Steve Jackson's Blog, page 69

December 28, 2023: The Curious Countdown: Number 4 – Shop 'Til You Drop . . . Dead?

Eeeek! It's time for another installment of the curious countdown! This time we're turning our all-seeing eye to number 4. (And if this is all new to you, check out the first post where we explain the premise.)

I love Floor Plan 4 – Mall of the Dead . I mean, I love the other installments of the Floor Plan series, which presents oversized maps of ready-to-use locales. (We're counting the cheeky – and free-to-download – Floor Plan 2 - The Great Salt Flats in this assessment.)

Mall of the Dead stands out for me because it's two supplements in one. It features a full multi-level mall map (with both hexes and squares, like the entire Floor Plan series). That map is perfect for an action-packed set piece for various RPGs. It also includes a sheet of Cardboard Heroes counters, with an assortment of zombies – which are always welcome in my campaigns. (If you're in a holiday spirit, those counters also have Santa and some elves . . . in both traditional and zombie formats!)

The physical version has been out of print for years, but the digital version is available to download from Warehouse 23. Depending on your needs, Floor Plan 4 might be just the supplement for (four?) you!

– 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 27, 2023: Massive Dungeon Fantasy RPG Sale, From Gaming Ballistic

Several days ago, we mentioned that there's a limited-time Bundle of Holding for the Dungeon Fantasy Roleplaying Game , the GURPS -powered stand-alone RPG of crypt-crawling camaraderie. It's an amazing deal, and it's resulted in a big influx of new fans . . . many of whom might be asking, "What else is there?"

Well, Gaming Ballistic has an excellent answer to that question: more Dungeon Fantasy RPG goodness! Gaming Ballistic is an officially licensed partner and creator of Dungeon Fantasy RPG material (along with fantastic support for The Fantasy Trip ). Gaming Ballistic has produced amazing material over the years, including:Adventures such as The Citadel at Nordvorn , an epic non-linear setting.The Delvers to Grow series that helps players quickly and easily create adventurers at different power levels.New monsters, rule options, and more!To celebrate the aforementioned Bundle, Gaming Ballistic is having an incredible Dungeon Fantasy sale at their online store of 50% off on their PDF-only offerings, and even a 25% off sale on their print products. And this sale applies to the discounts already factored into their bundles. These prices are so unbelievable, you'd think they were the result of a reality-warping six-dimensional skull lurking in the final room of a tesseractic tomb!

Be warned that the Dungeon Fantasy RPG Bundle of Holding concludes on January 3, while Gaming Ballistic's sale ends January 5. A life of dungeon delving has never been more affordable!

– 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 26, 2023: The Locked Tomb

A friend talked me into trying the "Locked Tomb" series by Tamsyn Muir. I was a bit reluctant . . . "Lesbian Necromancers in Spaaaaace!" sounded more like sensationalism than literature. But the second book in the series did win the Hugo . . . So I started reading.

Now I'm through with that second book and getting into the third (a fourth is planned, too). And I'm having a great time. The necromancers and their sword-swinging cavaliers are a deep and nuanced spin on the traditional wizard-warrior relationship. The background is original – Goths in space, for sure, but not what I was expecting.

This isn't a true review; I haven't finished the series yet, and frankly there are things going on here that I'm going to have to read again. But it's definitely a recommendation. If you enjoy tightly written, emotionally and physically explosive, character-driven space fantasy, then read Gideon the Ninth, the first novel, and see where it takes you.

– 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!

December 25, 2023: The Curious Countdown: Number 5 – The Future, In More Ways Than One!

We're here, once again, with the curious countdown; we're in installment #6, which means that we're looking at number 5, and it's at this point that I'm realizing that having two number streams counting in opposite directions might have been a mistake. Oh, well! Fortune favors the foolhardy or whatever. (And if you're new to this series, check out the first post.)

So, let's talk about Transhuman Space: Fifth Wave , which is a fun book on its own merits. It's a supplement that focuses on Earth in the optimistic future universe that is Transhuman Space . Transhuman Space – set in the not-too-distant future of 2100 (which is getting closer every day) – has had a long life, with Transhuman Space: Changing Times bringing the setting to GURPS Fourth Edition.

Fifth Wave is also interesting (to me) because it's part of our incredibly popular On Demand program. This service has kept huge swaths of the GURPS library in print. So the book is "futuristic" in another way!

However, it's possible that folks might consider this Transhuman Space supplement to be a " GURPS " supplement, as far as the "curious countdown" challenge goes. Even though Transhuman Space  is somewhat its own product line, I understand the reasoning, especially since I used the opportunity to plug GURPS . So, hey! What about the FnordCon 5 USB Flash Drive?! It's cool, it's futuristic, it's loaded with lots of awesome digital files, and it's got a "5" in its title.

– 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 24, 2023: Time And Time Again

Back in my college days, I ran a lengthy GURPS Supers campaign for many years. The joys of the GURPS library – even then – was having a plethora of sourcebooks on hand. So every session, I kept handy the usual supplements needed for the game ( Supers , GURPS Psionics , GURPS High-Tech , etc.). For months, I also brought GURPS Time Travel . The first few times, the players groaned in anticipation: "Looks like we're hopping into the time stream!" But nothing ever happened, and they eventually more or less forgot about it, even as I made a point of pulling the book out and carefully setting it on the gaming table before each session.

Then, one day, I didn't bring Time Travel .

That – of course – is when the time-travel miniseries began in the campaign.

Take from this anecdote what you will, but I do note that we also have supplements on vampires, werewolves, zombies, nuclear meltdowns . . .

– 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 23, 2023: What Do You Do With A Printed Gift Card?

