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Illuminated Site of the Week
GURPS Bio-Tech is the GURPS, Fourth Edition supplement on biotechnology. Based on the original Third Edition title, it has been heavily revised and expanded for Fourth Edition by original author David Pulver and GURPS Transhuman Space: Under Pressure author David Morgan-Mar. Bio-Tech provides both real-world explanations and game statistics for medical technology, implants, genetic engineering, cloning, biological weapons, and living vehicles. It also includes rules for designing genetic upgrades, variant humans ("parahumans"), uplifted animals, and artificial biological organisms ("bioroids") as PCs or NPCs.
We will conduct the Bio-Tech playtest on a closed mailing list. Only Pyramid subscribers are eligible for the playtest, and list membership is limited. Those interested in participating should write to Sean Punch at kromm@sjgames.com by no later than July 6, 2005. Since we will be selecting a limited number of testers, please include a brief note describing your past playtesting experience and familiarity with GURPS, Fourth Edition (not Third Edition!), as well as any real-world expertise with the book's subject matter. As we anticipate many replies, we cannot respond to individual applications. Conciseness and ability to follow these instructions will affect the selection process.
-- Sean Punch
Warehouse 23 News: Little. Creepy. Different.
From the twisted pen of Madame M. comes Madame M Presents: Creepy Little Bedtime Stories, a storybook of things all-together ooky. Oddball humor mixes with off-beat art to form 120-pages of fun for all ages.
It took us long enough, yes . . . but the first new In Nomine source material (as opposed to adventures) is now up on e23. It is the Liber Umbrarum, the Book of Ghosts, by Chris Anthony. And we all very much hope that you like it.
Warehouse 23 News: You Know The Drill
Abandoned mine, evil curse, goblin raiders. Nothing you can't handle, right? Then put your sword where your mouth is and check out Dungeon Crawl Classics #1: Idylls of the Rat King. (Note: Warehouse 23 does not advocate actually putting a sword in your mouth. That would hurt. A lot.)
I'm sure you have all wondered what Chess would be like had it been a product of modern computer game culture.
No?
Well, you should have. But thanks to blarney at Kuro5hin, we have our answer.
Hee hee hee.
-- Steve Jackson
Warehouse 23 News: Unholier Than Thou
For some vampires, it's not enough to be cursed. They have to be the holiest of the cursed. Sound confusing? It is. Don't worry, though, Vampire: The Requiem - Lancea Sanctum will clear things up.
Also known as "mother-in-law's tongue" and Sansevieria trifasciata. This is one of my favorite houseplants, because it is happy with low light and weekly waterings, It grows slowly, but it does grow, and is easy to propagate . . . just take a six-inch section of cut-off leaf, let the end dry for a couple of days, stick it in potting soil and keep it damp.
And occasionally it blooms. I've got a blooming one in my house now. Rich perfume. Very good for morale. Mmmmm.
-- Steve Jackson
Warehouse 23 News: Now That's Dedication
Celebrate the time honored tradition of stabbing yourself in the stomach with a knife by buying the Ninja Burger: Guaranteed Delivery Poster.
This is our latest release, now (after ENTIRELY too many delays) on its way to distributors everywhere and soon (FINALLY) to be on the shelves of a game store near you, from which we hope you will snatch it with cries of glee:
Munchkin Dice
There are lots of ways to keep track of your level in Munchkin – coins, pretty glass stones, even candy (which has its drawbacks if your rivals eat your levels when you look away). You could just "remember" your level, but would you trust some other player who tried that? We didn't think so. In the end, most gamers use a good old 10-sided die. And now we've got the ultimate, creme de la creme of 10-sided dice – six of them, all different colors! – in the brand-new Munchkin Dice set!
These oversized (35.6mm), swirly-shiny 10-siders all have the victorious Super Munchkin's picture in place of the "0". When you reach Level 10 and claim victory, everyone will see that YOU are the ultimate Munchkin!
And new dice just cry out for a new random-results table. So here it is. You'll like it (heh, heh) . . .
And finally, there are 14 brand-new, never-before-seen Munchkin cards to make your character even more overpowered. Try adding "Master" to your Class, earning you extra Treasure! Or become a "High" or "Dark" member of your Race! Or if you lose a battle, you can play “Rocks Fall, Everyone Dies” (featuring guest art from Something Positive’s Randy Milholland!) – Everyone else shares your pain and loses a level! And if you die, everyone dies!! There's more – of course – but you're going to have to roll the Munchkin Dice to get them!
