oops...
My apologies, I did say Arial... with this toothache I have, its been hard to do anything .. mainly sleep and concentrate... My text is NT Roman and when I went to look for the font, I tried to insert text instead of viewing properties.... Still, changing the font to something other than NTRoman would do well for the overall look (Verdana, or perhaps Georgia). But that's neither here nor there right now...
Lacking a Center.... you hit the nail on the head my friend, couldn't have said it better myself. That is also the way I felt about the overall aspect of the zine. As it evolves, the center should find itself... at least I hope it will.
I don't think the mapping challenges should be seen as articles themselves, but as a stepping stone to creating a working zine. I love maps, and I can't think of not being interested in them, so I can't fathom why anyone wouldn't be interested. However, any gamer, esp. GM's, worth their salt can take a map and implement it into their game in some form or fashion... at the very least... a concept or idea. So the mapping challenge shouldn't be a focus as much as the maps and the campaign arc behind them should be.
I'm sure I had a point when I started... but an idea occurred to me. Perhaps a challenge in reverse, for instance, suppose TM's map wins this month's challenge. take the map itself... forget the reasons it was made, and give it to stormers or CBG to build an adventure and/or story around it... present it that way. I really hope that hasn't been done before now, because then I'd feel like somewhat of an idiot... lol
I agree with you 110% about how the commercial plug and play stuff is everywhere. But I've never been a fan of this kind of style.. I've always had a homebrew and so little caters to those who have their own worlds. I think we should really stray away from that and concentrate on what CBG was founded on and that's the original creative individuals out there with their own stuff. I think a few how to articles that are themed right will stand out among other clones. (And yes, Johnn Four Rocks... he's a machine.)
Bland, Safe and Boring is good because its.. well, safe... but sometimes change is brought on by the pebble atop the mountain... little changes in layout might just push the zine into what it needs to be....
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