Steve Jackson's Blog, page 30

January 8, 2025: Finding Fantasy Settings At Puy Du Fou

I have no idea why Facebook decided to start showing me videos of French theme park Puy du Fou one day, but I'm glad it did. While I'm generally not a theme park aficionado, I've been entranced by footage of knights fighting next to rotating castles and gladiators duking it out in a full-scale replica of a Roman circus ever since joining one of the park's fan groups. Why? Well, blame my love for TTRPGs and world building. The default setting for many tabletop RPGs is based on Western fantasy – castles, dungeons, magic, dragons, swords, and so on. Puy du Fou has plenty of that on display, but what really got me excited were clips from the park's shows and settings that didn't fit that format. The aforementioned Roman circus opened my eyes to the possibility of a game or setting influenced by the ancient world, when previously I'd had no interest in such. Why? I suppose it's because it made the excitement and grandeur more immediate. It's one thing to see a Roman ruin and wonder what might have been. It's quite another to see crowds sitting around a dirt track while skilled stuntmen drive chariots pulled by actual horses. The stadium itself even has a retractable awning, just like its historical counterparts! Puy du Fou also has interactive shows paying tribute to 17th Century theater and WWI battlefields, both of which have long intrigued my husband and me. Imagine an RPG of magic, mystery, and courtly intrigue, or a Great War in which ritual occultists and battle mages hurl spells at each other over a barbed-wire festooned No Man's Land. While I doubt I'll ever find myself visiting Puy du Fou, my online experience with the park's attractions has already helped me come up with potential ideas for homebrew campaign settings, original characters, and other possibilities. Inspiration can be found anywhere, but I never guessed that I'd find it via video clips from a European theme park. It's funny how the world works sometimes, isn't it?

– Katie Duffy

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!

January 7, 2025: Become Part Of My Feature Of Habit!

One neat aspect about working at Steve Jackson Games is that it's home to a tremendous number of creative individuals – with too many ideas to be contained by just one beloved hobby. To that end, I've embarked on a personal project in my downtime: Feature of Habit .

The idea is simple: Watch a movie every day; write something about or inspired by that movie every day. Repeat. Since I make the list of movies available ahead of time, I'm hoping this will be a "film club" of sorts, with folks following along or offering their own insights into the proceedings.

My inspiration came about partly as a desire to fill some decades-long holes in my movie-viewing ignorance, and partly as a way to keep me from burning through too much of my life and psyche by doomscrolling. I've conceived of this as a year-long project (inspired by Kevin Murphy's A Year at the Movies: One Man's Filmgoing Odyssey from 2002), which started January 1, but December consisted of me easing into the concept with a month of holiday movies.

Longtime fans of Pyramid magazine are probably familiar with over 500 of my Random Thought Table columns between the HTML era and PDF years. And, of course, if you read the Daily Illuminator, you've encountered a lot of my musings (including . . . um . . . one where I plug writing about movies).

I invite those who want to join in the fun to check out the Patreon, which includes a number of articles to read even for free members. But bring your own popcorn; I can deliver wit and insight digitally, but not snacks.

– 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!

January 6, 2025: Enter The Forbidden Corner

It would appear that Meta knows I'm a gamer. While I've been intrigued by Puy du Fou for a while now (more on that later), this morning Instagram let me know about an attraction that seems tailor made for a TTRPG fan like myself. Sometimes the algorithm gets it right! The Forbidden Corner in the Tupgill Park Estate in North Yorkshire, UK, began as a simple wooded area in 1979. Two friends decided to build a viewing tower in the western corner of the property, which led to them building a walled garden, then a grotto, then . . . well, you know how these things go. The property was opened to the public in 1994, and today it's a walkthrough attraction featuring "a unique labyrinth of tunnels, chambers, follies, and surprises," according to the website. That description might be underselling it. Pictures and videos from around the Internet depict a place that could have doubled as the set for an 80s children's fantasy film. There's a tower with eyes (you enter through the mouth), a hedgerow labyrinth, a folly castle/dungeon, a Roman temple, a mine tunnel, a haunted mausoleum, and more. Guests can even download the Forbidden Corner Quest App to gamify their experience with an immersive treasure hunt and Augmented Reality. While it doesn't look like The Forbidden Corner can be rented out for private parties, I could see the attraction working well as a LARP destination, or even just a place where TTRPG fans could get some inspiration and have some fun. If you ever find yourself in that corner of the world, consider checking it out – and report back with findings! 

