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Daily Illuminator Archive for May 2025
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May 1, 2025:
Philip J. Reed is one of SJ Games' most distinguished alumni, and since he went freelance he has continued to produce Cool Stuff . . .
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May 2, 2025:
Happy National Space Day! Today we honor all things in the solar system, and possibly beyond . . .
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May 3, 2025:
Many of you, like me, are fans of artist Rick Hershey, who does most of the illustration for The Fantasy Trip.
Recently his family was touched by disaster that could easily have become tragedy. All four of his kids were in a car which was struck head-on by a median-crossing vehicle going 70 mph . . .
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May 4, 2025:
I admit that sometimes I feel like I'm not doing enough with my life. Well, that fear just got amped up to 11 by learning that experimental composer Alvin Lucier is still creating new music . . . despite the fact that he died in 2021 . . .
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May 5, 2025:
Dragons and drawing and dungeons, oh my! Deadly Doodles returns with a Second Edition, and it has more dungeon-crawling fun than ever before! This family-friendly Draw 'n' Draw game for one to four competitors challenges players of all ages to make their way through a dungeon . . .
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May 6, 2025:
Reading Steven Marsh's Daily Illuminator about making fake podcasts for game props got me thinking. I love using props . . .
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May 7, 2025:
I recently recommended a daily online game called Raddle. Now I have another one that's pretty fun . . .
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May 8, 2025:
In my last post, I talked about enhancing your RPG campaign by using maps for props. Here are some more ideas:
If your campaign is set in a recent era and in an actual city, find a map of that city and add a few captions, like "BBEG Building." With a bit of web searching, you can scare up historical maps, too; they are particularly handy for a Call of Cthulhu game . . .
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May 9, 2025:
As longtime readers of the Daily Illuminator might have noticed, I enjoy a number of daily games, including Raddle and Align. In the past few months, I've also started mixing up one of the other games I've been playing . . . by combining it with another . . .
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May 10, 2025:
What if Lemony Snicket were a punctilious old woman whose parlor game collection comprised exclusively indie RPG zines? Well, her name was Dahlia, and she apparently bequeathed her "best of" collection to Steve some years ago . . . . .
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May 11, 2025:
A while ago I wrote about the reasons you should make maps as player handouts. Here are some suggestions for using authentic-looking materials:
You might be familiar with the process of "tea aging": Take your printed paper and soak it for some time (the duration being, basically, "until it looks right") in a container . . .
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May 12, 2025:
I play a lot of tabletop games that feature ongoing support, such as Marvel Champions, Arkham Horror: The Card Game, and ‐ of course – Munchkin. Since I sometimes can't come back to a game for weeks or even months, I've often built up a small collection of "new stuff" to add to the game when I return . . .
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May 13, 2025:
It took me a while to come up with an angle for this article. I considered framing it as a conversation about manufacturing in the U.S., due to our ongoing concerns with what it might cost to print games overseas . . .
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May 14, 2025:
It's a lovely time of year as a Hoosier, when the days are long and the evening is coming off the winter chill but not yet summer hot. And that means . . . bunnies . . .
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May 15, 2025:
BGG.SPRING, an annual event in Dallas-Fort Worth, Texas, will be held this year over Memorial Day weekend from May 22-26 at the Hyatt Regency DFW Airport. The spring verson of the long-running BGG.CON convention is geared toward families, with no minimum age requirement . . .
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May 16, 2025:
Here's a quick tip for tabletop roleplaying gamers. A lot of times, GMs will think of a nifty prop idea after coming up with a character concept: "Oh, it'd be awesome if this guy had a black briefcase," for example . . .
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May 17, 2025:
Life is idyllic on this British isle . . . but what is the cost? The answers are yours to form and discover, in Harvest . . .
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May 18, 2025:
My cheapest hobby is collecting random interesting words that I find when digging into the etymology of modern vocabulary, sometimes fiddling with them to make them look part of a cohesive yet fictional language for that fantasy RPG campaign kicking around my head or that Star Trek fan fiction I might someday write. I very soon realized that I wanted to keep track of my notes in something more than a spreadsheet, which lead me to discover all manner of useful tools for designing and documenting constructed languages . . .
