolling

Don't. No personal attacks or flames, no inciting personal attacks or flames. Feuds are another matter. As long as the disagreement remains respectful and a substantial discussion I'm fine with it. But once it degenerates into name calling and insults that's it.

Deadline

The deadline for each issue is the 20th of the month prior, or 200,000 words whichever comes first. For the first issue the deadline is November 20th.

Publication Date

Each issue will be released the first of the month. December 1st in the case of the first issue.

Contact Information

Include an email address at the very least. That way I can send you the download link when the issue is ready.. Snail mail address, web site, and/or phone number in case I need to get in touch with you some other way. Though such are not absolute requirements.

Format

A Little Dice Music will be published in PDF. 8 1/2 by 11 with 1 inch inner margins and 1/2 inch upper, lower, and outer margins. Since I use a PDF printer driver all text will be in Palatino. Bookmarks are not guaranteed, I still haven't figured that part out. I will include a table of contents. An index if I can.

For things like headers, italics, tables and the like include the following tags:

-b-: Bold
-i-: Italics
-u-: Underline
-st-: Strike Through
-h1-: Header One (section)
-h2-: Header Two (sub-section)
-h3-: Header Three (etc.)
-h4-: Header Four (etc.)
-title-: Zine Title
-table-: Table
-text box-: Text Box
-ogc-: Open Game Content (Please clearly indicate Open Game Content in your document, whether it comes from another source or is original, and if from another source the identity of that source. Makes proper attribution in Section 15 of the OGL a lot easier.)
-art box-: Art Box (be sure to include dimensions in points (72 points per inch).)
-sb-: Side Bar
-fs='N'-: font Size (I'm using 10 point type. You may want a smaller size for all or part of your APAzine. I recommend just a part since I'd like a consistent look to the APA.)

Be sure to close all tags so I'll know where the special formatting ends.

As time goes by I'll be adding more tags. "-f='font name'-" for instance when I get a real PDF application.

Cost

For contributors, free. Both for issue contributed to and the following issue. For non-contributors, $7.95 U.S.

Distribution

Electronic at first. If this takes off I'll look into print distribution.

Finis

And that's it. Obviously things can change. When they do I'll update this document. Send your contributions to mythusmage@mythusmage.com as an email attachment. I hope to hear from you.

1st Issue Deadline and Theme

The deadline for the first issue is November 20th. Or 200,000 words, whichever comes first. If the APA fills up before the 20th I'll announce it here. But it's not very likely.

The December theme is Winter Holidays, Observances, and Festivals. You don't have to include anything relevant to the theme, but it would be nice.

For January the theme will be Winter Survival, while the February issue will focus on burrowing rodents and their seasonal legends. (Ala the groundhog and the start of Spring.) Have you any suggestions for the March issue send them in.

Looking forward to hearing from you.

I don't know... shouldn't this go in the publisher's forum?

der_kluge said:

I don't know... shouldn't this go in the publisher's forum?

Click to expand...

This is pretty much a fan project. No fancy graphics, no fancy typesetting, no ads. Desktop publishing on the cheap concentrating on content and conversation. As a fan project I thought General RPG was the best forum.

DK, do you have anything to contribute?

A publisher has expressed an interest in carrying A little Dice Music as an imprint. We're in 'negotiations' right now, should matters be settled to our mutual satisfaction I'll make the announcement in this thread.

And to answer your questions regarding doing an APAzine: Give your zine a name. Write an essay or two, do up some RPG material, generally get your thoughts down in an organized fashion. When I get contributions will determine the order they appear in each issue.

Remember, the deadline for the first issue is Nov. 20th.

An Update

So far I've gotten two offers of artwork, and a contribution. The contribution comes from one V. Shane, who sent me three packages with a total of 89 pieces of art. Depending on how much art each apazine uses it could be enough for 6 issues or more. And it's good art. In my opinion good enough for use in professional publications. From the one piece I had a look at, I'd say I have enough cover art to last the first year.

That said, I'm always open for art, interior and cover work both. After all, I do want to showcase a variety of artists.

Working on my zine, and looking forward to receiving more. Now off to post a question in RPG General about active deities and the effect on holidays, holy days, and festivals.