– Katie Duffy

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!

January 5, 2025: Could This Be One Of Us?

If this is you, send a wave my way!



 

– 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!

January 4, 2025: FOMP?!

I suspect most of us have heard of "FOMO" – "Fear of Missing Out."

I have Fear of Missing Pieces. I generally buy games because I love them. And because I love them, I play them. But playing them means pieces can get lost or damaged. So, I do what I can to protect games I know I want to play often: sleeves, covers, tasering people who get too close with snacks or beverages . . . normal stuff. But sometimes I don't know if I love a game until I play it – and by then Cheese-Dust McGee might've gotten their grubby little paws over everything. Thus, I often preemptively sleeve games I suspect I'll like. This has gotten worse in recent years, as games have reached more of a "periodical" model . . . meaning print runs are lower and replacements are rarer. I mean, when I was a kid and lost a Monopoly piece, it was no big deal. A new copy I bought from the store would burn as brightly. But "just replace it" is much more difficult in an era of crowdfunding exclusives and convention rarities. I've had to tamp down the urge to buy two copies of games I'm sure I'll really like, because I don't have the money or room to support that.

Similarly, it somewhat pains me to play the near-complete 7 Wonders set at my in-laws' house because the black edges of the cards are universally (but not uniformly) chipped and damaged. Yes, I know that card you're holding is a double wood; no, I don't feel great knowing that.

I have no action items or witty conclusions here beyond noting I have anxiety over actually playing games I love. If you have any similar insight or reservations – or you did in the past but figured out how to move beyond the feeling – I'd love to hear your thoughts on the 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!

January 3, 2025: The Transhuman Space Bundles Of Holding Are Leaving The Solar System!

Welcome, traveler, to the strange future of . . . 2025! If you're reading this, it may not be too late – to pick up the Transhuman Space Bundle of Holding!

We talked a bit about this amazing offer , so we won't repeat everything here. However, if you wanted a realistic science-fiction setting of what it means to be human in the year 2100, there's never been a more-affordable time to begin your journey.

Whether your New Year's resolution was to settle the moon, explore the solar system, dive to the depths of the ocean, or make your way among the intrigues of Earth, the Transhuman Space bundle is an incredible bargain.

In addition, you can supplement to the core rules presented in Transhuman Space Classic with the GURPS Third Edition Core Collection Bundle, which comes with the three most-essential GURPS Third Edition rulebooks to add options to your characters and campaigns.

We hope this computer-transmitted message reaches you by the Earth date of January 6, 2025, because that's when this bundle ends. But even in a best-case scenario, you don't have much time to begin your journey. If it's not too late, tomorrow awaits!

– 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!

