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Daily Illuminator Archive for November 2025
All Archives
November 1, 2025:
Around here, we love games, and we try to keep all the rules straight. Some edicts are easier to follow than others . . . such as the Laws of Thermodynamics . . .
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November 2, 2025:
This is slightly old news, but still pretty cool. Aapparently the sun had a hole last month that looked like a giant butterfly . . .
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November 3, 2025:
It's a place not unlike our own, except the "divergence" is an unleashing of four timelines at once, resulting in a setting that's . . . super. Welcome to GURPS Infinite Worlds: Gotterdammerung . . .
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November 4, 2025:
Nancy Hutchins and her wonderfully deranged crew at Dorkstock (you remember Dorkstock – the little convention inside Gamehole Con) have created a gigantic version of GreedQuest, complete with Foglio illustrations . . .
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November 5, 2025:
I've been a keyboard jockey for a loooooooong time. (I used the correct number of o's there.) . . .
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November 6, 2025:
The latest segment from Tabletop Weekly: "We're joined this week by Colm Lundberg, director of MOGI: the Museum of Games Ireland, in Killarney, which is dedicated to archiving and recording the modern tabletop hobby." Why is this of interest? Because I've been donating materials - mostly but not exclusively very old SJ Games manuscripts – and MOGI bids fair to become a significant repository of gaming history . . .
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November 7, 2025:
Where do you find your strength?" Groon asked. "In my friends," Grog answered.
You, too, can find strength in your allies in Munchkin Vox Machina. This all-new, deluxe-style Munchkin set transports you to Exandria and challenges you and your friends to battle some of Vox Machina's most formidable villains . . .
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November 8, 2025:
When Dahlia's Diversions for Peculiar Parties was headed to print, the uncertainty of tariffs with our crowdfund made overseas manufacturing a risky proposition . . . so we ditched the box and dice in favor of a rigid envelope and had the games printed here in the USA. The printer we found for the actual games was local to Atlanta, GA, and the envelopes were shipped to us . . .
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November 9, 2025:
For those hoping to spark inspiration for your GURPS Illuminati campaigns, I present not one, but two ideas from one story from SFGate:
It turns out the mysterious object that hit a plane at 36,000 feet was not space debris (say, from an orbital mind-control laser), but probably from a "weather balloon" <wink wink> . . .
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November 10, 2025:
August 27, the date when the first gamebook was released, but it's celebrated these days on November 9 because the "real" date often bumps into a UK banking holiday. At any rate, Jon Green has put together a video about his own gamebook history and others! . . .
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November 11, 2025:
If you're like me, you love Wikipedia and access it about eleven jillion times a day. Okay . . . that second prong may just be me . . .
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November 12, 2025:
The first of a three-part series detailing favorite projects that I had a significant part in:
For the first 18 months that I worked for Steve Jackson Games, I was solely a production artist. My earliest work was mainly Munchkin reprints and marketing ads . . .
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November 13, 2025:
For those looking to outfit their heroes with a bit of flavorful bling, there's a fun article on Open Culture about armillary sphere rings. When folded, these precious-metal rings fit on one's finger (just like most other rings), but they can unfold to make a little armillary sphere, useful for astronomy . . .
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November 14, 2025:
Enter the realm of Golarion in a new DLC for Munchkin Digital – Munchkin Pathfinder! Based on Paizo's award-winning Pathfinder Roleplaying Game, Munchkin Pathfinder brings all your favorite characters to the classic buddy-stabbing card game . . .
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November 15, 2025:
One of the supreme triumphs of my collegiate career (last millennium) was getting a "Great Ideas in Computer Science" course to count as my natural-science requirement. Forget biology or oceanography; electrified silicon is where the real natural world lies . . .
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November 16, 2025:
The first Daily Illuminator was posted on November 16, 1994, and today the blog celebrates its 31st anniversary! Here are some fun facts you might not know:
The title of the first entry was "Welcome To . . . . .
