[The Stronghold 'Zine] Issue One: Layout Complete!

I was hit with some food allergies today. Something I ate last night was...contaminated with something I shouldn't eat. By noon today, I was filling up with gas like a hot air balloon. Then the queasiness, the dizziness, and the diarrhea started. And kept going. And kept going.

If someone holds a copyright to this image, please let me know.

So I was up late tonight, or rather, early this morning. In between trips to the Porcelain Throne Room, I decided to start setting up the layout for Issue #1 of The Stronghold. I've got more than enough material; I needed to see what, if anything, I needed to weed out and keep for next issues. I'm not shooting for the War and Peace of OSR 'Zines, after all.

Then I had to try and figure out how to make the actual copies come out. I recently purchased a new home printer; it's a small one, just meant for odd jobs and what-not. Certainly not as fancy as the family printer. But, it's the one that was sitting on my desk and plugged into my computer. That meant I'd see what I could make it do and if it worked the way I wanted.

So far, I think, so good. I've got one more test to run with the printer, because I really don't want to have to use a photocopier to double-side the pages. I'd rather do the rotate and reverse print with the printer and save a generation of deterioration on the copier. As far as I'm concerned, the old adage holds true, even with fancy digital copiers and printers: the more times something is copied, the more degradation occurs.

So...my late night/early morning bore good fruit, I think. I just need to get my artists to e-mail me the art files and I should be set. Google+ hasn't been cooperating with my download attempts with the artwork, so I have to resort to the "old fashioned" e-mail method.

I'm really excited about this first issue. I think it has some good material in it; while some of the stats are 3.x related, I think they're easily converted to other editions. Happily for my OSR friends, there's a substantial amount of setting-free materials. And the contributed artwork is killer. Absolutely magnificent--both the cover and the interior art; I almost feel embarrassed to think I used some clip-art and a hand-drawn map. My stuff certainly doesn't hold up to the contributed artwork. But I'm still excited for you all to see it.

More to come.