Daily Illuminator

July 20, 2008: Illuminated Site of the Week: Oh, Wait, You're Serious?

Well, this time, yeah. A lot of folks show off their technological, uhhh . . . we'll call them "innovations" . . . on the Internet, but occasionally it turns out someone's actually doing something that doesn't require timecubes or free energy or wombat blood. The Daily Ill has featured Sandia National Labs here and there for things that caught our fancy, but if you cast a wider net you see it's high time they were recognized for their bionic contact lenses, or their neutron scatter camera, or their lightweight, high-caliber, self-propelled cannon system, or . . .

You know, on second thought, you could just get a job there. That'd be easier.

-- Suggested by John Evans

July 19, 2008: Coming In November

Munchkin 7 -- More Good Cards

You Asked For It!

A munchkin can never have enough good cards . . . so we bring you . . . More Good Cards!

In this small but mighty expansion, you'll find the cards that you,yes, YOU, asked for in our online survey.

More Wandering Monsters! The best fromMunchkinBlender, with new art, along with the brand new. . . And Its Little Friends.
More Monster Enhancers! New ways to beef up thecritters your opponent is facing.
More Cheats! More copies of the classicCheat!, plus the TRULY abusive Cheat With BothHands and Cheat Like There's No Tomorrow!
More Curses! Don't Call MeShirley from Blender, and twoall-new cards, diabolic and hilarious!
More Wishing Rings! Actually, just one. Wewouldn't want to spoil too many of those Curses, would we?

Plus potions, items, and item enhancers! Shuffle them all in, or just add your favorites.

Munchkin 7 -- More Good Cards is an expansionfor the classic Munchkin set.
-- Paul Chapman

Server Maintenance

We will be performing maintenance on our servers Saturday, July 19th, starting at 2:00pm (CDT, GMT -5:00). The maintenance window will be 2 hours. During this time, you may be unable to reach our websites, email, or DNS servers.
-- Jimmie Bragdon

July 18, 2008: Dr. Horrible

So Joss Whedon has created a mini-movie. Right now, and I mean RIGHT now, you can watch the first two acts of Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog for free. And the last one will go up, also free, on Saturday. For a short time only, as they say. But you may very well want to pay money to have your very own copy, and he's good with that, too.

I liked this. It involved me very quickly. I didn't cry, and I didn't laugh out loud, but I did grin a lot, I really did tear up a bit, I did replay a couple of the duets, and I did clench my fists and shake my head and think "No, you idiot," when the Doctor . . . Well, you have to see it yourself.
-- Steve Jackson

July 17, 2008: Protospiel Was Awesome!

Will and I are back from Protospiel. We played several games, including a few upcoming SJGames releases that haven't been publicly announced, and had the chance to chat with several of the attendees about printing games, working in the game industry, and the game development process.

On Sunday afternoon, as the con was winding down, Alex Yeager of Mayfair Games showed us around Ann Arbor. We visited game stores (hey, we're gamers), a used bookstore, and enjoyed a quiet dinner. We also talked about games, game design, and the industry. Thanks, Alex, for a fun afternoon. It certainly beat sitting in our hotel room.

With the convention over, and life returning to the normal grind, I find myself dreaming of a similar con in Austin. If only I had the time . . .
-- Phil Reed

July 16, 2008: BioWare's Solution To Piracy

"That's ultimately the best, most successful path to prevent piracy. To have players that want your games, want to believe in them and think they're high-quality and realize they're going to get a lot of value out of them as platforms for long time afterwards." -- BioWare's co-CEO Ray Muzyka.

In other words, if you've got quality fans, and quality products, piracy really isn't a concern.

Except on Talk Like a Pirate Day, of course.
-- Paul Chapman

July 15, 2008: The Wave Of The Future

If you don't know what new film spawned the Buy n Large site, you won't find out from me. But it's worth a look. Here, we have clever, evil marketers being devastatingly parodied by . . . hmm. By clever, evil marketers, I think.

Way to go, guys.

-- Steve Jackson

July 14, 2008: Bringing Out The Big Guns of Pulp

Sure, detectives carried snub-nosed revolvers, and masked adventures blazed away with twin .45's. But what about the big guns?

GURPS High-Tech: Pulp Guns, Volume 2 brings the machine guns, the flamethrowers, and even the cannons from the pulp era. Perfect for military campaigns set before or during World War II, this catalog also includes just the sort of "boom" you'd need to, say, destroy a secret lab of cultists bent of raising an Elder God.
-- Paul Chapman

July 13, 2008: Rising Prices

Rising gas prices increases shipping costs. Rising energy costs also make paper more expensive to make and ship, and that increases printing costs. And if you're printing a game, and having it shipped from the printer to your warehouse, you're getting double increases. The bid to ship Munchkin Quest from the printer -- just the shipping part - has gone up by $10,000 in the last month.

The scariest part is there is no sign of energy prices leveling off. Where is the ceiling? Is there a ceiling?

We've done our best to keep prices stable, despite the increased costs, but it's a losing battle. Unless energy costs drop soon - not just level off, but drop -- we'll have to do an across-the-board price hike. We don't know when, nor how much, but it's coming.

We'll keep you informed.
-- Paul Chapman

July 12, 2008: GenCon Approaches!

GenCon Indy is getting closer and closer! We'll be there, hanging out with the Adventure Retail guys, at booth 1621.

Who's "we"? Not telling . . . yet.
-- Paul Chapman

July 11, 2008: Illuminated Site of the Week: Knock, Knock

We already showed you Entrances to Hell, a cautionary tale for those readers surrounded by the infernal in the UK, but if you're willing to travel further afield you'll find Darvaz has a door of its own. This passage in Russia leads straight to you-know-where, but it has something other portals don't: video.

-- Suggested by Eric Newsom

July 10, 2008: I'm Going To San Diego

ComicCon, that is! I've never attended before, and while I will be spending the majority of my time doing the Exact Change Dance at the booth . . . hmm, this is usually the part of the post where I mention the booth number. I can't seem to find a map of ComicCon's exhibit hall. Oh well, I'm sure you'll be able to find us -- it's only 460,000 square feet!

Anywho, while I will be stuck to the booth for the majority of the show, I do hope to see some nifty media-like exhibits. I'm not much for the autographs, but I'm all about the sneak previews.
-- Paul Chapman

July 9, 2008: Protospiel Pilgrimage

Will and I are attending Protospiel this week -- okay, technically this weekend -- where we plan to gather feedback on a few of the not-yet-released projects that have been eating up development time. (Have I mentioned our weekly -- or, if we're in a crunch, daily -- game development meetings? We find a comfortable place in the office to sit down and go over one or two games so that we can hammer out what's going well, what's going wrong, and whether or not we should add the word "Munchkin" to the title. Great fun!)

We'll also drag along the well-traveled copy of Munchkin Quest just in case anyone at the show wants a peek at the prototype.
-- Phil Reed