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Illuminated Site of the Week
GTS is over and done with. All the "gotta do in time for the show" crunches are past. Sure, there's now the unpacking of the Huge Pallet o'Stuff, and the debriefing and note-sharing and whatnot. But basically, today will be the first normal day at the office in quite a while.
How abnormal.
-- Steve Jackson
April 29, 2007: Frequently Asked Questions, GTS Edition
I expect Paul will have a comprehensive report on the GAMA Trade Show sometime next week, once he recovers. In the meantime, here are the questions I got most often. And, since I don't wish to be pointlessly cruel, the answers.
- How ya doing? Just fine. Selling so many Munchkin my ears are bleeding.
- Get your booth set up okay? Yep. They delivered the pallet three whole hours before the show opened. It was looking perfect with five minutes to spare, easy.
- What's new for Munchkin? Funny you should ask. Here's the Rigged Demo. There's the box mockup for Munchkin 5 - De-Ranged. It's at the printer now. And over here . . .
- Whoa, what's this? This is the prototype for the new Munchkin boardgame. Nobody outside GTS has seen this yet. Probably next week we'll put up a web page with some pictures.
- Wasn't it pointlessly cruel to tease them that way? Whoa! Breaking the fourth wall here! You didn't really ask that.
- That's true. So, is there going to be a supplement to Munchkin Cthulhu? Oh, absolutely, and there's been enough interest that we're going to see if we can push up the release date. No promises, though.
- How about Bavarian Fire Drill? Coming along, honest, except the Munchkin stuff keeps knocking it off the track.
- And GURPS? Funny you should ask. Here's a printout of GURPS Martial Arts. All done except the last bits of art. It'll go to press soon.
- So when's the next Fnordcast? Next week.
That's all for now. Got some pictures to take and a new web page to build . . .
-- Steve Jackson
Warehouse 23 News: Well, Orision Had 'em Last
Dungeon Crawl Classics #41: The Lost Arrows of Aristemis is about slavers, not about absent-minded deities leaving weapons of mass godliness lying under a pile of dirty laundry and empty soda cans in their apartment. More's the pity.
April 28, 2007: Randy Milholland Is A Wicked Man
We talked for a long time at Penguicon last weekend, and never once did he drop a hint about what he's doing this week in Something Positive. Okay, Randy, you got me.
In the first place, his characters are playing GURPS. Woo, product placement. Heh heh fnord. But what's neat is that they are playing cross-genre, and this is being used as bait to draw in somebody who thought he wouldn't be caught dead roleplaying.
And in the second place, though Randy is still doing the art, the script is a guest effort by Eric Burns of Websnark. And Eric has absolutely nailed (so to speak) the voices and personalities of Randy's characters. Usually, in webcomics - or, for that matter, print comics - a guest sequence is highly non-canon, just people fooling around. Here, Eric . . . who has done a lot of webcomic writing, but is by far best known as a commentator and critic . . . is showing once again that he can do this stuff himself and do it well. And Randy is showing that he's not threatened by the idea of letting a fellow pro take the wheel for a bit.
Very neat. And I found out about all this at the same time you did. Randy is a wicked man.
-- Steve Jackson
Cry "havoc," or cry "wolf," or just plain cry, because the Forsaken are on the march and they're very, very unhappy. The rules and suggestions found in Werewolf: The Forsaken -The War Against the Pure will have your werewolves barking out orders, digging in, and marking their territory faster than you can say, "Ow, my internal organs!"
April 27, 2007: Illuminated Site of the Week: They Don't Make 'Em Like They Used To
What makes the deathbed confessions of highwayman James Allen so fascinating? It's not that it's a compelling read, it's that the book is bound in human skin . . . that of the author. The only thing more interesting would be to learn to whom the Boston Athenæum has lent the volume. -- Suggested by Scott Slemmons
Advanced Adventures: The Pod-Caverns of the Sinister Shroom. Seriously, that's the title. Don't look at us, we don't have any idea.
In the "Is It Gross, or Really Cool?" category, we have Make Your Own DNA Necklace!
While I don't think it'll be the fashion trend of the season, I can see it being used to bring a bit of science into a kid's summer craft activity. And the more hands-on science kids get, the better.
Especially if I don't have to clean up after them.
