"Wouldn't the sentence 'I want to put a hyphen between the words Fish and And and And and Chips in my Fish And Chips sign' have been clearer if quotation marks had been placed before Fish, and between Fish and and, and and and And, and And and and, and and and And, and And and and, and and and Chips, as well as after Chips?"
Color proofs for The INWO Book came today. Pretty, pretty, pretty. Except for the pages that are fouled up, which is the whole point of getting color proofs in the first place. We will fix it, we will, we will, and you will be amazed at its wondrousness.
We got e-mail from a card retailer today, saying she was already sold out of the INWO Factory Set. Heh, heh. Fortunately, her distributor's nearby . . . she said she was ordering ten more . . . and thus the plot for World Control progresses.
We have a willing and silly Animator, but a shortage of players . . . if you want to get in on the fun, check out io.games.message.toon.
And . . . oh, yes . . . the INWO Factory Set ships today from distributors!
We're all cutting out early to McKinney Falls State Park, for barbeque and a picnic celebrating the release of INWO Unlimited Edition. Yee-hah!
We're out of here.
-- Scott Haring
Why all the panic? Why this week? Because Derek leaves on Saturday for the Cap Cities trade show in Chicago, IL, followed by a month's vacation in Europe! I'll try to get Derek to post something here before he leaves . . .
And he's not the only one with a traveling Jones. Steve Jackson will spend 11 days in Brazil,
editor Susan Pinsonneault is taking a week to go camping in Yellowstone, and I'm planning a couple of weeks exploring the grandeur
of minor league baseball in the South, all in the next month or so! Do we know how to have fun or what?
-- Scott Haring
If you or a loved one is involved in the military and can steal an ammo box for 7.62 mm NATO cartridges, they make great INWO carriers. Nifty slide-off lid with a handle for carrying, and they're bulletproof! (They're great for those Magic types who want to keep those Black Lotuses mint, too.)
![[Pyramid #13 Cover]](/pyramid/covers/pyr-13.jpg)
This issue is still at the printer, and what with shipping times and all, it may be another month before you see it (much later than I'd hoped, but sometimes that's the way it goes) -- but it will be worth it. This is the issue with the two free preview cards from Wizards of the Coast's Ice Age, by the way, and will be the most popular issue in Pyramid history, with a circulation of well over 20,000!
Pyramid #14 is coming along nicely, and has a good chance of getting us back on schedule. This issue's got loads of neat stuff, including a feudal Japan adventure, GURPS rules for weapons with a mind and will of their own, a new minor bloodline for Vampire, as well as our regular features and lots of other stuff.
Looking down the line, we'll do another big
giveaway in our September/October issue, #15.
We'll kick it off with a new INWO card from the
upcoming Assassins Expansion Set. Like our
last INWO
giveaway, this card
will not be available in the regular run of
the expansion set. Then add in some promo cards from some other
manufacturers --
we already have a committment from Thunder Castle Games for a
Towers In Time card that won't be available in
any other magazine, and a
Highlander card that won't be available
anywhere else! And that's just for starters .
. .
-- Scott Haring
You've probably already seen it on your way to this page, but in case you haven't, Jeff Koke has done another bit of graphic wizardry on the SJ Games home page. You should definitely check it out.
And I found a couple of cool new links I thought I'd share with you today. For all you sports junkies (like me), ESPN has a Web page that isn't great on graphics (though it ain't bad), but has loads of information, the latest news stories, features and columns from their on-air staff and other nationally famous sportswriters, and lots of other cool stuff.
And if you're a science-fiction fan (and who
isn't?), the Sci-Fi Channel has a
pretty extensive Web page with lots of schedules, features and other
things of interest. Happy surfing!
-- Scott Haring
Time for a couple more samples from the ''Things You Can Do With INWO Blank Cards'' list:
''Place your cards in a circle around you. 'They' cannot get to you while the circle remains unbroken.''
''Two words: More fiber.''More to follow, surely ...
I spent a good part of the day working on the next issue of Pyramid, Derek cranked away on In Nomine, and Jeff, Susan and Rick worked on various GURPS projects -- Cyberpunk, Fantasy Folk 2nd ed., IOU, Reign of Steel ... some stuff that's going to come out soon, and some that won't be out for months.
I did make some minor modifications to my home page, adding pictures my sister sent me of
my six-month-old niece, the cutest baby on the planet -- check it out
if you dare.
-- Scott Haring
Second, the rest of those GAMA Trade Show pictures are available for the curious. One word of warning, though -- this is now a very large page with lots of pictures, and it may take awhile for your slower browsers to download it all.
And thirdly, a Web service called Table of Contents, Inc. has
added Pyramid
to its stable. They now have gifs of the current
cover and text of the table of contents of over 200 magazines covering
everything imaginable. You can find Pyramid under
''Electronic
and Computer Games'' -- not a perfect fit, but the best available ...
-- Scott Haring
io.games.visionary, for
news
and talk about Visionary Games and their ''digital book'' magazine,
Vision Quest. And visit their home page here on IO!
And we're wrapping up the insert cards for the INWO Blank Cards that will be on sale in June. It's just a pack of 20 blank INWO cards, for making up your own groups, using as proxies so you don't expose your precious Rares to damage, and other nefarious uses. What other uses? Well, the insert card -- the card that has the price and product information on it -- provides a number of useful suggestions. We've come up with a bunch, and at the rate of one per pack, it will take a while to get them all. How many are there exactly? That would be telling ... but here's a couple of samples:
''Tape them together into a giant pyramid and fly it like a kite. When the sky darkens, wait for further instructions.''
