Fight On! is coming to an end. :(

[Treebore]

Not a surprise at all. With it being over a year since the last issue came out, I've seen the writing on the wall for this. Still very saddened by the official news, since this has been my favorite gaming magazine, ever. Only Dragon and Dungeon together exceed my love for Fight On!, and since they are gone too...

So issue 14 will likely be the last, with a possibility an issue 15 will be done. At least I have tons of great material to read and reread in the 14 to 15 issues we will have.


http://odd74.proboards.com/index.cgi?bo ... hread=8435

and for those who may not be able to go to the forum:

"Friends of Fight On! �

Here�s what�s up. It�s been a year since we got an issue out. There have been a variety of reasons for this, some more plausible than others, but it seems clear to me that for whatever reasons I don�t have it in me to grind out regular issues of a fanzine any more. So we need to tie things up.

For this reason, either #14 or #15 will be the last issue of Fight On! that I shepherd forward. I am currently planning for #14 to be the last issue, but in order to fit the whole rest of The Darkness Beneath into it, including Simon Bell�s �Snow Throne� expansion of level 8, Lee Barber, Welleran�s, and my level 9, Alex Schroeder�s level 13, and my level 15, it�s going to have to be oversized. It may be that I�ll get done with one or two of those DB segments, see a full and beautiful issue at 88 pages, and publish it, in which case we�ll do one more. Otherwise #14 will be the last.

During and after the completion of the last issues of Fight On!, we have two more projects that we have promised people we need to get done. The first, possibly of less interest here on the ODDD boards, but mentioned for the sake of full disclosure, is that my long-time creative collaborator Del and I were so impressed with the work of Alex Jennings, the winner of our fiction contest that led to Roll the Bones, that we decided to try to bring out a collection of his short stories as he gets his first novel ready for publication, to get his work into more people�s hands and help boost his profile. You can actually see the pre-release version of it on Amazon already:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/147825 ... er=&sr=8-1

Please don�t distribute that link though � we need to fix some minor glitches in the cover graphics and so forth before announcing �real� publication this spring. If you would like to help with cover layout and/or conversion to kindle, we�d be very appreciative � get in touch if interested. Credit in the book and maybe even a token payment are available, since this is a 'side project'.

Second is the Book of Tables from our last contest, which is going to be amazing. I solicited permission from a lot of the authors of the best tables in Fight On! to go in with the great contest winners, and am going to pull a bunch of my private tables that I never got to putting in the mag, and I am going to chase down a few other people for some additional features. I am hoping to construct a volume from your contributions that rivals or surpasses the Ready Ref Sheets and CDD #4 in interest and utility. In any case it will be cool.

After these 3-4 projects are complete I am getting out of the fantasy publishing game for good, subject to the usual �who knows for sure what they will think or feel ten or twenty years down the line� and �if a good friend comes forward with a finished project and wants to use my old imprint to get it out there I would consider it� type of qualifications. But barring something really unexpected this will be it for Fight On! Publications.

I cannot properly express the gratitude I feel to everyone involved in this project. There are very few things, so far at least, I have done in my life that have had the joy and success that this fanzine has had; and since it has been, from beginning to end, a service project for our community, all of that joy and success really is a credit to you, our contributors. Thanks to the quality of your ideas, writing, and art we have reached tens of thousands of people through our �zine. The fact that I started work on Fight On! at an emotional low point in my life, wherein I seemed to myself to have nothing to offer anyone and nothing to use my modest talents to accomplish in life, makes it all the sweeter.

I can�t not mention Jeff and Gabor, so I won�t.

The artists.

All of you, really. If I start with the shout-outs now this will be a twenty page post. Plus, we're not done yet! Look at the tables of contents and the art indices if you want to know who gets the credit for all this.

What a great thing this has been. I�m ready to get it done. Since I came to clarity about wrapping things up I've been able to get on my computer and work on it every day again, and #14 is moving.

May a thousand campaigns blossom, and don�t be shy to hop from one to another, if your DM can handle it.

Fight On!

Calithena "

[redwullf]

The demise of the RPG magazine seems systemic. I've purchased the first issue of Gygax magazine, but I'm honestly not optimistic that it will persist better than any of the others. TSR was able to build a lot of hoopla over the first issue, but I don't see them maintaining that kind of enthusiasm. To be fair, many periodicals are foundering in the electronic age, so it might not be unique to our area of interest.