I'm pretty sure I've never gotten to do a riff on "What Do You Do With a Drunken Sailor?" in a Daily Illuminator . . .

Anyway, the day is late, the hour is nigh, the stores are closed, shipping is impossible, and you need a gift – now. There's at least one option that's still a possibility: digital gift certificates, such as those available for purchase at Warehouse 23.

You fire up the Epson inkjet and, voila! Like some kind of . . . I dunno . . . ink-and-paper-based 3D printer (the future is amazing!), you have a gift at your disposal.

To add some visual pizazz to the affair because the printer's already warm and loaded, consider downloading one of the free holiday greeting cards and printing it out. Heck, if they're fans of (and who isn't?), print out a Munchkin Mask and include that. It's easy, gift-giving fun at your fingertips!

– 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 22, 2023: The Curious Countdown: Number 6 – Drive Very, Very Aggressively?

Welcome back, now with the fifth installment of our "curious countdown." We've had four previous posts, so today we're looking at number 6. (The first post of this series contains the details of what we're doing here.)

As I was researching this number, I realized that we had two fantastic six-related possibilities. In deciding which one to choose, I found it interesting to compare/contrast them.

We recently saw the triumphant release of the long-awaited Car Wars Sixth Edition . This complete redesign for Car Wars retains the automotive action that's the fundamental core, then rethought the rest. The result? A game of fast-and-furious firefights. I especially love the tactile experience of manipulating those beautiful model cars; it's like rocket fuel for my inner eight-year-old playing with model vehicles, where crashing and carnage came with the territory.

The Sixth Edition of this game was first announced as a possibility during the Ogre Kickstarter, a super-successful campaign that came within a tank-shell's explosion of hitting one million dollars. That version of Ogre hit distribution as Ogre Sixth Edition . In contrast with Car Wars , this Sixth Edition retained the core rules and experience that made Ogre a classic, instead ramping up the production values of the game to utterly gorgeous proportions. This quintessential example of asymmetrical game design continues to delight fans old and new alike.

Two Sixth Editions for your consideration, making this a particularly curious pit stop on the curious countdown. And we're halfway to the end . . .

– 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 21, 2023: Two GURPS Playtests To Join!

As can be intimated from our 2024 Schedule Announcement from a few weeks ago, we're still hard at work on new  GURPS goodness. To that end, we've got two projects coming up we're looking to playtest!

• GURPS Meta-Tech – The "laws of physics" are really more . . . guidelines. This supplement is a stand-alone GURPS system to create cool and amazing tech using money. Although it's based on the system originally presented in Pyramid #3/46: Weird Science , knowledge of that issue is not required; in fact, we're looking for some fresh eyes that haven't seen it! The playtest is currently scheduled to start sometime at the beginning of January and last at least a month. Info on how to join is on the GURPS Meta-Tech playtest forum post.

• GURPS Loadouts: Starship Crew – You've made some spirited spacefarers with GURPS Template Toolkit 3: Starship Crew ; wouldn't it be great if you could outfit them quickly and easily? Well, that's what Starship Crew aims to do. We're currently planning to start this one in April. Check out the forum post for how to help make this supplement even more awesome.

GURPS is nothing without its fans, and we're grateful to the folks who help us maintain our decades of high standards. If either (or both!) of the playtests above sound like fun, please consider applying today!

– 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 20, 2023: The Curious Countdown: Number 7 – It's A Sin!

Behold! The fourth installment of our "curious countdown." Today we turn our eye to number 7. (Check out the first post if you want more info.)

I'm not entirely in the loop of everything that happens in the intergalactic conspiracy, so many times, cool stuff just shows up on my doorstep. Case in point: the  Seven Deadly Sins Die . When this oddball die arrived at our house as part of a "box o' loot," I wasn't sure what to make of it. But I soon realized the potential. (The premise is pretty self-explanatory, but in case: it's a seven-sided die, with each side adorned with one of the deadly sins.)

As someone who's an improv-type GM, its usefulness for quick-and-dirty motivations made it so powerful for me. I couple it with a "strength" die – a plain six-sider. When the heroes meet someone I haven't fleshed out, rolling those two dice gives me their "most-interesting" (as I define it, from an adventure standpoint) "sin." So, a roll of "Envy, 1" might mean the barkeep listens a bit too intently to the adventurers' exploits (current or forthcoming) – which may open up future blackmail or coercion opportunities for other bad guys. A roll of "Wrath, 6" could indicate the herbalist is secretly a mass murderer – are the heroes minutes away from stumbling onto a plot that the GM didn't know about seconds before?

For those who have one of these fine dice and are looking for more ideas, I note that Hexagram #11 has an article from Car Wars Line Editor Irene Zielinski called "Seven Deadly Motivations," with meaty insight into how to incorporate this die into The Fantasy Trip .

– 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 19, 2023: The Curious Countdown: Number 8 – Get To The Chopper!

Welcome to the third installment of our "curious countdown"! Today is devoted to number 8. (The premise is explained here.)

I first got exposed to Car Wars a long time ago. I loved how much stuff there was to add to the game beyond the basics. Trucks, cycles, tanks . . . and, of course, helicopters. Car Wars Expansion Set 8 – Chopper Challenge includes a vast variety of those vertical villains to incorporate in your scenarios. This supplement comes with the rules and counters you need to set up helicopters as adversaries or take to the skies yourself.

This particular set is available digitally or physically – the latter being a reprint that was part of our very popular Pocket Box reprint Kickstarter campaign a few years back. For those who are looking for a bundle of fun, Chopper Challenge is included in the Car Wars Pocket Box Bundle 3 . . . and if you go that route, you might as well pick up the three other bundles, so the one bundle isn't lonely.

– 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!