Steve Jackson's Blog, page 15

June 3, 2025: The Gift Of Games: Friendship Edition

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.

To make it even simpler (at the cost of some elegance), you can forgo the jarred popcorn and instead include some ready-to-use Jiffy Pop or microwave popcorn bags. (I'd personally opt for the Jiffy Pop because it's a bit more "exotic," but tastes vary.)

Regardless of what you choose, you can stick everything in an oversized bowl, and voilà! You've turned a straightforward game into a "thinking of you" game-night gift – without a huge increase in budget, depending on the bells and whistles you include.

We can't help with the popcorn, but if your friendly local shop doesn't have the gaming goodness you want to give, consider poking around Warehouse 23 for cool present options.

– Steven Marsh

Warehouse 23 News: The City Never Sleeps Because Of All The Action

There are a million stories in the city, and they're all exciting! GURPS Action 9: The City shows how you can add GURPS City Stats to your GURPS Action campaigns. It also features six sample cities to use with your own action-packed adventures. Download it today from Warehouse 23!

June 1, 2025: Dahlia's Surprise: A Sweet Summer Salad

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. Well, the games weren't the only thing Dahlia left us . . .

Among the bonus ephemera were some old recipe cards – some handwritten, some typed – for game night refreshments. To celebrate this campaign and the coming summer, I thought I'd share the most intriguing recipe that I found!

Dahlia's Surprise – A Sweet Salad for Summer Gatherings

Ingredients: One melon, cubed Burrata, one 8-oz container (Best at room temperature!) Prosciutto, 2 oz or thereabouts Extra Virgin Olive Oil Balsamic Vinegar Fresh Rosemary, 2 or 3 sprigs

Serves 4-6 players and one Game Master.

I prefer to make this with honeydew, but cantaloupe is more than adequate. You may substitute other fresh herbs to your taste – whatever you have in your garden will do. Chop your melon into bite-sized pieces, and cut the proscuitto very finely. The slices will want to stick together; do your best to discourage this. Combine with the melon in a large bowl. Drain and gently slice the burrata. Reserve.

Destem your rosemary, and clap the leaves between your hands before adding to the salad bowl. Drizzle the melon mixture with olive oil and balsamic vinegar and toss.  You may refrigerate the salad in this state if you are preparing it ahead of time.

When you are ready to serve, add your burrata and gently toss the salad again. Some of my guests like to add fresh cracked black pepper, but it doesn't need it. Leftovers keep for a few days, if you manage to save any. I never do!

I did try this, and I'm not going to lie. The color after mixing in the burrata was . . . questionable. But it was very tasty! And in the interest of trying new things, I hope you'll also check out the eight fantastic games in  Dahlia's Diversions for Peculiar Parties.  You may find something unexpected and delicious.

– Irene Zielinski

Warehouse 23 News: Why Is The Darkness Blinking?

They're trapped between the realm of the living and the dead . . . and they're not too pleased about it. The Book of Unlife adds 44 unliving monsters to your The Fantasy Trip campaigns, along with a complete adventure setting. Live like there's too many tomorrows thanks to Warehouse 23!

June 2, 2025: Fictional Worlds, Factual Skills

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)?

At the risk of repeating myself from almost a year ago, but I know how to fold an origami boat thanks to the Grailquest series. As another example, I vividly remember from Mike Carr's Robbers and Robots book from the TSR Endless Quest gamebook that head injuries bleed a lot but otherwise might not be a terribly serious injury. While this is not a piece of information I use more than a few times a week, it's one that comes up a fair bit in other media, and I always appreciate remembering it.

When I asked Editor and Production Artist extraordinaire Nikki Vrtis if she had any memories of that sort, she got contemplative and then lit up with her own memory: learning from L. Ron Hubbard's Battlefield Earth how to enter a room with authority – eyes forward, feet first, shoulders back. She said that insight has helped her navigate conventions (like the forthcoming Gen Con) with composure and confidence.

If any of my cohorts in the company read this and come up with their own fiction-forged memories, I'd love to read about them in a future Daily Illuminator (hint, hint). And if I've sparked any recollection of your own skills formed as a reader, please feel free to drop me a line privately or tell the world on our forums.

– Steven Marsh

Warehouse 23 News: The City Never Sleeps Because Of All The Action

There are a million stories in the city, and they're all exciting! GURPS Action 9: The City shows how you can add GURPS City Stats to your GURPS Action campaigns. It also features six sample cities to use with your own action-packed adventures. Download it today from Warehouse 23!

June 1, 2025: Dahlia's Surprise – A Sweet Summer Salad

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. Well, the games weren't the only thing Dahlia left us . . .

Among the bonus ephemera were some old recipe cards – some handwritten, some typed – for game night refreshments. To celebrate this campaign and the coming summer, I thought I'd share the most intriguing recipe that I found!

Dahlia's Surprise – A Sweet Salad for Summer Gatherings

Ingredients: One melon, cubed Burrata, one 8-oz container (Best at room temperature!) Prosciutto, 2 oz or thereabouts Extra Virgin Olive Oil Balsamic Vinegar Fresh Rosemary, 2 or 3 sprigs

Serves 4-6 players and one Game Master.