-- Paul Chapman
The Monty Python: Trojan Rabbit is ideal for infiltrating enemy fortresses and stealing their mythical, holy cups. Or, it would be, if you could actually get inside it. And then had the people you were trying to steal from pull the rabbit in. And . . . hm . . . okay, perhaps if it were a big horse . . .
Laura Balzer is the comic artist who illustrated the upcoming Pegasus game Kleine Helden (Small Heroes). At a recent convention in Hanover, one of our ever-watchful Men In Black asked her to draw her characters with the Eye in the Pyramid . . . and here's the result!
You will now be saying "Hey! Cute art! When will the game be out? Any chance that it will be translated in the US? Like, maybe, by SJ Games?" And the answer to that would be "I don't know. Yes, I like the art. I'm looking forward to trying out the game . . . if sounds like fun."
Thank you, Laura! Thank you, Agent Helke!
-- Steve Jackson
Politicians are a nutty bunch, what with their laws and votes and . . . um, deliberations . . . So if it's Politics As Usual it must be some kinda of zany, wacky, monkeys-swinging-from-the-rafters crazy time! Er, Right?
And now the page is up and the secret is revealed.
We'll be giving copies of the Munchkin Rigged Demo to our Men in Black and to the retailers at GTS. But they'll also be available for sale, because after we got it all planned out, we realized that some of you would hunt us down and slay us if you couldn't get one. Plus, we don't want to give them away at GTS and see them on eBay next week at 20 bucks. So it's got a nice cheap printed retail price: $4.95. However, we only printed 5,000 total, and I used one up at Penguicon, so if you really really want one, you should really really grab it as soon as you can. If they're going for 20 bucks on eBay in a year, that's the way the cookie crumbles.
-- Steve Jackson
Warehouse 23 News: Ain't 'Fraid Of No Ghost
Do you believe in UFOs, astral projections, mental telepathy, ESP, clairvoyance, spirit photography, telekinetic movement, full trance mediums, the Loch Ness monster, and the theory of Atlantis? Then read Ghosts of the Lady Grace. It's ghost-busting, but without that bothersome risk of total protonic reversal.
Wow, what a couple of days this has been.
Penguicon was very, very good. All I can say is that sometime I'd like to just attend. I did make it to some of the programming, and it was both entertaining and instructive. This is what one ought to expect from a convention that is about both science and science fiction, and Penguicon delivered.
The rest of the time, I was on panels myself, or in gaming. We introduced a new Munchkin set to a terrified world. No, not Munchkin Cthulhu . . . newer than that. I would tell you its name, but I just found out that there's no PAGE for this set yet. So I will cruelly tease you by telling you it exists, and when the page is up (which may be after GTS, for reason you can no doubt figure out), I'll point you to it.
And, of course, I spent a lot of time with the Chaos Machine. The Machine went very, very well this outing, with two "best yet" and one "first." The "best yet" items were, first, that the Machine's skeleton was fully populated with busy gadgets and whizzing balls earlier than ever . . . by the time I went to bed Friday night, it was already completely chaotic. And, second, there was less "Whoops, somebody left a part on the floor and somebody else stepped on it" than ever. The "first" was . . . the Machine was on the Internet. Malcolm Kudra brought and installed the hardware. Not only were there blinkenlights . . . it was actually possible to log in from anywhere in the world, if you knew where, and turn the motors on and off.
I haven't even mentioned the liquid nitrogen ice cream. Or the really nice AND competent people running the Green Room and taking care of the guests. Or the wedding (yay for friends getting married). Or the too-short time I got to spend with friends both fan and pro. And I dropped more money in the dealer room than I did at Worldcon.
Tonight I sleep in my own bed. Tomorrow afternoon I fly to Las Vegas for the GTS.
-- Steve Jackson
Warehouse 23 News: Power Vacuums Suck
Kings never die clean deaths. They always seem to leave large piles of loot and land just lying around. And it's always an abrupt, unexpected departure from the land of mortals. If those idiots would just set up a will before someone poisons the punch, there wouldn't be all these Warrior Knights running around like crazed terriers, snatching up land and generally making a mess of things for the peasantry. "Highness" indeed.