Six big 10-sided dice and 14 Munchkin cards, plus rules, in a clamshell display pack.
Stock #1442,
ISBN 1-55634-737-5.
$14.95.
Warehouse 23 News: Frightening Fiction
Arthur Machen. That name alone strikes fear into the hearts of horror fiction aficionados the world over. Want to know why? Take a peek into Call of Cthulhu: The Terror and Other Stories. You won't regret it. Much.
They seem like such a good idea. But there are a few bugs in the system. I thought about linking to some pictures of truly alarming insects here, but I think I'll just invite you to imagine hordes of dark, crawly, scuttling horrors . . . rustling chitinously toward you . . . But I digress.
The good people at Goats (which I hope you read daily, as I do) recently tried a micropayment experiment. You can read about it on their site . . . it's the June 14, 2005 news entry.
Executive summary: It blew up in their faces. We're talking singed eyebrows. We're talking shrapnel up the nostrils. To drop the metaphor, we're talking "The site was significantly less profitable during the period in which they offered a micropayment option."
Kudos to Jon and Phillip for playing pioneer, and I hope the arrows come out of their backs without too much screaming. And aw, shucks. I really like the idea of micropayments, but judging from this, we're not there yet.
-- Steve Jackson
Warehouse 23 News: They're Not "Cliche," They're "Classic"
Bored by bank robberies? Annoyed by alien invasion? Weary of super-weddings? Sure, these are all mainstay adventures for superheroes, but they can get stale. Hero System: Champions - Villainy Amok gives some classic super scenarios the swift kick in the pants they so rightly deserve.
June 24, 2005: Illuminated Site of the Week: Alternate Theories
Someone's been doing a lot of thinking . . . or at least a lot of collating. All the data you need about quantum physics is located on the Resonant Field Theory Education Page. Find out what the latest is - though, how can you be sure Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle is obsolete? And what if it's right in the universe next door? -- Suggested by Paul May
Put some cheese in your cake, as well as some cat in your girl, with this SPANC Cover Poster. It features the art of Phil Foglio and . . . well, that's it, actually. But really, what else do you need in life?
Armin Sykes, programmer of GURPS Character Assistant, will be chatting with Pyramid subscribers this Friday, 24 June, at 7pm Central.
What will he be talking about? GURPS Character Assistant will be on shelves in scant weeks, and Armin will reveal the trials and tribulations he has experienced in programming GURPS character creation, all the way from GCA 1.0 to today's official GURPS Fourth Edition digital character generator.
Pyramid is our online zine, now with more chats and sneak peeks at upcoming GURPS Fourth Edition supplements. As always, Pyramid has Ken Hite's Suppressed Transmission, weekly comics (including Murphy's Rules, drawn by Greg Hyland, and John Kovalic's Dork Tower), and reviews from every area of gaming. Click here to subscribe!
Warehouse 23 News: Play Ninja Burger 2 Or Die!
You will purchase a copy of Ninja Burger 2: Sumo-Size Me!! It contains rules and cards that expand on the original Ninja Burger Card Game. Do not forsake the honor of your ancestors!
Cosmos 1, the first solar sail spacecraft, went into space yesterday atop a converted Russian ICBM. The $4 million launch is not a government project . . . it was put together by the Planetary Society. See the CNN story . . . and watch the video.
I'm especially happy about this because I've been a Planetary Society member for years. Now THIS is what I call getting something for my dues!
Late update: An hour after posting time, Cosmos was still AWOL, but the Planetary Society website was optimistic; they think they've had enough contact to establish that the spacecraft is live. Cross fingers.
-- Steve Jackson
Warehouse 23 News: Tact, Diplomacy, And Thick Shoes
Creation is far from stable. Indeed, it is a tumultuous place filled with people who like to pick fights. Good thing the Exalted have the Eclipse Caste to serve as emissaries, ambassadors, and negotiators. These travelers need more than just a comfy pair of shoes, however. Enter, Exalted: Caste Book - Eclipse.
The scurvy scoundrels at Three Rings Design brought us Puzzle Pirates (arrr!) . . . and now they've got a new project going.
Game Gardens is an experiment in online game development. Basically, you can log into their site and use the professional tools created by Three Rings to create your own Java/Flash games!