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November 17, 2025:
Longtime fans of the site know about Evil Stevie's Pirate Game, which encourages you to gather your plastic toy bricks of choice to build buccaneer vessels to battle it out on the high seas. Well, next time I hear of the game at a con, perhaps I'll see if I can make a terrifying eight-legged leaky steampunk walker – powered by actual steam . . .
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November 18, 2025:
The escape-room enthusiasts of The Escape Game have a neat activity called DESCEND Inc. that can give you a few minutes of mystery-solving fun in your web browser. It looks like it'll be a five-part "story"; so far, four folders have been unlocked . . .
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November 19, 2025:
Note: If you are wondering where Part 1 is, you can find it here. But you don't have to read them in order!
Another excellent favorite . . .
Another project I had a big hand in working on was Bill & Ted's Excellent Board Game. This one was SO fun . . .
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November 20, 2025:
It's a double convention week – our team is at both BGG.CON in Dallas, Texas, and PAX Unplugged in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania!
BGG.CON kicked off yesterday, and the exhibit hall opens for the first time today at 10 am. Stop by Booth 115 to adopt a copy of Purrfect Potions – a family-friendly dice game – and score a fun surprise! . . .
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November 21, 2025:
I absolutely love Australia's commitment to be as Australian as it can be. Case in point? . . .
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November 22, 2025:
If I can make a humble suggestion, please do not venture into the now-exposed crypt from three centuries ago. For more info, I point you to the BBC article . . .
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November 23, 2025:
This one might be a bit of an obscure dive even for me, but I found this video fascinating. In it, YouTube creator Joekutz's Workbench manages to get green LEDs to light not by any kind of direct power current, but by ambient electrical fields: static electricity, holding wires up to various objects, etc . . .
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November 24, 2025:
The holidays are nearly upon us, and the offices and warehouse of Steve Jackson Games will be closed for several days around Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year's Day.
In November, we will be closed from November 27 through November 30. Shipping for orders placed on those dates will resume December 1.
In December and January, we will be closed December 24 through January 4 . . .
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November 25, 2025:
I'm not sure I have formatting emphatic enough for the DON'T TRY THIS AT HOME element of today's post, but . . . Wow, are my creative juices flowing after watching this YouTube video from Shake the Future, where he makes a metal vise in his apartment from scratch, melting iron in a microwave to pour it into molds . . .
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November 26, 2025:
Pledging is now open on Kickstarter for the next five books in the solo adventure series Fighting Fantasy. In books 6-10, which feature most of the original art from the first editions, you'll journey through thrilling stories.
Island of the Lizard King – "To free the prisoners held on this remote isle, you must face the Lizard King himself . . .
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November 27, 2025:
It's Thanksgiving here in the United States, which is a time when most of us are enjoying food, family, friendship, football, and – um – fun games. Before we at Steve Jackson Games went our separate ways for the weekend, I invited the Secret Masters to share anything they were grateful for . . . in a maneuver that was definitely not a clever-but-touching way to fill a Daily Illuminator slot while I'm also scrambling to prepare for the holiday . . .
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November 28, 2025:
I'm sure by now you've heard about the daring-but-kind-of-silly jewel heist at the Louvre in October. It's not really related, but I was amused that, according to PC Gamer (summarizing from French newspaper Libération), the password on the Louvre's security system was:
Louvre
Yeahhhh . . .
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November 29, 2025:
For those looking for a ready-made plot justification for all manner of bio-weirdness in your tabletop games, you might find inspiration in this article from Science Alert, about scientists extracting signs of life from a strange tube of blue volcano goo . . . complete with a suitably terrifying photo.
-- Steven Marsh
. . .
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November 30, 2025:
A beast of an undertaking: Munchkin.
Throughout the years, the constant has always been Munchkin – while my design handiwork is at the forefront of a few versions (lookin' at you Munchkin CCG, Munchkin Wonderland, and Munchkin Spell Skool!) – this game has permeated my day-to-day tasks over the years. With good reason, too . . .
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