Sometime mid-day, Austin time, the crew and I will be boarding the big iron bird and winging off to Las Vegas for the annual GAMA Trade Show. We'll meet up with Ross Jepson, our Canadian Director of Sales (he does all our sales, but happens to be Canadian -- not that we hold that against him), and the mysterious MIB Control, aided by his key minion from the West Coast.
GTS is the biggest hobby games trade show, and this year we'll be in a brand new (to us, anyway) facility -- Bally's. This will be the first time for Will and Randy, the second for Control and his minion, and my seventh.
Wait a minute -- is that right? Seven? Time sure flies when you're having fun!
Anyway, if you, or your friendly local retailer, will be attending, stop by Booth 508 and say howdy! We'll be next to our old friends in Atlas Games and Dork Storm Press, and across the aisle from PSI, who will be representing White Wolf, Soverign Stone, and a bunch of others.
We'll be talking up Munchkin, of course, including a couple of new items for that line. Stay tuned to the DI for updates as the week goes by.
-- Paul Chapman
Warehouse 23 News: Three to Six Species Enter, One Species Leaves
When you participate in The Great Space Race, you're not just racing for glory, for fame, for riches. No, you're racing to make sure the Emperor doesn't turn your entire race into a tiny, nondescript cloud of slowly dissipating atoms. So, y'know. No pressure.
April 21, 2007: Illuminated Site of the Week: Paper Or Plastic?
The titanic battle continues at Left-or-Right. No, not that titanic battle . . . you can catch that every night on CNN and Fox News. We're talking about the important issues of the day. Make your voice heard: Coffee or tea? George or Kramer? Condoleeza or rice? You will decide. -- Suggested by Mike D
Warehouse 23 News: Blow Up Your Neighbor!
The Johnsons have a thermonuclear device. Why don't we have a thermonuclear device? In fact, why don't we have two? We can always sell the howitzer to make room. Though if this Escalation! keeps up, we may need to take out a second mortgage . . .
April 20, 2007: Dungeon, Dragon Magazines To Cease Publication
Paizo Publishing announced Thursday, on their home page, that the long-running Dragon and Dungeon magazines would be discontinued. See that page for the details.
In Unrelated News, Our Phones Are Out
If you have been trying to call the SJ Games offices, please send us e-mail instead. Apparently AT&T has a serious outage in our area - they are saying it may be Saturday before everything's fixed.
Warehouse 23 News: Brought To You By The Letter "Fnord"
One of the crates deep in the warehouse's basement got tired of being downstairs and brought itself to surface level. It opened itself up in the shipping department and something labeled SiegeStones popped out. It's either some sort of game or an alien [TEXT DELETED]. Either way, we're pretty sure it's harmless, so we've decided to sell it. Enjoy!
One of our goals this year - in fact, our #1 objective - was "Don't run out of Munchkin stuff." Well, guess who's out of Munchkin Cthulhu. It's been back-ordered for weeks.
In our defense, if we'd gotten as many as we had ordered from the printer, we would not have been back-ordered until a few days ago. Our card printer is moving to another state, and having Interesting Times, and they sent us 3,000 fewer sets of cards than they were supposed to.
They made those up, and the games have been assembled, and will start shipping to distributors next week. But at this point we have MORE back-orders than those 3,000 sets can meet. The NEXT batch will hit the distributors before the end of May, at least.
Argh. It's a good problem to have. But now we know to order even MORE of Munchkin 5 - De-Ranged.
-- Steve Jackson
Phone Difficulties: Our phone provider is experiencing widespread difficulties, and we are currently unable to make or receive phone calls.
It's a party puzzle game! Ubongo! Race against the clock and against your friends! Ubongo! Collect jewels from the board to win! Ubongo! That's really fun to say! Ubongo! Please help, we can't stop! Ubongo!
April 18, 2007: Kill Them All, Let Lego Sort Them Out
This might truly qualify for the title of Ultimate Lego Chaingun . . . 11 rounds per second, 64-shot capacity. Sebastian Dick is to be congratulated. Preferably by e-mail, as clearly it's not safe to be in the same room with him! Here's a video of the thing in action, complete with techno soundtrack.
Warehouse 23 News: Look At The . . . Staples?
