Awhile back I had a crazy idea for a new community-driven zine dedicated to the craft of modern Sword & Sorcery. You might remember my post “The Most Authentic Way to Publish Your Fantasy Stories,” where I wrote about the merit of handbinding zines to share your short fiction.
That was the first appearance of Mordschlag Sword & Sorcery Magazine, which began as a very simple idea before blossoming into something so much more.
I opened up the first submission period and a month later, I had an full issue of 100 pages of prose. I thought I would just print out a few zines for the contributors and give out a free eBook. I thought that was the end of it.
Then, people kept asking me about Mordschlag; more than anything else I’ve published thus far.
I spent some time poring over Tales from the Magician’s Skull, New Edge Sword & Sorcery, Battleborn Magazine, my old school Dungeons and Dragons books, and a beautiful copy of The Magic Goes Away that I found at a Goodwill.
I put my nose to the grindstone and let my imagination go wild. I started sharing some images of the design, and people started getting really excited.
So, I did what any rational business-minded creative would do. I listened to my readers and made Mordschlag a real magazine, an actual printed-product that people can get their meaty hands on. Not only is it a space for new Sword & Sorcery writers to cut their teeth, but it’s also a place where they can share pages with the greats of our genre.
What started as a passing thought on a lunch break has turned into a something of a watershed moment for The Arcanist. We’re about to launch Mordschlag and the 2026 issues of Literary Fantasy Magazine on BackerKit and I’ve never felt so pumped for a launch.
But making a magazine from scratch is no easy task, and it’s definitely not my first lap around the arena. So I want to review at a high level the steps I took to turn Mordschlag from daydream to paperback.
If you like what I do and want to support, please check our BackerKit campaign, going live Friday, July 24, 12pm EDT.
First Steps and Submissions
The very first thing I did was come up with a cover concept. Typically, this should be one of your last steps in creating anything, but for me, it helps to create a window into the future where I can imagine a tangible result.
Somehow I received 50 submissions for the very first issue. This was my first sign that Mord was more than I gave it credit for. For reference, in the entirety of 2025, I received 250 submission for The Literary Fantasy Magazine. In one week, I got 1/5 of that amount for Mord.
Since this was just an experiment at this point, I went through the submissions on my own, without the help of the submission readers team. That was challenging—and a bit grueling. I had a very clear picture of what I wanted to feature in issue #0 and so I was pretty harsh when swimming through the pile.
I had only 3 spots, but I found 7 standout submissions that I shortlisted. Out of those seven, I found my three stories to publish in issue 0. Since I have other publications, two more got accepted for other venues.
5 out of 50 submissions, that’s a 10% acceptance rate—and I don’t think that my markets will ever get to be so generous again. The more submissions, the lower the acceptance rate.
A Testbed for Weird Ideas
TLFM is very organized and plainly presented. For Mord, I wanted to take a leap, do interesting things that I might not do otherwise. I wanted a fourth story for issue #0 that was a crossover. So I reached out to Lee Patton and we tried something we’ve never done before—we took turns writing a short story featuring some of my characters exploring a place in his setting.
We aimed at 5,000 words. The story clocked in at 9,100; that’s a flippin’ novelette. Issue 0 already had an 8,000 word story and a 10,000—and this opened the door for another quirk that makes Mordschlag stand on its own.... most S&S magazines only allow up to 6,000 words; yet the classics thrive at the 10 to 12 thousand mark.
I often see writers lamenting how few markets there are which accept long form work. Now Mordschlag is one of those places.
The Design and Formfactor
With the stories chosen, I began to refine the presentation. I redesigned the cover, taking a high contrast B+W image from Diego Castro, who is absolutely excellent by , and with his permission, I recolored the negative space to red.
Not just any red, but a shade that might be found on the Dungeons and Dragon basic box of the 1970s. I looked around at these old products, I’ve always loved how the rule books and the adventure modules were multicolored; they look so interesting on a shelf.
So I yet again looked to Goodman Games, who published Tales of the Magicians Skull, and reference the coloration of their 5e conversions of classic adventures, and I decided to make a four issue pattern.
Issue #0 is red, 1 is blue, 2 is yellow, and 3 is purple. It adds a bit of color to a very black+white interior. And you can put them on the shelf with your OSR books.
Mord’s interior design is my favorite thing about it and I went wild with it. I used the combination of sans-serif headers with serif body text, common in old school D&D books, and I ensured that every story has a spread illustration, and at least, a half page introductory image. I filled out any blank space I saw with excellent artwork.
Integrating Tabletop
Speaking of D&D, a sorely missed column in the Tales from the Magician’s Skull was their Monster Pit, which featured a bunch of monsters pulled from the stories, ready-to-play in Goodman Games’s flagship game, Dungeon Crawl Classics.
While I studying the market of similar magazines, I realized no one else is doing this anymore. The original run of the Skull only lasted 12 issues and no one else has tackled this concept since.
I began my writing career as a freelance game designer for Fifth Edition D&D. I’ve long since moved on from 5e… but last year at GenCon, I had an excellent time playing ShadowDark RPG by Kelsey Dionne of the Arcane Library and I recalled her incredibly generous third party license.
So I contacted Arcane Library ensuring my idea was inline with their license and when they gave me the go ahead, I added my own take on the Monster Pit to Mord.
Menagerie Macabre will be found in the back of every issue of Mordschlag Sword & Sorcery Magazine, featuring not only monsters pulled from the fiction and ready to play in Shadowdark RPG, with short two page adventures utilizing the new monsters.
I’ve long yearned to get back in touch with my RPG roots and Mordschlag is just the perfect place to dip my toes back in.
Shoutout to Arcanist author Michael Goe for coming up with Menagerie Macabre.
Little Touches, a playground for my every creative whim
Mordschlag has truly become a playground for every cool idea I’ve ever had or adapted from other cool works I admire. It’s a far cry from the professional tone of TLFM while maintaining the same strict standards of quality.
I’m playing with a few other ideas which will make it into the first couple issues.
Instead of notes from the editor, I’m going to write my meta-commentary from the perspective of Lord Mord, whose helm has been punctured by a murder stroke. Many pulp magazines have something of a mascot, and its a fun tradition I want to follow.
Coming next year will be special Mordschlag issues, whose covers depict a mordschlag in action. Those issues will contain a special key to Lord Mord’s secret library, which will reveal a hidden story.
Recurring characters from returning authors is a huge focus for the magazine. I’m working to simultaneously open the doors for newcomers, highlight veterans of the genre, and give cool original characters a consistent stage.
In Sum
I’m so excited for Mordschlag. Seriously, I’ve never had so much fun designing a publication and it means the world to me that this is the one that’s working for so many people.
Mordschlag Sword & Sorcery Magazine is available first on BackerKit on Friday, July 24th, 12pm EDT. Early bird backers and followers will receive free bookmarks and you’ll have to oppurtunity to pick up every book we’ve ever published at a reduced price.
I hope to see you there.
Backed. This looks super cool.
I genuinely appreciate this! Sword and sorcery magazines are all but nonexistent, or at the very least, completely inactive. Mordschlag has the potential to re-chart the genre.