In their own words:
"Though Java and Flash have done a great deal to enable the development of simple single player games, multiplayer games tend to require an always-operating server, at least for match-making and frequently for running the server-side of a game. While there are free web hosting sites, there are no free game hosting sites (that we know of).
"Making any multiplayer game requires a bunch of work that has little
or nothing to do with the game design but stands in the way of someone
getting their idea turned into code. Being firm believers in (and users
of) open source, we realized that the toolkit we'd written . . . is exactly the sort of thing that makes a perfect open source project . . .
. . . At a time when everyone in the industry is lamenting a lack of originality and wishing developers and publishers would take more risks, we are hoping to plant the seeds (pardon the pun) of innovation in this small way and do what we can to smooth the path for new game ideas to be born and grow."
So. Is that cool, or what? The site includes access to tools and a discussion forum. And even if you're not (yet) interested in creating your own games, you can see and play the games that others have already created.
-- Steve Jackson
Warehouse 23 News: A Kinder, Gentler Breed Of Killing Machine
Most Ogres have something of a reputation for rolling around and leaving big craters where people used to be standing. Not so with the Ogre Vulcan. With repair arms in place of primaries, this Ogre is as pacifist as a gigantic, artificially-intelligent supertank gets. It also tends to hang out with a gaggle of drones.
June 20, 2005: And What Does "April 1" Mean To You . . .?
Number of people who have written me so far to advise me that the BBC report of Zombie Malaria is in fact, a hoax: Four.
Number who wrote me back saying "Whoops!" before I could reply: Two.
-- Steve Jackson
Stoic. Steadfast. Dutiful. Boring? I wouldn't say that to their face. Exalted: Aspect Book - Earth covers everything you ever wanted to know about Earth-aspected Exalts, and proves that even though Earth aspects are level-headed they can still be fun at parties.
June 19, 2005: Another Reason To Hate Mosquitoes
I missed this article when it first appeared. If you missed it too, note the dateline before you run screaming out to buy DDT.
Can you say "scenario," though? Print that page out, hand it to your players, let them read their morning newspaper, and then tell them they hear screaming outside . . .
-- Steve Jackson
Warehouse 23 News: We've Got The Tools, You Supply The Talent
Armaments don't make the man. They do, however, make the man live longer. From machine pistols, to blimps, to the latest ProtoMechs, Classic BattleTech: Combat Equipment is an excellent resource for the gun-toting psychopath in all of us. Well, in our BattleTech games, anyway.
June 18, 2005: Illuminated Site of the Week: You Must Walk Before You Can Launch Surface-To-Air Missiles
Sakakibara Kikai is another company that can't sit around and wait for technology to catch up to entertainment. They've developed a Gundam-style walker that will actually walk you around. The product page has a lot of characters that may baffle your browser, but The Japan Times has the story. -- Suggested by Greg
Warehouse 23 News: Renegades, Rebels, And Rogues
Just because you're unwashed, untrained, ill-equipped, and misunderstood doesn't mean you can't kick butt with the best of them. Get the lowdown on the down-low Exalts with Exalted: The Outcaste.
Steve Jackson Games announces the following releases for October, 2005:
Munchkin Bites! 2 - Pants Macabre
Munchkin is about beating up monsters, taking their stuff, and sequels. Munchkin Bites! is no different. Thus were born . . . the Pants Macabre.
The World of Dorkness has been busy in the past year. Can you face the sonic stylings of Ten Inch Tacks, the annoyance of the Gnat Bats, and the chilling waddle of the Were-Penguin? Will you wield the might of Power Piercing with the Huge Dice Pool, or will you be bludgeoned by Bad Fiction? And do you dare play the new Race . . . the Mummy?
In addition to the always awesome art from John Kovalic, we have two guest artists: Pete Abrams of Sluggy Freelance and Maritza Campos of College Roommates from Hell. The jokes can be blamed on Steve Jackson.
It's got 110 shiny new . . . no, not shiny – dark! It’s got 110 dark and evil new cards, plus two blanks to create your own. And of course, like all other Munchkin releases, this supplement is completely compatible with the original Munchkin and all its supplements and spinoffs. Of course, since Pants Macabre has powers, it will work especially well with Super Munchkin.
112 cards in a clamshell display pack.
Stock #1443,
ISBN 1-55634-747-2.
$16.95.
GURPS Traveller: Interstellar Wars
The transition between the First Imperium, governed by the Vilani, and the
Rule of Man, led by the Terran Confederation, has always been a pivotal era in
Marc Miller's Traveller universe. Now, for the first time in any game system,
Traveller players can explore this rich setting.