That's right, no bones here. Just tiny bits of metal you can bend around paper. The Monty Python: Rabbit Stapler sure looks safe enough. Uh, you go first. Please, we insist.
will be a one-day gaming con June 9, held by and for a very elite group of gamers: our troops in Iraq and the civilian contractors who support them. It will be at Camp Adder/Tallil Airbase. See the detailed writeup on Gamegrene. And yes, your support - whether you're a publisher or an individual - is welcome, and will help the con come off!
Warehouse 23 News: Fake Words Are The Bestest
The gameosity of Cineplexity is some of the most refininated and enjoyablous we've seenified. Won't you buyinate this excellentious partyrific gameoid? It's a surefireified wayination to livenify your next social gatherification!
Last week our friend, gaming buddy, and co-worker Nicholas Vacek left SJ Games, returning to his home town to deal with personal business.
Fortunately, he's going to be able to continue with some of his duties on a contract basis . . . so the person answering your random mail to info@sjgames.com will still be Nicholas. This is good. The Illuminati hate to lose talent.
Warehouse 23 News: Frankenstein . . . Of The Future!!
Okay, not exactly, but Promethean: The Created - Saturnine Night does have big, juicy slabs of information on Prometheans that have a slight sci-fi slant. Ah, the lonely, melancholy life of the free-range clone . . .
Can anybody beat November 1994?
We knew that the Daily Illuminator was one of the very first weblogs - long before the word "weblog," let alone "blog" - but we didn't realize that it's apparently the longest-running one, with daily updates, all still archived, since November 1994.
Derek Pearcy wrote to point out this Cnet article on "Blogs turn 10," which, as commenters pointed out, was at least two years behind the times. And none of the comments document an existing blog older than the Illuminator.
Scary. As Derek said in his own comment to the thread: we didn't think we were doing anything special at the time. Just keeping in touch with the community . . .
-- Steve Jackson
Warehouse 23 News: Zombies Are Were People, Too!
All too often, careless motorists fail to observe traffic signs. When the dead are walking the earth, this usually isn't much of a concern. Staying alive is kinda at the forefront. Regardless, the design on the Zombie Crossing T-Shirt offers you just one more road hazard to keep in mind. Until the zombie in your back seat eats your mind, anyway.
is dead at 84. So it goes.
Read the excellent New York Times obituary.
Warehouse 23 News: Bring The +2 Waders Of Stink Reduction
Fair Haven has gotten fairly quiet recently. The cause? Creepy blue mist floating up from the sewer. If your players haven't yet run screaming to the hills at the prospect of a sewer crawl, give Dungeon Crawl Classics #40: The Devil in the Mists a shot. Or find new players. The ones you've got now may have . . . questionable taste.
April 13, 2007: Illuminated Site of the Week: You Forgot To Carry The Tudors
Ever had trouble with math? Tried to add or subtract, or maybe do taxes, but came up with a surprising and probably incorrect result? The Antichrist Revealed adds the House of Windsor and the House of Stuart together and gets Prince William as the Antichrist. How this is possible is the subject of their extensive website. Oh, there's some stuff about Freemasonry and the Lost Tribes of Israel in there, too (or so they claim - it would be hard to imagine these several dozen pages were all about the inbreeding of European royalty), but we know it's all related in the end, right? -- Suggested by lilith
Much like real school, Mutants & Masterminds Beginner's Guide offers new M&M players many opportunities to get beaten up. There's also some stuff about learning or some other junk. Mostly, though? Beatings.
An update for those anxiously awaiting
GURPS Martial Arts news:
We carefully shaved words off the manuscript with a straight razor (held in our toes, no less) and pounded it into the layout with a flying elbow drop. Only then did we discover that it weighed in at 256 pages rather than the 240 pages of every GURPS Fourth Edition book so far. This left us with a tough decision to make.
We could have sent the book back to the secret ninja training camp until it made its weight. The result would have been a supplement with less content, a few months later than planned . . . but, gosh, the 256-page version seemed so wonderfully comprehensive. We made painful cuts during the full-contact playtest, and many more items fell to the editorial axe, but that left us with close to 100 combat techniques, over 110 fighting styles, and in excess of 20 pages of weapons and equipment that we felt were necessary to cover all forms of personal combat: armed and unarmed, foot and mounted, armored and unarmored, striking and grappling, from every part of the world (not the "all Asia, all the time" approach of many RPG martial-arts manuals). Plus 40 pages of expanded combat rules for using all this stuff. And that isn't even getting into the history chapter, researched in part from historical texts only recently restored and made available to the public, and in part from serious treatises on the martial arts that simply didn't exist in the early 1990s, when the original Martial Arts was penned.