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May 19, 2025:
While in the midst of a game design discussion on Discord, I was thinking about the difference between TTRPGs and LARPs. When I was younger, I used to do a lot with silence and speech in LARPing . . .
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May 20, 2025:
Our ongoing work with bringing the Fighting Fantasy books to the United States continues apace. Even as we make plans into the future, it's still fun to look into the past . . .
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May 21, 2025:
Read me first! If you somehow missed the first three installments of Jean's great advice on making props, you can catch up here, here, and also here!
Creating a good prop isn't just about displaying information; removing information can be important, too. You can, of course, tear off part of your map . . .
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May 22, 2025:
If you were intrigued by my earlier insight into designing fictional languages, I have a couple more computer options for your consideration to help track your own creations. I briefly considered the database options at Lexiconga . . .
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May 23, 2025:
We recently gathered with some family to play a new game, because that's how we roll. ( Literally! See, because there were dice in the game, and . . . <ahem>)
Anyway! It was the first time I'd played the game, and it'd clearly been a while for the others . . .
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May 24, 2025:
Walking my neighbor's dog has become a pleasant ritual these past few years, a bright spot in my week. It's not just the joy of spending time with his Malinois, but the surprising connections forged on those quiet journeys back and forth . . .
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May 25, 2025:
Before I get below the fold on my first-ever Daily Illuminator post, I ought to tell you that we're offering 15% off Discworld Roleplaying Game PDFs on Warehouse 23 until May 28. It's not truth, justice, or freedom, but it is reasonably priced . . .
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May 26, 2025:
As someone who enjoys a good alternate history or near-science-fiction game, I always like thinking about signifiers to let folks know, "Hey, the future is different!"
One thing that came to mind today – which might be useful for certain RPGs – is how different cooking tech can become so commonplace as to be near-invisible. Both coffee-pod brewing systems and air fryers are barely a couple of decades old for home use . . .
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May 27, 2025:
Summer is just around the corner, and this year it will bring three new releases from Steve Jackson Games!
Munchkin Big Box will be arriving on Warehouse23.com and at Friendly Local Game Stores in mid-June! The box is big . . . really, really big . . .
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May 28, 2025:
A few different fandoms were rocked over the weekend with news that prolific writer Peter David had passed away at the age of 68, after numerous years of health challenges. Of the many sites with the news, I'm linking to IGN almost at random . . .
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May 29, 2025:
I'm writing this from London. The UK Games Exposition starts in a couple of days, and I should be done with jet lag by then! . . .
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May 30, 2025:
We'll be at ChupacabraCon XI in San Marcos, TX, this weekend and we're bringing along a collection of recent favorites, new games, and sneak peeks of upcoming games to play with the folks there! ChupacabraCon is a local tabletop games convention in their eleventh year. Packed full of games, events, and industry guests, it promises to be a good time, and they are running a charity event throughout the convention through Extra Life benefiting Dell Children's Hospital.
If you're in the mood for some fantasy, come delve the dungeons and hope the dragon is distracted in our draw-n-draw game Deadly Doodles! However, if you prefer a bit more of a hands-off approach, you could manage competing adventuring guilds in our press-your-luck game Hack & Slash!
Those that prefer their escapism set in the future can join us in the arcologies and back alleys of the world of Munchkin Shadowrun for some hacking, hacking, and slashing, or take to the post-apocalypse arenas and highways in their decked-out cars in a Car Wars 6th Edition scenario.
If espionage is more your speed, you could try to survive getting out of the Cold War espionage game in one piece in our new card game Last Shot, or pull off the heist of the weekend as 3 Raccoons in a Trechcoat in one of our new small roleplaying games from the Dahlia's Diversions for Peculiar Parties collection, currently crowdfunding on BackerKit!
If you'd like to join our events at the convention, you can sign up for them here . . .
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May 31, 2025:
The prices of some of our games will be increasing, effective June 1. We held the line as long as we could – perhaps too long, everything considered . . .
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