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Daily Illuminator Archive for June 2025
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June 1, 2025:
The Dahlia's Diversions for Peculiar Parties campaign on BackerKit ends on June 5 – and we're excited to welcome any and all last-minute guests. As explained in an earlier Illuminator, I unearthed this collection of games in our Deep Archives and have been making good on Steve's old promise to Dahlia by getting this collection ready for print . . .
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June 2, 2025:
I imagine the Venn diagram of "fans of Steve Jackson Games" and "avid readers" is – if not a single circle – a squishy thing with a lot of overlap. Realizing this got me to thinking: Are there any facts, skills, or how-tos that you've specifically learned from reading (especially geek-related fare)? . . .
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June 3, 2025:
If you're looking to give a game but want to make it a bit more personal, consider pairing it with a snack or meal. A great shelf-stable option is popcorn kernels; they make all kinds of gourmet options and even "gift kits." If you're not going for a kit that contains all the fixins, add some specialty salt and oil . . .
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June 4, 2025:
Almost 50 years in, and people are still playing my first game, Ogre. This is unspeakably cool . . .
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June 5, 2025:
Signups are now open on BackerKit for Last Train to Bremen by Possum Creek, now an imprint of Steve Jackson Games!
Last Train to Bremen is a one-shot storytelling game about four cavalier musicians and their questionable decisions. Things go awry after they make a deal with the Devil, which causes them to go on the run . . .
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June 6, 2025:
Roleplaying fans can now score a specially priced copy of Yazeba's Bed & Breakfast by Possum Creek on Bundle of Holding! In honor of Pride Month, June's Bundle of Holding features LGBTQ+-friendly RPGs . . .
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June 7, 2025:
Yep, we released Wiz-War over a year ago. But, you see, I wrote this nice Developer Notes piece and due to an unfavorable alignment of the moon and Sagittarius, or something, it didn't run . . .
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June 8, 2025:
Question for you all: What do folks like as far as game tables? Our household doesn't have one of those dedicated game tables; most of our discretionary income goes toward buying more games . . .
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June 10, 2025:
I recently offered a tip about giving a game along with a snack to turn it into a gift of a game night. But what if the recipient is a bit closer to you – either someone you're dating or in a long-term relationship with? . . .
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June 11, 2025:
Some props are more elaborate than others. One arrived in today's mail: the Brindlewood Bay Community Cookbook. Brindlewood Bay is a cozy mystery game with a Lovecraftian twist, published by The Gauntlet . . .
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June 12, 2025:
When it's not your turn in a game, do you have an etiquette for what is and isn't allowed at the gaming table? It's the sort of thing that doesn't tend to cause problems until it is a problem – at which point it's often too late to easily soothe the ruffled feathers . . .
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June 13, 2025:
You might know that our friends at Dire Wolf have made a really great digital adaptation of Munchkin that's available on Steam, phones, and tablets. You should play it! . . .
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June 14, 2025:
When we began the transition from the old Warehouse 23 store to the new Shopify-based Warehouse 23 more than two years ago, we had a migration process in place for bringing over all our customers' digital files into the new system. However, this process couldn't account for orders placed as a guest (when not logged into an account) or issues from Pyramid subscriptions . . .
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June 15, 2025:
Way back in August 2004, we talked about one of the songs on Tom Smith's then-new album And They Say I've Got Talent called "The Illuminati Polka."
If you didn't know about that song (or have since "forgotten" definitely not a mindwipe fnord), now you do. If you did know about that song, you may not have known about the animated version of that song, produced by A.B.S . . .
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June 16, 2025:
How many of us owe our Today Selves to the cool stuff that their Past Selves found in the pages of the American Science and Surplus catalog? If you know, you know . . .
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June 17, 2025:
We celebrated on Saturday, as one should, but you can still enjoy anachronisms, airships, and steam cannons this week by taking advantage of our Steampunk Day Sale, still alive and well on Warehouse 23 for a couple more days. Looking to add some technofantasy tinkering to your GURPS or Munchkin games? . . .
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June 18, 2025:
Not too long ago, I talked about downtime between games in longer sessions. Here's another consideration: Who's setting up the next game? . . .
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June 19, 2025:
A high point of my trip to the UK Gaming Exposition was dinner with Sir Ian Livingstone. Sure, we talked about Fighting Fantasy, and we talked about everything else too . . .
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June 20, 2025:
While doing a bit of internal research recently, I came across this Daily Illuminator post from November 11, 2018: "Ten Awesome Things About SJ Games."
Always on the lookout for new Illuminator ideas, I was amused to discover that a lot of it still holds true – which is always refreshing for an article from pre-COVID (or, as I call it, "the Before Times") – though we've added another six years to the "world's oldest blog."
However, my eyes were immediately drawn to one element that isn't true any more . . . in a way that's both noteworthy yet humbling. The first item on the list states: "We are the second oldest game publisher still under its original management, the first being the venerable Flying Buffalo."
Reading that reminded me of the founder of Flying Buffalo, Rick Loomis . . .
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June 21, 2025:
I recently talked about what to do when it's not your turn. What if it's not anyone's turn? . . .
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June 22, 2025:
Recently, Steve posted his notes from the Wiz-War design. At the end, he mentioned the Wiz-War STL files for printing your own miniatures, which are available on Warehouse 23, as is a nice package of matching wizard busts to display on your shelf . . .
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June 23, 2025:
We're living in a golden age of RPGs. There are so many options available to us in the modern market, from major brands to the quirkiest indies, that most of us will never have the time to play all the games we're interested in . . .
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June 24, 2025:
SJ, Irene, and I are were at LibertyCon over the weekend (6/20-22). It's an awesome convention, and you should go sometime if you possibly can . . .
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June 25, 2025:
Incredibly excited to announce that Wanderhome is now available for pre-order on Warehouse 23! Five years ago, Ruby and I created Wanderhome, a pastoral fantasy game that focuses on characters and relationships over combat, and while my current style of game design is very different from that, it's still something I'm incredibly proud of . . .
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June 26, 2025:
I've previously recommended online daily puzzle games Align and Raddle. Here's another one that started not too long ago, for more trivia-minded folks: Revealed . . .
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June 27, 2025:
If you've perused high-quality RPG books in the gaming biz in the past couple of decades, you've likely run across Owen K.C. Stephens (who, among a jillion other credits in the gaming realm, had an ongoing column – Icosahedron Adventures – that's part of the Pyramid Volume 2 HTML Archive) . . .
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June 28, 2025:
My gaming tables tend to be as organized as my computer desk . . . which is to say, "Completely not organized, oh help, I just pulled a load-bearing pencil and now I'm buried." As a result, I don't necessarily have the dice I need at my fingertips. But I'm lazy; I'll just roll whatever's handy that gets the job done . . .
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June 29, 2025:
Last Train To Bremen is available now on Backerkit! It is a tragedy for a doomed quartet: a storytelling game about four arrogant musicians who made a deal with the Devil that blew up in their faces . . .
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June 30, 2025:
Beyond a doubt, this is my favorite "discovered in 2025" series. The Bobiverse books, by Dennis E . . .
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