So instead we did the honorable thing -- the chivalrous, sportsmanlike thing, like handing back the other guy's sword -- and decided that more stuff, sooner would be preferable to less stuff, later. Come August 2007, then, GURPS Martial Arts will step into the ring as a 256-page super-heavyweight. The new price of admission is $37.95. We hope you'll be in our corner!
-- Sean Punch
If you keep staring into the Abyss like that, something is bound to stare back. In fact, Mage the Awakening: Intruders - Encounters with the Abyss is chock full of stuff that just might reach out and stop you from staring at much of anything. So cut it out, before something cuts it out for you.
April 11, 2007: Nothing Typed On This Can Fail To Be Cool
When first I heard about it, the project page for this wonderful steampunk keyboard was swamped, probably due to hits generated by the Gizmodo article. Things have settled down now, and you should go look. The world is not wholly lost while things like this are being created.
While it is marvelous in its every detail, the thing I like MOST about it, I think, is the Roman-numeral function keys.
-- Steve Jackson
Warehouse 23 News: The DM's First And Second Line Of Defense
Don't risk your Dungeon Masterly security on just one DM screen. Dungeon Crawl Classics #39: The Ruins of Castle Churo includes two four-panel screens. When your players breach the first wall, you'll remain safe beyond a second layer of sweet, protective cardboard.
I'm hoping that not too many people tried to join the current UltraCorps beta and couldn't get in.
Or maybe I'm hoping that hundreds of you wanted in! Heh.
Anyway . . . Work continues on the game. Perhaps we should have "shot the engineers and shipped the product" months ago, but Kira and I are the engineers!
-- Steve Jackson
Warehouse 23 News: A Game The Whole Family Can Injure Themselves With
When it comes to Jungle Speed, you're one of two things: quick or dead. And by "dead," we mean "stuck with a pile of cards you can't get rid of for love or money." Unless you suffer some kind of horrifying accident while trying to snatch the totem. Then, uh, yeah. Dead dead. Fun game, though!
April 9, 2007: If Travel Is Broadening, I'm Going To Be Completely Flat
I've got two trips coming up:
April 19, Jimmie Bragdon and I will leave Austin for Penguicon. I'm looking forward to seeing a lot of old friends and playing with the Chaos Machine. There will be a lot of game demos, including Munchkin Cthulhu and a sneak preview of . . . hmm, no, if I told you now I'd ruin the surprise. So if you're going to be in the Detroit area, come on by.
Sunday afternoon we fly home. Monday evening I'll be back on a plane, this time to Las Vegas, to join our crew at the GAMA Trade Show, which is our biggest annual "meet the retailers" session.
Once I make it back, no more travel for me till Origins. But I'm looking forward to that one too!
-- Steve Jackson
Apples to Apples just got a little less secular. Christian and Jewish gamers now have their own special editions of the popular party pastime: Bible Edition and Jewish Edition. There's also now a British Isles Edition for those of you who worship The Beatles or haggis.
Austin had its coldest recorded day Saturday - lowest low, lowest high. But there seems to be a lot of that going around this weekend. I'm now hoping it doesn't mess up the wonderful wildflower display that the wet spring has given Texas. We've been planning some office landscaping to follow up on the highly sophisticated "Throw lots of wildflower seeds around" procedure that we followed last fall.
This has nearly nothing to do with the game business in particular, but I know that no matter what I am doing, I work better in an attractive environment, and I choose to believe that the rest of the staff either feels the same way or is willing to humor those of us who do. And my particular definition of "attractive" includes "green stuff growing."
So I sure hope it hasn't all frozen!
-- Steve Jackson
New Year has come and once again the Dragon Parade is making its way through town. Does that mean you get to sit back, relax, and enjoy the show? No! It's festival time! That means you get out there and you work! Set up those food and drink booths along the parade's path, lest someone else make off with all those sweet, sweet monies.
If you were bored with geometry in high school, it's because they didn't give you problems like this. Read the comments, too.
