Steve Jackson's Blog, page 63

February 26, 2024: Sculptors In The Mist

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Conor Flynn, the artist who sculpted the spectacular dragon from Foes 2 , has a really awesome project on Kickstarter: the Tabletop Fog Machine.

The core is a tiny fog machine that generates a glycerine-based mist. This is thicker and more persistent than water fog, with no puddles or spray, but it doesn't leave a gooey coating like vegetable oil types. Around this, Conor has sculpted an assortment of structures that can be used in dioramas, battlefields, or dungeons. I know how good a sculptor Conor is, so I know these are going to be incredible.

The set comes with your choice of switch or remote-controlled fog generators, a container of "fog juice" good for 4.5 hours of total use, STLs for nine custom fog-emitting sculpts, and a set of pieces for the classic ruined walls, etc., for battlefield terrain to surround with mysterious fog.

I can already think of a plethora of gaming uses for it, and it's going to be spectacular for photography, too. I'm eagerly awaiting mine! (They're promising fulfillment in March.)

There are more pictures and videos of the fog maker making fog on the Kickstarter page. Go take a look. Because this is really cool!

– Jean McGuire

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!

February 25, 2024: Looking For Our Stuff? Try Your FLGS

A new game store has opened up relatively nearby, and I'm excited to stop by, introduce myself, and see what their setup is like. Friendly Local Game Stores are always delightful, and it seems like more and more of them are becoming de facto gathering places. That's great! One of the best things about games is the way they bring people together. While our online store is always open for business, we here at Steve Jackson Games are grateful to all of the brick and mortar shops that provide a place for people to try out new games, pick up old favorites, engage in friendly competition, and make new friends. The next time you're looking to pick up one of our titles, head to our store finder to see if your FLGS carries our titles. And if they don't, ask them to get in touch with us at retailers@sjgames.com!

– 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!

February 24, 2024: Mind If I Impose?

This may be the least surprising statement ever, but I do a lot of printing at home. I have three printers in my office, and a backup of one of those in the garage. One aspect of printing that's incredibly useful is making little booklets. As anyone who's tried to print a folded booklet knows, this is trickier than it seems; even if you take a simple "four-page booklet" (that is, one sheet of paper folded in half), you'll quickly realize that – for it to read correctly when assembled – it needs to be structured such that it's page 2 and 3 on one side, and 4 and 1 on the other (in that order). This is called "imposing" the pages, and can be the source of countless jokes . . . or exactly one joke, restated countless ways.

Getting the pages to line up correctly in this way requires software or (if doing it by hand) a general willingness to be sad and frustrated.

I've decided on the former method. I'm on a Mac, so my app of choice has been Create Booklet, by TheKeptPromise. I'm sure other software exists that also does it, but Create Booklet was well-regarded and within my budget. It's simple to use, but powerful enough to allow for lots of tweaks and adjustments, many of which can be applied incorrectly. Speaking hypothetically.

I love Create Booklet and have used it for years. Honestly, it's so straightforward that I don't even think about it too often, outside of situations like now, where I go, "Hey, I really like this and should mention it to folks." And thus I am.

– 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!

February 23, 2024: Groo-Vy!

I have been advised that the nearly-brand-new Groo: The Game needs to be reprinted.

The last one I can recall that went back to press so quickly was an obscure little game . . . you probably haven't heard of it . . . called Munchkin .

Happiness!

– 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!

February 22, 2024: Time Is On My Side

Speaking of game elements that are ephemeral, have you ever noticed how weird "playing time" is with games? I've played 30-minute games where I've been like, "Gee, that felt a bit long," and I've been engrossed in games where 2 to 3 hours have simply and delightfully melted away.

I want to pontificate more here, but – unlike my precious "choices/feelings in games" post – I have nothing specific to point to. So I'm curious if this is just my personal weirdness when it comes to timekeeping, or if others feel the same way. Feel free to share your thoughts and experiences 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!

February 21, 2024: Summiting Austin

Here we are, fresh off our Steve Jackson Games Summit, held right here in Austin, TX. It was the first one in my memory, and I've been here more than nine years!

With most of us working at home (yay!), and with seven (!) staff people now working from out of state (Dallas IS out of state, yes?), the start of a new year seemed the perfect time to put our heads together for some heavy-duty collaboration. For some of us, it was the first chance we'd had to meet our newest staff members face to face! The first thing we had to do, of course, was introduce everyone to breakfast tacos.

We had some fruitful meetings, which inspired even more talk and collaboration. Production met with Marketing, Marketing met with Editorial, our Line Editors met with Marketing and Production, and Steve and Meredith met with everyone! It's really helpful to open these conversations; we all do our jobs better when we understand what other departments are doing and how their work meshes with everyone else's in order to complete a new game. 

A lot of ground was covered, and we finished the week with a release schedule for 2025 that is almost complete, as well as a great working schedule for 2026!