GURPS Traveller: Interstellar Wars covers the 200 years of war and change as the ancient Vilani Imperium falls to the upstart Terrans. In this time of conflict, the opportunities for adventure are more exciting than ever before! Forge new trade routes within the Imperium itself. Defend the homeworld from invaders during the Siege of Terra. Make first contact with alien races.
Help guide the Terran Confederation in its expansion from a single planet to a star-spanning empire.
GURPS Traveller: Interstellar Wars is an official GURPS Fourth Edition
sourcebook for the Traveller universe. It includes a detailed timeline, along with rules for starship design, interstellar trade, exploration, ship-to-ship combat, and tailoring characters to the last days of the First Imperium.
240 pages. Hardback.
Stock #01-2401,
ISBN 1-55634-746-4.
$34.95.
Trying to hitchhike across the galaxy on only 30 Centauri Ducats a day? Then you, friend, need the Babylon 5: Galactic Guide. It's the perfect companion to have when you find yourself all alone in the night.
June 16, 2005: Warehouse 23 Site Improvement: New Top 10 Page
Warehouse 23 has changed a great deal since the creation of the Top 10 Page. Our product selection has increased greatly, but in directions we couldn't have foreseen when we first selected the categories. In addition, we've been open long enough that the selection menu at the top of the page had begun to take over the screen.
We have designed a new Top 10 Page to address these issues. It features new categories that give a more accurate view of what's really selling and pull-down menus that allow you to select any month you like.
We hope you'll enjoy it. We know we do.
And please let us know if you find any bugs. It is new, after all. -- Cyndy
Warehouse 23 News: Attention Airheads!
Aspects of Air are known for their intelligence and wisdom, but are your players? Pick up a copy of the Exalted: Aspect Book - Air. It will help get your Air-aspected Exalts to be all they can be. Or frighten them off in a blind panic. Either way, you win!
June 15, 2005: General Mission Call To All Men In Black: Find AWOL Parties And Report!
There are several persons who are due a few . . . items from the Secret Masters. Oddly, they have thus far flown under the Eye's radar (we are just as interested in their method of detection avoidance as their actual whereabouts . . . ). If you have any information on the current location of the following subjects, please email alicia@sjgames.com, using the standard Bravo Epsilon encryption.
Loston Wallace
Andy Park
David Lynch
Gerinaldo “Gerry” Colon
Mike Naylor
W. Dow Rieder
Marc Jannsen
Bob Walters
Mark R. Ford
If you cannot help in this General Mission, please check your breakfast cereal for an alternate assignment.
Warehouse 23 News: The Dragon, The Lich, And The Wardrobe
Well, okay, no wardrobe, but two outta three ain't bad. Dungeoneer: Dragons of the Forsaken Desert is a new set. Dungeoneer: Tomb of the Lich Lord is a reprint. Both are much too fun for mortal man to describe with simple words. So, we'll just beam the description mentally . . . like so. Cool, huh?
If you're like most Americans, 99% of what you know about Korea you learned from watching "M*A*S*H." But they have a thriving gaming culture there, and GURPS is a big part of it. Dayspring Games is our translator/licensor in Korea, and they already have a Korean version of GURPS Basic Set, Fourth Edition for sale.
Dayspring has just sent us a Korean translation of GURPS Lite for Fourth Edition, and like its English counterpart, it's absolutely FREE! We hope our Korean fans will take advantage of this resource and use Lite to introduce GURPS to their friends.
We're working on other foreign-language translations of GURPS Lite – more news as it happens.
-- Scott Haring
Warehouse 23 News: A Pirate's Life For Me
Covering the lands of the An-Teng and the massive pirate organization known as the Lintha Family, Blood and Salt is the perfect resource for running Exalted campaigns in the Southwest. Just try not to make any "Polly want a cracker" jokes. The water is cold, and very, very unfriendly.
When we announced the release of the GURPS Fourth Edition, one of the things we said was that we'd be releasing a 240-page hardcover every month, like clockwork. I actually said that. "Like clockwork."
Heh. If I could bottle that optimism and sell it, I'd have the DEA on my trail in nothing flat.
The super-sized books have . . . not gone well. In retrospect, the problems are clear. Hindsight is 20-20. We thought that if we had the resources to do more than two dozen 128-page books a year, we could do a dozen that were twice that big. But it didn't work out that way.