[Treebore]

The demise of the RPG magazine seems systemic. I've purchased the first issue of Gygax magazine, but I'm honestly not optimistic that it will persist better than any of the others. TSR was able to build a lot of hoopla over the first issue, but I don't see them maintaining that kind of enthusiasm. To be fair, many periodicals are foundering in the electronic age, so it might not be unique to our area of interest.

Well, this one was never "for profit". It is foundering simply because the bulk of the responsibility for putting each issue together falls on one guy. I imagine he is simply burned out, and his crashing and burning is why we haven't seen an issue for over a year. I bet if a group of 3 or 4 people were able to work together to put together the content for each issue, it would be able to go on for many more years. As far as I know, getting submitted work has not been the problem. Its simply the fact that Cal has been over loaded for too long.

[Sir Ironside]

Too bad. I stopped getting it around issue #7, more or less as my gaming budget required something has to go.

Around issue #5 I had offered my services to help with the lay-out. I even offered to lay-out a previous Fight On! mag to give him an idea of what I could do. It would've been an easy assignment because of such a clean OD&Dish lay-out. I asked for no recompense because I would've done as a labour of love. I was flat outright refused, even rebuked. I'm guessing, at the time, he viewed it as his baby and was unwilling to delegate responsibility. I have no knowledge of how things really went down, but that seems just as likely as any other possibility.




* I really disliked the Fight On! Cover header.

[Treebore]

Yeah, I by no means know any details as to what led to his burning out. He very well be a control freak and does not trust anyone to do it "right" and help him. I do not know. I do know he says some personal hardships came up and slapped him around. Which I have no doubt of, we all get slapped around by life far too often.

I do hold a glimmer of hope that now that he is letting go of it, that others will step forward, and be allowed, to pick it up where he is leaving off. Highly doubtful, I know. But since I have loved the content of this magazine so much, I have to hold out hope.

[serleran]

I've only read the first one, or whatever one was free. Oh well, another magazine dead.

[Lord Dynel]

Yeah, I didn't read any past the first issue, either. I don't know what to make of this news. Mostly sad news, I reckon, for another source of old school goodness is gone. The number of 'ziines are declining, for sure. My personal opinion is that the rise of everyone having a blog on old school gaming has something to do with it. Why submit an article or a monster or a house rule, when you can just post it to your blog yourself? But, I digress.

I listened to the interview with Jim Wampler (from Gygax magazine) on the SOD podcast, and it sounds like they have a solid game plan. Will that equate to a successful magazine? I don't know. I know KQ recently went down, but there's was never a monetary issue, as far as they revealed. Theirs stemmed more from not having the time to produce the magazine, which I can probably hypothesize came from them getting more involved in their non-KQ pursuits.

[Sir Ironside]

Seeing as how; Fight On! was heavily geared towards Grognards. I'd imagine they had a captive audience with a fairly consistent readership. I'd imagine that; Fight On! had a decent enough of people buying it regularly and from I understand the mag was not a money making entity. So, I don't think the lack of buyers was the problem. What's better for the old Grognard than a real paper magazine that isn't on the net? I think; Fight On! hit its target base well.

The sentiment is that contributors was not the problem, it just seems like the burn-out came from someone not wanting to relinquish any kind of control.

Like was said above, if it wasn't for this stubbornness (Where he'd rather see the mag die than pass the torch to someone else) is what really killed it. I'm sure there would've been a number of people (Including myself) that would've been happy to have it continue.

That is just speculation only on my part.

He took his ball and went home.

[redwullf]

I've purchased the first issue of Gygax magazine, but I'm honestly not optimistic that it will persist better than any of the others. TSR was able to build a lot of hoopla over the first issue, but I don't see them maintaining that kind of enthusiasm.

Got Gygax in the mail today, by the way. It's good, you guys. Getting a lot of nostalgia feels from it.

[Christina Stiles]

I know KQ recently went down, but there's was never a monetary issue, as far as they revealed. Theirs stemmed more from not having the time to produce the magazine, which I can probably hypothesize came from them getting more involved in their non-KQ pursuits.

I worked on the magazine its last year with Wolfgang, and he and his wife were just literally burnt out from the amount of time invested in just one issue. They decided they'd rather be spending time working on other projects, and that it had a very good run while it lasted. I'll miss it, for sure, but I TOTALLY understand what they were going through--and they have little children to take care of, as well.