January 2, 2025: Every Part Of The Meeple

Note: The following article comes to us courtesy of guest contributor Jay Dragon. Hi everyone, my name's Jay Dragon! I'm a tabletop RPG designer (author of Wanderhome and co-creator of Yazeba's Bed & Breakfast ), editorial director at Possum Creek Games, and friend of Steve. The SJGames crew has brought me in to do some guest articles for the Daily Illuminator to talk about various parts of game design. I hope you enjoy! So I'm normally a Tabletop RPG designer, but I've been doing forays into boardgames lately as part of my work on the ongoing sprawling wizard project currently called Seven-Part Pact . In that game, each Wizard has an asymmetric board which represents their personal Domain, and in order to diversify and properly design these boardgames, I've been studying a lot myself! There's one quality I've grown to really appreciate in boardgame design, which I'm sure someone somewhere has written about, but which I'm going to give the cutesy name "using every part of the Meeple." When a boardgame uses every part of the Meeple, it means the design team is intimately familiar with the physical qualities of the boardgame components and is using the properties of those components to communicate information that would otherwise be quite cumbersome to communicate. The same token in different zones can communicate drastically different pieces of information. A rotated token, or a token on its side, or a die being used as a token, all have different physical functions and can be used to further this. I've been playing a lot of ARCS , which is a game that makes use of every part of the Meeple quite well. An Agent is a small figure I can place on a Court Card to represent the favor I've earned with that card. If someone else seizes that card, they take my Agents as captives, moving them to the captive zone in front of them. But I can also give you one of my Agents to place on your character card to represent owing you a favor. You also place an Agent over a resource type when you've provoked outrage against that resource's civilians, as they have to permanently be on call to deal with it. There are also certain cards that can seize Agents to represent certain in-game events. I can easily imagine mechanics in which Agents end up on various planets, in the trophy zone, in resource spaces, and so on. The game understands how its different zones can be used to communicate different pieces of information and uses its game pieces to do so. What does this mean for my work on Seven-Part Pact  ? One of the biggest factors with such a sprawling game is the difficulty of conserving pieces and information across so many games and with so many different possible mechanical events. A Wizard's week of time can be placed almost anywhere in the game, and each different location communicates to the rest of the players exactly what its function is. I'm currently experimenting with adding mechanical complexity to the Faustian's boardgame without adding any new game pieces through the use of face-up cards representing accomplices working to stop the Devil. The Mariner boardgame currently has an excess of little parts – perhaps I can conserve parts but preserve information by using the location of these parts to communicate different pieces of information. For instance, a "trade" Meeple on a Route can represent a shipping route, but on an Isle it can represent a market, and in a sea it can represent a fishery. It's a useful tool for game designers: Do you need a special counter just to indicate this one mechanic, or can you use the same marker in different places, or flip the marker over? How much information can you encode onto the physical play materials, and how can they be arranged to produce new meaning?  Let us know if you enjoyed this article. I'm looking forward to talking more about my process here, and getting to know you all.  

– Jay Dragon

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!

January 1, 2025: What's In A NamNO CARRIER

I discovered on Ars Technica that talked about how some names seem to have been hard-coded to lock up the ChatGPT system. I'll leave it to you to read the full explanation as to what's happening, but – as a gamer – one element that caught my eye was how someone triggered this by including one of the "forbidden" names in a light, barely legible font on an image upload.

The idea of being able to lock up a computer by putting in an almost invisible name felt very arcane or cyberpunk . . . or maybe both. Of course, there's nothing like that in the corporeal world fnord, right?

– 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!

December 31, 2024: Descend Into Fun With Deadly Doodles

I recently (finally!) had the opportunity to play a fan-favorite Steve Jackson game, Deadly Doodles .

Deadly Doodles , which features art by Katie Cook, is a fast-playing family game that plays up to four people and is suited for ages 8+. Players draw paths in a dungeon to try to score the most points. Four cards are flipped at the beginning of each of the seven rounds, and they instruct players on which shape of path to simultaneously draw. It could be a straight line, an L shape, or even a dead end!

Monsters, loot, weapons, and a dragon are all present on each player's board. Collect loot for 2 points each and weapons for 1 point. Matching a monster with its weapon will give you points. But if you doodle over a monster and don't find the matching weapon, you'll lose 2 points. 

An interesting aspect to the game is that the dragon is not actually the villain. If you draw your path over it, your loot score will be doubled! You do want to watch out for traps, though, because those give -3 points for each one you cross.

My family and I battled against each other and ultimately my husband took the victory. It was a highly enjoyable game that I would recommend to anyone looking for a great option for a family game night. Don't have a group to play with? That's ok – solitaire rules are included! It's a very adaptable game. We've even been known to play with large groups at cons with giant cards!

You can find Deadly Doodles and its expansion, Deadly Doodles 2 , on Warehouse 23 and at your FLGS. Plus, we also offer an adorable Deadly Doodles Dragon Pin !

– 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!

December 30, 2024: Late Pledges For One-Page Bulge 2nd Edition Now Available

Late pledges for One-Page Bulge Second Edition are open now! This project is a collaboration between Steve Jackson Games and Dana Lombardy, of Lombardy Studios. Originally published in 1980, this new edition of the classic game features updated rules, as well as upgraded artwork and components. If you missed backing the initial project, now is your chance to get your copy! You can learn more about the game here and make a late pledge until January 3rd.

– 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!