I prefer to make this with honeydew, but cantaloupe is more than adequate. You may substitute other fresh herbs to your taste – whatever you have in your garden will do. Chop your melon into bite-sized pieces, and cut the proscuitto very finely. The slices will want to stick together; do your best to discourage this. Combine with the melon in a large bowl. Drain and gently slice the burrata. Reserve.

Destem your rosemary, and clap the leaves between your hands before adding to the salad bowl. Drizzle the melon mixture with olive oil and balsamic vinegar and toss.  You may refrigerate the salad in this state if you are preparing it ahead of time.

When you are ready to serve, add your burrata and gently toss the salad again. Some of my guests like to add fresh cracked black pepper, but it doesn't need it. Leftovers keep for a few days, if you manage to save any. I never do!

I did try this, and I'm not going to lie. The color after mixing in the burrata was . . . questionable. But it was very tasty! And in the interest of trying new things, I hope you'll also check out the eight fantastic games in  Dahlia's Diversions for Peculiar Parties.  You may find something unexpected and delicious.

– Irene Zielinski

Warehouse 23 News: The City Never Sleeps Because Of All The Action

There are a million stories in the city, and they're all exciting! GURPS Action 9: The City shows how you can add GURPS City Stats to your GURPS Action campaigns. It also features six sample cities to use with your own action-packed adventures. Download it today from Warehouse 23!

May 31, 2025: Price Increases

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. The reasons will be obvious to anyone in today's economy!

• General inflationary pressure

• Increasing shipping and distribution costs

• And, of course, higher production costs, largely due to the elephant in the room . . . tariffs. We have already paid a healthy five figures in surprise tariffs, and literally don't know what to expect for any given release until it clears Customs. For an ICv2 analysis of tariffs' impact on the gaming hobby, see here. Executive summary: Of course higher costs, from any source, are passed to the consumer. The money goes to the government, and, directly or indirectly, out of our pockets. Where I'm from, we call that a tax. The ongoing uncertainty about what will actually be tariffed, as Trump changes his mind and different courts weigh in, simply makes everyone at all levels reluctant to create new products, invest, or do anything else at all!

What can you do? As far as the tax goes: If you have the kind of elected representatives who read mail from non-billionaires, write letters! Vote, always, and encourage your friends to vote.

As for your own game collection: If you are on a tight budget, look for games released last year or earlier, which hopefully won't carry a tariff premium. If it comes down to it, buy used games or swap with your friends. I realize this advice won't sell many copies of OUR next release, but there are bigger issues right now.

And what can we do? Domestic printing is quite unfeasible on some releases, but where it's possible we're going to do it ( Dahlia's is an example of creative print buying enabling domestic production, and there will be a whole Illuminator about that soon). There will be more books and more PDFs. We have already reduced our head count significantly (bizspeak euphemism for an agonizing process). Other measures to raise money or cut costs are on the table.

Wish us luck, and we wish you the same.

– Steve Jackson

 

Warehouse 23 News: The City Never Sleeps Because Of All The Action

There are a million stories in the city, and they're all exciting! GURPS Action 9: The City shows how you can add GURPS City Stats to your GURPS Action campaigns. It also features six sample cities to use with your own action-packed adventures. Download it today from Warehouse 23!

May 30, 2025: Join Us At ChupacabraCon XI Today!

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. See you in San Marcos! 

– Jimmie Bragdon

Warehouse 23 News: The City Never Sleeps Because Of All The Action

There are a million stories in the city, and they're all exciting! GURPS Action 9: The City shows how you can add GURPS City Stats to your GURPS Action campaigns. It also features six sample cities to use with your own action-packed adventures. Download it today from Warehouse 23!

May 29, 2025: UK Games Exposition

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! (Well, hope springs eternal.) I'm moderating a panel and participating in another, and I expect to have a good time.

If you happen to be at UKGE, come say hello! I will be "headquartered" at the Lorescape stand.

– Steve Jackson

Warehouse 23 News: The City Never Sleeps Because Of All The Action

There are a million stories in the city, and they're all exciting! GURPS Action 9: The City shows how you can add GURPS City Stats to your GURPS Action campaigns. It also features six sample cities to use with your own action-packed adventures. Download it today from Warehouse 23!

May 28, 2025: Peter David, 1956-2025

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.

Peter David's career is difficult for me to unpack, with work as a comic-book writer and a novelist that spans decades. On the comic side, I could probably compose extensive individual essays on his 12-year run on The Incredible Hulk that spanned the 1980s and 1990s, his reinvigoration of Aquaman and Supergirl in the 1990s, and his "all-different" approach to the X-Factor team for Marvel in the 1990s. He co-created Spider-Man 2099. I can think of several good, important projects I'm omitting here in the interest of brevity.

On the novel side, he wrote for both his own projects (I'm especially fond of Howling Mad , about a wolf who becomes human after being bitten by a werewolf) and many licensed properties; his Star Trek novels were particularly acclaimed. (I could go down another rabbit hole here as to which Star Trek novels are more interesting, and why . . .)