In the first place, any individual writer or editor is more likely to run into a personal problem during a project that takes twice as long. We can, of course, deploy more than one writer or editor in parallel, but this has its own hazards. (Some of the stalled books were originally team projects. When two or three writers turn in good chapters and one writer doesn't . . . we're almost as stalled as if we had nothing at all. Multiplying the participants multiplies failure points.)
Each book, just because it has twice as many words and illustrations, has roughly twice as many places where it can get delayed even when the author has no problems. So for that reason alone it's roughly twice as likely to get stuck at some point during the process.
Yet there are fewer books in progress at any given time . . . giving us fewer options to move one book up to replace another.More things getting stalled or going wrong means more calls for the "firemen" . . . and we don't have many of those, and the ones we have really should be doing other things. (I haven't been in the office all week, because I've been home trying to unstick a GURPS book.)
We don't intend to compromise quality. And that means . . . books are taking too long. Staff enjoy their work less when EVERY project seems to be a Project from Hell. Comments, from sympathetic to cluelessly helpful to pointlessly sarcastic, appear on the forums. And cash flow curls up and dies.
We're making progress. We're learning how to change our routines to allow for bigger books. We're learning what can reasonably be expected of our various writers and editors under the new system. And almost all of the dozens of books that were underway last year are still progressing. Since we now know that most of you don't want a big new book every single month (on the average it seems you'd prefer one that size every couple of months at most), we see that there's enough in the pipeline to keep you happy for a long time.
If we can just get some of them finished.
-- Steve Jackson
The FedCom Civil War brought devastation to countless worlds of the Inner Sphere, but it also brought a number of new weapons to the battlefield. Very, very big ones. From 'Mechs to DropShips, Classic BattleTech: Technical Readout - 3067 has a slew of new hardware for the modern 'Mech commander.
(Ordinarily we like to announce things several months in advance. Every once in a while, we have an item that sneaks up on us. Witness, then, this belated announcement . . . .)
Steve Jackson Games announces for release in July, 2005:
 Super Munchkin "Momentous Unmasking" Shirt
Every hero needs a costume! *
This high-quality four-color shirt depicts the highly collectible and
completely non-existent "Origin Issue" of Super Munchkin.
It gives a special in-game benefit . . . the wearer can avoid Traps!
*Bath towel tied around your neck is optional.
Warehouse 23 News: Level Up Your Player's Guide
Just when you thought they were done writing variant rules, optional rules, additional rules, and revised rules . . . the Advanced Player's Guide sneaks up from behind and clubs with you 256 pages of still more rules! Classes, spells, a whole new ability score, there's bound to be something you can use!
June 11, 2005: GURPS Magic Spell Charts Update On e23
Known around here as the "one that broke the server," GURPS Magic Spell Charts continue to be one of e23's most popular freebies. The charts show the relationships between all the spells in GURPS, making it much easier to determine what leads to what, what depends on what, and just how far you can go with what levels of Magery and which prerequisites.
Author Michelle Barrett did a great job, but with a project this complicated, a few bits of errata will slipp through. An updated version has been posted, fixing the handful of errors our sharp-eyed customers have caught, and is available for immediate download. It's actually been up for a couple of days already . . . we announced it first on the Pyramid discussion groups, and then on the regular forums . . . We'll see if this spreads out the load a bit.
So don't go breaking our server again – the file will still be there tomorrow . . .
-- Scott Haring
Warehouse 23 News: Foul Magics And Fell Deeds
Learn the secrets of death in the world of Exalted with The Book of Bone and Ebony. Journey to the necropolis of Stygia, face unspeakable creatures of the Underworld, or give your Abyssal Exalted the power of necromancy . . . if you dare.
June 10, 2005: Illuminated Site of the Week: It Keeps Going, And Going, And . . . No, Seriously
Good news for those of you who worry someone might be smuggling iron filings into secure areas: mPhase brags they have used nanotechnological advances with batteries that will yield sensors 1,000 times more sensitive than what we've got today. Read the press release here.
-- Suggested by Erin Garlock
Warehouse 23 News: A Very Well-Armed Hive Of Scum And Villainy
What do you get when you add a city's worth of mercenaries to a country's worth of guns? Adventure, of course! Specifically, you get Rifts: MercTown, Palladium's guide to the town where mercenaries hang their hats after a long day's mercenary-ing.
