THE Gongfarmers’ Almanac for 2026 is OPEN for submissions!!

Greetings Gongfarmers! Submissions are now OPEN for 2026! We want you; the amazing authors, artists, editors, proofers, and supporters that year-after-year help to put together the annual community gift that is The Gongfarmer’s Almanac (GFA). The core principles: Open to everyone, Content we all love, Always free.

Your new Lead Admin staff: Charles Royston (Judge Cro) and Craig Langrall are agog about running this. We are recruiting people to help us coordinate this year’s endeavor as we get the GFA up and running. If you have social media, editing, artistic, or layout design skills (or want to learn by doing with our guidance) we could use your help.

Here is a sense of the process and all the important details below:

Timeline

Jan/Feb – Submission Form open for all forms of participation.
March/April – Writing & Art
May – Editing
June – Layout
July – Proofing/PDFs

Where can I find updates?

Internal communication will occur via email. Updates to the community will be posted in the following places by our social media manager:

* You are free to reshare our posts to other social media groups/locations.

How to Participate

Thank you for wanting to contribute! It is because of you that the GFA continues year after year. In order to manage access and maintain people’s privacy we have created a contributor sign-up form. Simply fill out the form to tell us how and what you would like to contribute. Once submitted an administrator will grant you access to the google drive documents and folders that relate to your contributor role. If you have any questions please contact us. Also, please allow a couple days for us to complete this process. Signing up will also sign you up for our mailing list.

Writing Submissions (2/27 deadline)

The first and most important step is content. We are looking for those who have original, unpublished Goodman Games-related ideas and want to write about them. This year’s theme is “Weird is Wonderful!” Submissions geared towards the wild side DCC RPG, MCC RPG, XCrawl, Weird Frontiers, etc: full adventures, new character classes/variations, patrons, spells, Judges’ tools, and even unique monsters (even though so many new ones have been published recently). That said, and like always, we are open to all types of content even short stories! Submissions should fall in the 200-8000 word range. You will receive emails once you are assigned to an admin. Late submissions may not make it into the final zine. Get creative and lets make 2026 as weird and Gonzo as possible.

Artwork (4/24 deadline)

What an awesome way to get featured for your art! We are looking for illustrators of all skill levels to contribute original artwork. Most art will be fulfilling the author’s vision, but we will accept spot art to be included in various places throughout the publication. As writing submissions get approved, admins will be assigned and will start reaching out to match illustrators.

Editing (5/29 deadline)

We are looking for people that want to help edit articles after they are submitted. We can’t do this without you! We will have articles that need editing as soon as they come in. As an editor, you will be responsible for line editing (and possibly suggesting copy edits) and working with the author to get the article ready for layout, including getting author approval for the edited version of the article. This is all done through Google documents with Suggestion and Comment features. You will receive email(s) connecting you with an author and article from a GFA Coordinator for every article you are asked to edit.

Layout (6/26 deadline)

We are looking for people that enjoy and have experience in designing booklets, zines, and print material to layout the wonderful content into the volumes. We will provide some basic guidelines we wish to be followed. Typically, a Layout artist will be assigned one or more volumes depending upon how many volunteers we have for layout.

Coordination (Admin team)

If you are interested in taking an active role in helping coordinate the GFA, you are Awesome! We are always looking for people who are interested in coordinating each project (writing, editing, art) and then whole volume layout. This is the core team that make the GFA actually happen which is why they have top-billing in the credits page. Please contact us! Lead Admins will coordinate (and guide) this team.

You can find resource materials, templates, and guidelines for the different roles on the website’s guidelines page.

Final Thoughts

We appreciate all of your effort and it goes without saying that everyone retains ownership of their work. This zine is not sold for profit; we’re all volunteering our time and talents. If you’d rather get paid for your work, that is totally cool, but this is not the right venue.

If you have any questions please post your question in one of the community social media sites or contact us directly. If emailing, please start the subject with “GFA 2026 – Your Subject”.

Go forth, create, spread the word far and wide, and from all of us in the GFA Community, Thank you for being awesome!

Your 2026 GFA Lead Admins, Craig and Cro