Warehouse 23 News: Big 'Mechs, Teeny Heroes
There's more to a person than their Piloting and Gunnery stats, and the Classic BattleTech RPG is here to prove it. It may seem safe and familiar sitting in that 30-foot-tall walking weapon of mass destruction, but there are all kinds of other neat things to do in the BattleTech universe. Like, say, running away from 30-foot-tall walking weapons of mass destruction. Quickly.
April 6, 2007: Illuminated Site of the Week: Ever Meet An Alien That Wasn't Shifty?
Alienshift takes you deep inside the illuminated mind, but it doesn't stop there. When you pop out the other end you'll find Majestic-12 and the shadow government that created it; John Titor's travels through time; and Hopi prophecy springing eternal. It's a dizzying array with a large block of links, but at least it spares us the usual broad wash of random text and graphics -- Suggested by Ed Elder
Being a Viking isn't all pillaging and cleaving and generally running amok in northern Europe. There's also a lot of floating about on boats! When it comes to naming a game, however, you can't include everything. After all, what fits better on a box: Fire & Axe or "Fire & Axe & Boat & Beard & Neat Hat?"
April 5, 2007: Mr. Tesla Is In The Building
Beamed power is not a new idea. But maybe this time it will work . . .
Meanwhile, there's a really spiffy prototype electric car named in Tesla's honor. A cent a mile? Wow. $92,000 for the production models due out late this year? Also wow.
Warehouse 23 News: Warehouse 23 Top Ten
Warehouse 23 has posted an updated Top 10 page for March. Check it out, and see what all the cool kids are buying . . .
A new UltraCorps game, N-Space, is now open. It will close, and start ticking, at 10pm CST Wednesday night, and as of this writing there are 223 players in the game and 27 positions open. If you're interested in trying out UltraCorps, this is a good time. The only requirement to join this particular mega-game is that you complete a solo game first in order to learn the basic rules. This is one of the last free mega-games we'll run, so come give it a try!
-- Steve Jackson
Warehouse 23 News: Wood And Sheep Like You've Never Seen Them Before
In card form. What? What were you expecting? We're talking about Settlers of Catan: Catan Card Game. Sheesh, you people . . . Should we even bother mentioning that the game has an "expansion"?
April 3, 2007: Scheduled Downtime This Thursday
There will be a scheduled downtime for maintenance on our router and network beginning at 10:30 PM CDT this Thursday, April 5th (Friday, 3:30 AM GMT). The expected maintenance window is approximately three hours.
If things go smoothly, this should only result in a brief outage of up to 30 minutes for our mail server, Pyramid chat, and our websites (sjgames.com, warehouse23.com, and UltraCorps) while router changes are made. The rest of the work is internal, and thus may prevent SJ Games staff from responding to communications for the duration of the outage.
--Jimmie
We were just looking at The Darkness and we started thinking . . . It's like, how much more black could an RPG be? And the answer is none.
April 2, 2007: I Guess It Beats Eating Glass
So . . . there I am at my local grocery store, and I see flyers everywhere featuring their happy anthropomorphic grocery bag (really). They're announcing a "Customer Appreciation Day" and talking about encouraging healthy lifestyles.
And their special for the day is: for only a buck, you get a hot dog, chips, and soda.
-- Steve Jackson
In fact, let's just be honest without ourselves: hominini are boring. Oh sure, they think they're so great, walking upright and having "I-think-therefore-I-am" moments. eco does away with all that tool-using nonsense and replaces it with something much more interesting: grazing . . . Wait, that can't be right . . .
April 1, 2007: But Who Will Watch The Watchers From Space?
Google, first as an information organizer and then, with features like Google Maps, as an information provider, has been highly trusted. Now they've put a foot very wrong.
It appears unquestionably true that Google has replaced a lot of its current imagery of the battered New Orleans area with older pictures that show a clean, intact, pre-Katrina city.
No, that's not an April Fool's joke. It's real, and it sounds more like the thing you'd expect from a government.
Whatever the supposed reason for this falsification, Google won't get its reputation back until it corrects its imagery. And in the future Google Maps won't be seen as quite as much of an authority.
-- Steve Jackson
Warehouse 23 News: Ceci N'est Pas Une Pipe
It's Mythic Vistas: Damnation Decade.
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