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Illuminated Site of the Week
Building on traditions begun after the American Civil War, the United States sets aside the last Monday of May as Memorial Day, a day of remembrance for those who fallen in service to their country. It is an opportunity to reflect upon the price of freedom and security and to offer our gratitude to those who have paid that price. That we will spend this Memorial Day at war, in the midst of almost daily casualty reports, only increases the importance of observing it in a befitting manner. More information on the history of Memorial Day and suggestions for its observance, including the
National Moment of Remembrance, can be found at
www.usmemorialday.org.
Steve Jackson Games will be closed for the day.
Warehouse 23 News: The Horde From Hell
Demons, devils, daemons, and the d20 System: the perfect line-up for evil. The Book of Fiends collects three books' worth of churning masses of evil, from imps you can step on to demon princes who can step on you.
May 30, 2004: The "Talk Like A Pirate Day" Song!
is now online on the Talk Like A Pirate Day website. This is a live recording featuring the composer, Tom Smith, backed up by Luke Ski and, err, me.
IF you didn't believe me when I said I had fun at Penguicon, maybe now you're convinced. I got to be on stage with Tom Smith! Woo hoo! And Arrrrrrr!
-- Steve Jackson
Warehouse 23 News: Mind Yer Magic, Pardner
Gunfights. Spellfights. The West is a dangerous place. Fortunately, there's Horizon: Spellslinger to give you a little advice, in a new setting for the d20 System. Strap on your six-shooter, keep an eye on the horizon for dragons, and hope the birthmark you wear means you have some great power. You're going to need it.
Agents of Reich-5 are attempting to foil our schemes! Despite the obvious proof and generous rewards, no one has come forth to answer our call for Iconic Lookalikes!
The signs of parachronic tampering are obvious. Jeff Mackintosh now looks completely different (although he still is extremely dashing). Angel has been canceled. And the average temperature in Guelph, Ontario has warmed 20 degrees since we announced the contest.
Help us prove the interference of parachronic invaders! First, examine the targets. Do any of them look familiar? No? How about if you squint? Try stepping back from the monitor. Maybe if you turn your head sideways?
Fine. If you can't find an exact match, fake it. We're not submitting these to a major news service, after all. Play "dress up," use your L33T Photoshop skills, whatever you need to do. Make a cool picture of one, just one, of the characters, and you've got a chance to win the books!
(Fine Print: Send us the image, along with your name and address, as well as the name and address of your subject. Fax (512-447-1144) or snailmail (PO Box 18957 Austin TX 78760) a letter, signed by the subject, giving us permission to use the photo for this contest. We evaluate the picture for each character, based on closeness to the character, props, and sheer coolness. The photographer will receive signed copies of the GURPS Basic Set (both books), and the subject will receive a signed copy of GURPS Infinite Worlds. Submissions will be accepted until midnight, July 31, 2004. The winner will be announced in August 2004. All submissions become the property of Steve Jackson Games. We cannot acknowledge individual submissions.)
If your prospective players are intimidated by that three-and-a-half pound book, Hero System Sidekick is a slimmed-down introduction to the Hero System that won't make them twitch. But if you just can't get enough of those rules, the Vehicle Sourcebook will let you do even more in the system with things that go vroom.
May 28, 2004: Illuminated Site of the Week: Separation Of Mythos And State
What's next, "one nation, under the sea"? Act now to stop religious fundamentalism like this. -- Suggested by William Thrasher
Warehouse 23 News: Strategy Needs No Words!
Or at least, so we hope, since Das Buch Zum Spielen isn't in English. Fortunately, there's a translation of all the important information included in this compilation of scenarios and variations for Settlers of Catan, along with all the pieces needed to expand a set for use with the new rules.