June 9, 2005: GURPS Swashbucklers On e23!
GURPS Swashbucklers, one of our favorite out-of-print GURPS sourcebooks, has been brought back to life courtesy of e23! Pirates, Musketeers and Highwaymen all come alive in this GURPS worldbook of romantic adventure from Elizabeth I to Napoleon. Rules and backgrounds include: ship combat, black powder weapons, expanded fencing rules, cutlasses, chandeliers, codes of honor, duelling, compulsive gambling, and all the other classic elements of a good swashbuckling time!
This PDF is based on Steffan O'Sullivan's 1999 Third Edition, with all the errata found to date corrected. So whether you're emptying your guns into a British frigate or clashing steel with the Cardinal's Guard, GURPS Swashbucklers is the book for you.
-- Scott Haring
Warehouse 23 News: Enough Dice To Choke A Horse!
Not that you'd want to, of course. Then they'd be all wet and gross and hard to roll and stuff. Anyway, we have a lot of dice for you to do with as you please. Beautiful Borealis, shiny Scarab, vivid Velvet, splendid Speckled, and good ol' Opaque dice are now available. Betcha' can't roll just one.
This time for sure, Rocky!
Or at least, it really, really looks that way. And there are already potential practical applications, though it still produces less energy than it consumes.
Read the Christian Science Monitor story.
Warehouse 23 News: Look, It's A GM's Screen
If you haven't figured out the purpose and function of the GM's screen yet, here's a clue: it hides stuff from the players. Often, it has a handy list of commonly needed tables on the GM's side. A booklet of some kind is usually included. The D6 Gamemaster's Aid & Screen is no exception.
Wow. Companies are discovering the idea of official blogs. Gee. Wish we'd thought of that. Oh, wait, we did. In 1994. Read the CNN story and snicker.
-- Steve Jackson
Warehouse 23 News: Ships. In. Spaaaaace!
Hm. That wasn't as catchy as we had hoped. In any case, have a look at D6 Space Ships. It's full of information and rules for integrating ships of many sizes and shapes into your D6 System campaign. Cool, huh?
For the past few weeks I have been running the new "Tiger" version of OSX on my Mac. So far I'm quite unimpressed. Can't recommend it to anyone, and won't be buying it for the office.
It actually seems slower than the previous version - and I run a PowerBook G4, so there should be no issues of processor speed or RAM. 10.3 rarely gave me the spinner once I was booted up. Tiger does it a lot, especially looking at the web.
Tiger has solved none of the random cruft that 10.3 had been doing to me. That makes me think, again, that they are hardware-related. Time to go back to the Apple Store and visit the Genius Bar, or, as it proved last visit, the Very Nice Guys Who Have Black T-Shirts But No Answers Bar.
The OSX feature I was least happy with was Mail. The 10.3 version of Mail hurt my productivity so much that I tried to go back to Eudora, but it proved impossible. Once your old mailboxes are transferred to Mac Mail, forget about getting them back. (I have been advised that it's worth another try, so we'll try.)
The Tiger version of Mail hasn't yet done either of the things I hated most about 10.3, but then it hasn't had much time yet . . . and the interface is less convenient than the 10.3 one. They have improved the mail search, so you can now actually search for a multi-word string in mail. But the search still doesn't look in your Junk mailbox, so it's completely worthless for finding mail that has been mistakenly junked.
The Tiger feature that has gotten the most hype is the "Spotlight" whole-disk search function. For me, it's dead in the water. It definitely has more options than the 10.3 search, but it's far slower to use when all I want to do is find a filename containing a given word. In the first place, the unchangeable default is NOT "search filenames for this string." So I can't just hit splat-F and do a search . . . I have to click to the search type that I want. In the second place, it starts searching as soon as you start typing . . . so if I'm looking for, say, "France," it freezes up after I type the first couple of letters and shows me a huge list of "Fr" stuff . . . Freya, fried chicken, frombotzers, freeware . . . Eventually it lets me finish my real request. Then it shows me results, in a hostile and space-eating format that I can change but can't seem to keep from being the default. For all the talking that Apple did about this, you'd think it would have been tested on some real users.
The second biggest hype was for the Dashboard. I have one word to say about that: Konfabulator. The Dashboard is a poor re-implementation of someone else's idea, and none of the Dashboard widgets available so far has been of any value to me at all. It's tempting to invite people to create (for instance) a fnorder widget, just to support Mac, but does this feature DESERVE support?