The image accompanying this post, which I hope includes all of us, indicates that we also took a bit of time to play. Maybe we'll make this an annual thing!

– Susan Bueno

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!

February 20, 2024: Game Design Is Just, Like, Vibes

I've worn a lot of hats in the gaming world, from avid player to playtester to writer to editor to retailer and a dozen other aspects I've forgotten. One thing I've come to appreciate is how much game design boils down to this vague, ephemeral sense of how a mechanic feels.

Take, for example, a simple combat game where you need to roll against the other character's defense value. Imagine you miss your roll by 1 to hit your opponent. That will likely feel different if the game explains the outcome as "you miss" versus "you almost hit, but the enemy dodges out of the way" versus "you hit, but it doesn't penetrate the enemy's defenses."

Similarly, imagine a card game with cards that reflect various abilities or powers. "You need to pay three resources each turn or else your character becomes weaker" might be mechanically identical to "you need to pay three resources each turn or else your cool upgrade is discarded," but they can feel different.

As I recall, the original Dungeons & Dragons treated "hit points" not as a literal amount of damage you could take, but a combination of physical heartiness, skill at deflecting damage, and just plain luck in survival. I think it's gotten away from that in subsequent decades, but it's still interesting to consider, and definitely influenced one corner of my game-playing brain.

Are there any game-design decisions that feel better or worse for you even if you know they're mechanically identical to another way of presenting it? I'm curious to hear what you think 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!

February 19, 2024: My Pet Monster

Fantasy Trip fans noticed a new monster in the Legacy Edition : the Scolopendra. It's a big centipede. I added it because centipedes are cool. And fate rewarded me in a funny way.

You see, Scolopendra are real creatures. They don't (fortunately!) get as big as the biggest ones in TFT, but they get big enough. Over a foot long, for some species. Like the one I have in my office at home.

This is a fine, fat specimen of Scolopendra heros, the Texas Red-Headed Centipede. I found him (technically IT . . . determining sex on these beauties is not a job for the faint-hearted) in my house, in the middle of the night. When I woke up, I had a 4-inch highly-venomous centipede in a jar. He's now over 5 1/2" and apparently still growing. He likes crickets!

In this picture, Monster is curled up on top of his piece of bark. He was supposed to make a cave under the bark, but he dug under the flowerpot instead. The bark is his favorite resting place, and he makes a fine "Is that real?" display there. But what will he do when he outgrows it?

– 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!

February 18, 2024: Shuffling: The Next Generation

Apparently my recent batch of Daily Illuminator posts about shuffling generated some comments. Here are a few that piqued my interest.

Over on the forums, long-time contributor Buzzardo noted that the "most-effective shuffle" is the "smoosh shuffle," where you spread all the cards out on a flat surface and kind of . . . umm . . . smoosh them into each other. (In the same thread, RogerBW calls it a "puddle" shuffle.) Per an article Buzzardo linked, "One shuffle lasting about a minute is more than enough to ensure a statistically random arrangement of cards." It's an interesting idea, and I've certainly used the "smoosh shuffle" quite often. However, as , I tend to sleeve a bunch of my card games, and that kind of situation really requires all the cards to be oriented the same way or else they get caught in themselves. Still, in my experience, the "smoosh shuffle" is a great way to mix up a boatload of unsleeved cards.

Another comment I enjoyed in that thread came from GEVJockey, who disputed my claim about the number of shuffles needed for a Munchkin set. GEVJockey notes that, since there are two decks – Doors and Treasures – they need to be shuffled separately, resulting in 19 shuffles (10 for the Doors, nine for the Treasures). Now, I just have to say: I've been with Steve Jackson Games for almost 25 years, and if you think that I'd forget something so basic as the fact that Munchkin has two decks . . . you'd be absolutely right. Totally slipped my mind. I just looked at the numbers. My bad. Great catch, GEVJockey!

Thanks for the comments, folks; we are reading your mail!

– 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!

February 17, 2024: A New Munchkin Expansion Is Crawling Your Way

Today we're sharing news about a creepy-crawly new Munchkin expansion scheduled to release in June! Developed by Munchkin Associate Developer Devin Lewis and illustrated by new-to-us artist Bas Goverde, we are proud to announce Munchkin: The Floor Is Larva. And by the way, let me just tell you that it's really hard to say "larva" when your 10-year-old inner child is thinking "lava"!

Munchkin: The Floor Is Larva is a 56-card expansion chock-full of just what you might have guessed – bugs! Bee-bugs and roach-bugs and bugs that sting and even bugs in rugs. You name it; it's probably in here. It'll shuffle flawlessly into any Munchkin set you'd like to play with. Well, except for all the legs. It's hard to shuffle legs.

We're very excited to have a new artist illustraing Munchkin , too. It's really fun to see what new treatments a new artist can add to the mix!

Munchkin: The Floor Is Larva is now at print, and soon all those little bugs will be on a ship headed your way. Ask your FLGS to reserve your copy!

– Susan Bueno

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!