Out of Character, a new magazine of fantasy and science fiction work for the gaming community, is looking for submissions for our premiere issue, due in March.

Our mission is to publish engaging, lively stories of interest to gamers that stand on their own as quality writing. Any genre that has been used in a MU* is welcome, although we will not take stories that draw on copyrighted material.

Fiction: Submissions should be under 2500 words. Flash fiction is welcome, as are multiple or simultaneous submissions. We are willing to look at reprints.

Nonfiction: Interviews of interest to our readers, as well as opinion pieces dealing with aspects of text gaming, are welcome. Length should be under 2500 words.

Artwork: we are looking for cover art as well as smaller black and white pieces or photographs to use within the zine. Art should be submitted as JPEG files.  Cartoonists are encouraged to send samples.

We accept e-mail submissions as either an attachment in .rtf format or in the body of the e-mail. Submissions should be sent to PLEASE make sure you have your e-mail address at the top of the manuscript. The subject line should read either FICTION SUBMISSION or ART SUBMISSION, followed by the name of your piece.

Currently we are not able to pay; we hope to change this in future issues.  We will provide authors with a banner ad, which can be used to advertise a MUD, an electronic publication, or the commodity or cause of their choice.

What is or will be the difference between this and Mud Companion? Not many people are going to be optimistic about such a project when two of the Mud Companions' major contributors start a new publication.

I'm not sure what you mean - was MUD Companion the print magazine from a few years ago? I wasn't involved with that project, but wasn't it a print publication, rather than online?

FWIW, this online publication's aim is to promote text games by presenting primarily high caliber science fiction and fantasy stories. We hope to get an audience of people who enjoy reading such stuff and hopefully get a few people from that group interested in trying out a MUD or two, as well as making MUDs more visible to the public gaming eye.

<edit>Here's the thread that originally spwaned the notion, but when that one crashed and died, leaving only flames, the interested folk took the discussion elsewhere:
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Is there or will there be a website for submission instructions? If we encourage players to submit stories/art and they win on behalf of our MUD, is there a problem with rewarding them some way in-game?

Though Sanvean answered the question, I wanted to ask Estarra to make note that this doesn't sound like any kind of contest that someone can win. When you say "can win on behalf of our mud" it sounds like you're assuming that only one submission from any given mud will be accepted, and this doesn't sound like the case at all.

If you have a dozen writers who each submit something that this new venture wishes to publish, it's my guess that each one will in fact get published.

I just wanted to comment on that. Carry on, all.

That's fine. My only thought was that if a player were to obtain a banner advertisement for my MUD (be it through a contest or as 'payment' for an article or story), I'd like to somehow be able to say 'thank you'.

In addition to Sanvean’s and Jazuela’s responses to Estarra’s question about Mud Admin paying their players to submit stories, I’d just like to point out that a submitted story doesn’t automatically get accepted and published.

If this venture is going to be a success, we obviously need to keep a high standard on the content. So there will be some sort of quality control, the details are not quite worked out yet.

For those interested in following the development discussions, the current address is

If we love something submitted, and it exceeds the word cap, we will happily accept it, in spite of length.

I've also found that stories benefit from the sort of editing sometimes required to bring something down within guidelines. Usually I write and get the story out, not worrying about length (or lack of it) and only when it's done do I start messing around with counting words and that sort of thing.

Whoops!  This is indeed the thread I actually meant to bump up.  Thank you, John, for catching that, heh.