''Forge Secret Service credentials on one, gain access to game companies everywhere.''More weirdness sure to follow. Have a nice weekend, everybody. Happy Easter.
We learned of a small brush with media greatness today ... it seems that People magazine did a profile on Dan Hirschman, a 10-year-old from Southfield, MI who became the youngest Life Master in the history of the American Contract Bridge League. I played a lot of bridge in college, and I think I acquired 8 rating points or so at various tournaments. You need 150 (I think) to be a Life Master. Anyway, it's an impressive accomplishment. But to get back to the topic, Dan said in the article that he thought bridge was ''boring''. What games did he like to play, the interviewer asked? INWO, he answered. Bless his little heart. We're sending him a INWO Factory Set.
Yet another small step completed in our quest
for world domination ...
-- Scott Haring
![[Robots Front Cover]](/gurps/books/Robots/img/cover-lg.gif)
We bid goodbye to Pyramid #13 today, though it turns out we may not have a spine after all. Turns out the printer gave us an incorrect bid before, and we may not go with the fancy new binding. But it is still 96 pages, with 80 pages of color, and two free preview cards of Wizards of the Coast's Ice Age. And it still rocks.
Let me add my thanks to Jeff Koke for his great
job on the new Daily Illuminator title graphic -- nice
job!
-- Scott Haring
In other news, we just got our sample copies of the second Car Wars novel from Tor Books: Double Jeopardy, by Aaron Allston. It's a good book. I'm not saying that because Aaron is a friend (though he is) or because we make a little bit off every copy (though we do). Shoot, borrow a copy if you don't feel like buying it ... if you enjoy the Car Wars world, you'll like this book, and then you'll buy it. Grin.
Aaron's first novel, Galatea in
2-D, which was not a ''game novel'' or franchise of any
kind, was also excellent; I look forward to seeing a lot more from
him. In fact, he's got a new book just out, Doc Sidhe,
and I have to go pick up a copy ...
-- Steve Jackson
![[INWO Book Cover]](/inwo/products/INWObook/INWObook-front.jpg)
What else is new ... a first draft of
Reign of Steel, a worldbook for GURPS
Robots
showed up, as did the final draft of GURPS
IOU. IOU
stands for ''Illuminati University''. What does the O stand for?
You're not cleared for that. Fnord.
-- Scott Haring
I suppose these card games could be used in
education ... they're colorful, portable and already popular. And
they could be used to teach arithmetic, or set theory, or in the case
of INWO,
political science. :-)
Did you know that Atlas Games has a home page here on IO? Actually
there's a whole bunch of game companies
that do ... check it out!
-- Scott Haring
I don't want to sound too depressed -- hell, real baseball's coming back! But we just got some bad news about The INWO Book. It seems the hard drive we sent to the printer with the entire book on it failed. Or crashed. Or whatever you want to call it. Anyway, it's a doorstop now, and not a very good one at that. And it turns out our backup copy is missing a few files that need to be redone. This project was in great shape, and now it's dog food. And as Managing Editor, I feel personally responsible. So just shoot me.
The worst part is that our April lineup of products -- which was to include GURPS Robots and the INWO Factory Set -- is now likely to be late. And I hate it when things are late.
But here's something for your amusement -- I've
managed to Web up a few electronic photos I shot at the GAMA Trade Show in New
Orleans a couple weeks ago. Take a look!
-- Scott Haring
So when we get a chance to do something nice for collectors, we try to let you know about it ... We set aside just over 200 sets of Limited Edition press sheets (five different sheets to each set) of INWO back in October when the Limited Edition was first printed. Then we had Steve and all the artists sign each sheet, and the sets were numbered. And now you've got a chance to get one.
We're running a blind auction over the Internet
of 100 sets of Limited Edition press sheets. This is a genuine
collectable opportunity not to be missed; for more information, send
e-mail to inwo-auction@io.com.
-- Scott Haring
On to more important things. I promised you an
update
on the next issue of Pyramid.
The move to 96 pages (8 more than before) is confirmed, and we're
going to have a lot more color, too
-- 80 of the 96 pages! (It's not quite full-color, but it's
close ...) We're also going with a new kind of binding called
''ota-binding''
which is like perfect binding, except the magazine will lie flatter.
Also, for the first time, Pyramid will have a
spine. (No jokes about us being previously
spineless, please.)
Magazine Architect Derek Pearcy is already salivating at the
prospect of what he can do, not only with this issue's spine, but all
the ones to come.
How about a series of seemingly random graphics that form a
larger picture when you put the issues in order on a bookshelf?
Secret orders from the Hidden Masters? Who knows ...
-- Scott Haring
We welcome back Derek Pearcy, who brought back stories of spring blizzards on his trip to a Buffalo, NY game convention. Oh, yeah, he also brought back a tremendous cold and lots of In Nomine files. I'll get him to run a playtest if he's feeling better later this week.
We also welcome back Brenda Hurst, who spent the better part of a week overseeing the direct shipping of the Unlimited Edition of INWO to our distributors. The official distributor release date is tomorrow -- enterprising retailers who really want to could go pick up the cards and have them on sale the same day. But given the time shipping takes, most stores will have it by the end of the week.
Any other basketball fans out there? I'm going
with
UCLA tonight (they were my pick before the tournament started), but I
expect a close game. Should be fun to watch at any rate.
-- Scott Haring