I will get changed back to Panther as soon as possible. If I can't get my money back on the software, I suspect that I'll be selling this copy to somebody who doesn't heed my warning. Big disappointment. Apple got a huge boost out of Tiger sales, but what are the users getting?
-- Steve Jackson
Warehouse 23 News: Rock & Roll The Dice
Crank your spells to 11, It's the AC/HP T-Shirt! Buy one today! Your fighter is already into heavy metal, after all.
John Kovalic writes to say:
"At some point in the last two weeks, I passed the 1,000 card milestone for Munchkin.
Munchkin - 168 or so cards
Star Munchkin - 165 or so cards
Munchkin Bites! - 165 or so cards
Super Munchkin - 165 or so cards
Unnatural Axe - 110 or so cards
Clerical Errors - 110 or so cards
Clown Wars - 100 or so cards
Munchkin Blender - 110 or so cards
European Munchkin cards and other promos - around 25
Munchkin Dice - 12 cards
Rough total - 1,130 or so cards!
It'd be fun to find out find EXACTLY what the 1,000th card was . . ."
It would, indeed, and I doubt we'll ever figure it out, since we send John the art specs in long lists, and most are perfect the first try, but some get redone . . . so it will probably remain a mystery.
But a thousand cards! Cool!
-- Steve Jackson
Warehouse 23 News: Gorilla Giganticus Glowius
The Plush Savage Gorilla is for the massive, angry primate in all of us. He's furry, battery-powered, and most certainly not based on any particular enormous, building-climbing ape.
June 4, 2005: The Gnomes Of Zurich Collect Extra Income From Mind Control Drugs
Researchers at the University of Zurich have discovered that a hormone nasal spray causes subjects to be more trusting and to invest more money in a proposal made by a stranger. Read about it in (of course) The Economist. Fnord.
Warehouse 23 News: I Will Call Him . . . Minilla
Plush Minilla - Son of Godzilla. He's like Godzilla. Only much, much smaller. Hence "mini."
June 3, 2005: Illuminated Site of the Week: Reynolds Rap?
Announcing to the Nobility, Gentry, and Public: A Revue of the Stylings of Miss Prism, songstress to the Heads of Europe. She will perform "I've Got My Tinfoil Hat On" beginning precisely at half past click. Tickets and Places for the Boxes to be had of Mssrs. Doghorse and 4rthur at Eclectech. Participants are cautioned that Exposure to additional Elements at this Interweb Service should be under the Direction of responsible adult Authorities. -- Suggested by Stefan Jones
Warehouse 23 News: Subtle Spite At An Affordable Price
If you can't say something nice, write it on a T-shirt. Better yet, let someone else write it on a T-shirt and then buy that T-shirt. An example? Well, there's always the Lunch Money: Snipe T-Shirt.
This year, getting products out the door has been like pulling teeth, except we don't get any of the nice stuff that lets you sleep through the screamy part.
The Munchkin Dice have been infuriatingly delayed. We had samples at the GTS, and we expected to be shipping shortly thereafter. But first the manufacturer didn't get finished, and then the manufacturer didn't seem to realize he was actually expected to SHIP them, and then the boat they were supposed to go on did the sit-in-port thing rather than the cross-the-briny-deep thing. And then, when the container of dice finally made it to the States, it was pulled for X-raying, just in case they were, you know, EVIL dice.
But they're now on their way to Vegas for assembly. And soon, knock on wood, we shall announce that they are on their way to your stores. Buy some quick . . . before aliens abduct them all, or something.
-- Steve Jackson
Warehouse 23 News: A Legend Lives Again
Based on the works of M.A.R. Barker, Tékumel: Empire of the Petal Throne is a roleplaying game with a setting decades in the making. Tékumel is a world of fantasy and adventure unlike anything before or since. Utilizing the Tri-Stat System, Tékumel is back and better than ever!
The biggest cat in the world is not a lion or a tiger . . . but a crossbreed known as a "liger." Read the Snopes.com story. And enjoy the pictures. BIG kitty.
(It has been suggested that I add a joke to the effect that Apple won't be running out of OSX names any time soon. Feh. They should have stopped with Panther. You'll be seeing my Tiger rant here soon.)
-- Steve Jackson
Warehouse 23 News: Warehouse 23 Top Ten
Check out Warehouse 23's top selling items for May at the new Warehouse 23 Top 10 page.
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