Oh, and – combining those two difficult-to-summarize paragraphs – he wrote one of my favorite Star Trek comic runs of all time as well. I encourage RPG gamers who want inspiration for how to have interesting, impactful, ongoing stories in a licensed universe with established characters to seek it out.

Speaking personally (and perhaps selfishly), this death hits me particularly hard. His 1980s run on Spectacular Spider-Man is one of the earliest comic books which made me appreciate that comics didn't just happen but were specifically written by individuals – which means that, if you like that creator, you can track them down for more works you'll probably enjoy.

Professionally, when I became editor of Pyramid magazine in 2000, one of the biggest panics I had to grapple with was, "How am I going to compose something interesting about games every week?!?" As I wrote in a 2003 article: "The tone and general approach of 'Random Thought Table' itself has been heavily influenced on Peter David's own weekly 'But I Digress' column" – referring here to his long-running feature in Comic Buyer's Guide. (If you own the Pyramid HTML archive, you'll find several other instances where I mention Peter David – although I always had this impostor-syndrome fear of "do I look like I'm trying to copy his homework without making it too obvious?" Even the title of my column, Random Thought Table, was something of a game-related homage to But I Digress.) Even now, the DNA of my casual-but-informative writing – such as my contributions to the Daily Illuminator – has been heavily forged by Peter David.

I got to meet Peter David at Dragon Con in the 2000s, where I tried to explain the above without sounding absolutely crazy. Barring a black-Sharpie convention-line sign, there's a balancing act in the calculus of "How many meaningful works can I get a creator to sign without ticking off others in line or looking like a psycho fan?" I'm sure I got the math wrong. Even attempting to limit myself to bringing works that I liked the most, I still had more than I was comfortable asking for signatures.

Still, he signed my copy of his collected But I Digress essays . . . and it means so much to me. But that covers just one world – not the many worlds in which Peter David dwelled.

That paragraph would normally have been my pithy, heartfelt conclusion. However, the reality of creative industries intersects poorly with simple aspirations of tribute. Thus, I would be remiss if I didn't mention the long-running GoFundMe that had been established to help provide for Peter David's medical needs in recent years, and which will no doubt be needed as final expenses are resolved by his family.

– Steven Marsh

Warehouse 23 News: The City Never Sleeps Because Of All The Action

There are a million stories in the city, and they're all exciting! GURPS Action 9: The City shows how you can add GURPS City Stats to your GURPS Action campaigns. It also features six sample cities to use with your own action-packed adventures. Download it today from Warehouse 23!

May 27, 2025: Summer 2025: New Releases From Steve Jackson Games

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. Inside are over 700 cards, all drawn by Munchkin 's original artist, John Kovalic. Included are two gameboards, two Kill-o-Meters, upgraded wooden meeples, and a few other fun surprises. Munchkin Big Box will be printed only once, so don't miss your chance to add it to your collection!

Special delivery from Amazon Primate! Munchkin: Not My Monkeys , a 56-card expansion illustrated by Bas Goverde, is planned for an August release. Full of zoological zaniness, these all-new cards will have you going bananas! Don your Monkey Suit and go up against a whole host of apes, including the Level 1 Funky Monkey and the Level 12 Staboon. 

Purrfect Potions , planned for September, is the perfect game for cat lovers who appreciate a bit of magic! In this fast-playing game, featuring adroable illustrations by Naomi Lord, players become witches who are brewing potions with their feline familiars. First, a cat die and a moon die are rolled to determine which concoctions the kitties will assist with creating. Next, the ingredient die is rolled and players quickly compete to finish as many potions as possible. The game concludes once all potions are brewed, and whoever has the most points wins! 

– Michelle Richardson

Warehouse 23 News: The City Never Sleeps Because Of All The Action

There are a million stories in the city, and they're all exciting! GURPS Action 9: The City shows how you can add GURPS City Stats to your GURPS Action campaigns. It also features six sample cities to use with your own action-packed adventures. Download it today from Warehouse 23!

May 26, 2025: The Future Is . . . Bagel Sandwiches?

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. Instant Pots are younger than that.

Similarly, once these gizmos start making their way into homes, other items tend to piggy-back on their availability. Various flavored hot beverages are designed to work in coffee-pod devices, and my preferred breakfast of choice in recent months – a spicy chicken bagel sandwich – comes with air-fryer instructions that result in a meal that feels like it came out of a Star Trek replicator.

(Of course, all this talk of food is sidestepping the rise of 3D printers . . . but you know how much we love those . . .)

So, when you want a quick and easy way to build a bit of future, think of something lots of folks could be eating tomorrow. Then come up with a device that makes it simple to enjoy that food at home. It won't be as revelatory as anti-gravity belts or off-the-shelf cybernetics, but it's still a nice touch to add a bit of tomorrow.

Now, can I interest you in a quick-brew boba tea or a plate of fresh-zapped potato chips?

– Steven Marsh

Warehouse 23 News: The City Never Sleeps Because Of All The Action

There are a million stories in the city, and they're all exciting! GURPS Action 9: The City shows how you can add GURPS City Stats to your GURPS Action campaigns. It also features six sample cities to use with your own action-packed adventures. Download it today from Warehouse 23!