Time for an ACTA ezine?

[Ben2]

Has ACTA:NA etc gotten enough of a following now for us to do an online mag? I was thinking of a bi monthly specificially wargames focussed mag, not a huge number of pages, but fitting it to the amount of content we have.

Ideas for what it could cover:

New scenarios - 3 types (starter - based on starter set, generic - like the rulebook, historical)
Product reviews
News
Tournament reports
Variant ships
Painting
Battle Reports
Tactics
Fiction?
Crossovers?

I'm a little wary of the last two, as fan fiction tends to be very variable in content and quality. Crossovers would prevent any formal or informal relationship with Mongoose as it would be using another parties IP and leave Mongoose open to legal action for associating with it.

Starter scenarios would be scenarios that could be played with two starter box fleets (either specific ships types or points values that can be built with the fleets in the starters). This is to give players just gettng into ACTA, or who bought a set of fleet boxes and are adding to them sporadically, objective based scenarios to play with small fleets.

On the subject of crossovers I would rather not include them, and this would include B5. Leaving them seperate lets us discuss the mag on the Mongoose forums, and means if we find anything particularly good that Mongoose like the look of, something can be done with it. It also means crossovers are produced in discrete lumps by people to a reasonably coherent design premise. However I felt I should bring it up to establish ground rules. People are free to disagree with me, and if there is a lot of debate, I'll put up a poll.

Who thinks it is a good idea?
Who would like to be involved?

And yes, I am thinking in terms of son of Babcom.

 

[Da Boss]

Interesting and ambitious idea - look forward to seeing what you come up with

I'd be tempted to just call it a ACTA aine which allows you to include whatever you want....from Trek to B5 to Farscape or homegrown universes.

New scenarios - 3 types (starter - based on starter set, generic - like the rulebook, historical)
I like historical scenarios as it has a sense of meaning somehting

Product reviews
could be interesting - may also be worth covering other ships that would work well

News
Always handy for those things you miss

Tournament reports
Again all good - people seem reletively interested when we do ours

Variant ships
Doubt you will have any trouble filling this bit

Painting
Talk to a few forum regulars and you may be able to get some great articles - esp a certain McKickaha

Battle Reports
Yep good stuff

Tactics
Can be interesting

Fiction?
May be difficult as MGP had to pull it before...

Crossovers?
Do you mean actual crossovers or rules for other universes using the ACTA base system. I enjoy both and MGO has always been very relaxed about this - although ST seems a special case so may need to avoid.

 

[godsgopher]

We should call it....

Better Nobles and Grapples
The Dead Nobles Almanac
100 Ways to skin a Mimbari
Bad Captains and Salvage
Cold Space, Hot Guns
Unpainted Ships
Years to Build, Turns to Destroy

Anyway the whole project does sound ambitious, and I don't know the first thing about creating a PDF Magazine. Still I don't doubt I could make a few contributions.

 

[Ben2]

I've been playing with publisher a bit recently, though undoubtedly there are people better on the boards.

 

[locarno24]

Interesting thoughts, batman. Certainly be happy to contribute.

Battle reports & Variant Ships are reasonably easy.
Minor fleets might be a cool project.

 

[McKickaha]

Very good idea and I am certainly willing to contribute.

 

[Da Boss]

Certainly one of the things that was talked about in the early days of NA was having the ability to customise ships - so making a Command Variant of a Cruiser or a Missile variant of a frigate etc.

Something that would not be hard to put in a article