Thanks to the magic of iCal, we are now publishing our calendar online. The URL is www.icalx.com/public/sjgames/Steve_Jackson_Games. It can be viewed on the web or subscribed to using iCal, Mozilla Calendar, or other calendar programs supporting the .ics format. Currently, it has:
- Office closings
- Cons that we'll be attending
- Pyramid chats
- New Pyramid and JTAS issues
- Geeky dates like Talk Like a Pirate Day, Day of the Ninja, and lunar and solar eclipses.
- Now Shipping announcements (only after we have announced the exact date) . . . the New Releases page is still the place to go for the whole list of upcoming releases.
Just because they're cute and cuddly doesn't mean they can't power-game with the best. Fuzzy Knights: Tails from the Table #1 collects the comic strip about roleplayers who aren't about to let being stuffed animals keep them from their RPGs.
We are about to have at least one, and maybe more, entry-level positions open. These are probably not what you studied for in college, and they aren’t about making games . . . but they’re about helping the people who make the games, and there are definitely promotion opportunities.
Based on review of some of our best hires – and thinking about what went wrong on some of our not-so-best ones – we want to try hiring by personality type rather than by a specific skill set. We have an idea of the profile we’re looking for. You are:
- Educated. Not necessarily a recent college graduate, but we expect high literacy and computer literacy.
- Energetic, productive, and interested in learning. The people who do best here are builders. You don’t have to be a workaholic or a complete perfectionist, but if you are, you’ll be among friends.
- Not necessarily a frothing “people person,” but capable of getting along with others.
- Very, very, very into the kind of games we make.
- And finally, you have a strong work ethic. We’re building something here, and we want people who will pitch in and help, not sit around and chat.
Experience isn’t really an issue. We expect to train you, and you notice we haven’t said what the job is yet. The person we’re looking for doesn’t CARE exactly what the job is, as long as it lets you use your intelligence and work for a game company. (Especially since many promotion opportunities around here start with “We know you’ve never done this before, but we notice you learn fast; want to try?”)
These are full-time Austin positions, with fully paid health and dental benefits for those who pass the initial insurance qualifications. Pay is, as we said, entry level.
If you’re interested, send a resume to mia@sjgames.com (remember to name the resume with your name, NOT “resume.doc”). We promise, if we’re interested in you, we’ll tell you what you’re applying for.
-- Steve Jackson
. . . and guns, and katana-guns, and wandering gunslinger priests, and the biggest bounty you've ever seen on one man's head. Welcome to the world of BESM d20: Trigun, where the world's best gunslinger is the world's biggest dork. He may be out for love and peace, but the wild west land he's in doesn't agree.
May 25, 2004: Welcome To Austin -- You Won't Need Those Cables
Austin's Republic Square Park became the city's first park wireless hot spot last week, with three others planned over the rest of 2004. (The Austin City Hall and Texas Capitol are also free public hot spots, as are dozens of restaurants, bars, libraries, and so on.)
Why yes, we're glad to live here. Why do you ask?
When you're playing God, there's an awful lot of information to keep straight. That's what the DM Campaign Tracker is for: keep the details organized, and spend your brain power on more important things. Like figuring out how to add another tally mark to that "PCs Killed" score sheet.
Along with most of the rest of you, we heard yesterday that Richard Biggs, best known as Dr. Stephen Franklin on Babylon 5, had passed away suddenly and quite unexpectedly at the age of 43. We're about to start watching the fifth season of B5 at our weekly TV/movie nights, and this news came as quite a shock.
The staff of Steve Jackson Games would like to extend their condolences to Rick's family and friends. He left us much too young.
May 23, 2004: One With Everything Deck Design Contest Winner
You may remember that a fair while ago, Steve Jackson Games sponsored a contest to design a set of INWO decks built from a single One With Everything set.
All of the entries were impressive, and the designers obviously put in a huge amount of work, and the choice was very difficult.
The winning deck set entry, Personality Clash, was designed by John Wood. It consisted of nine themed decks, one for each of the Illuminati. To build nine playable themed decks from a single OWE set is quite an achievement, and they worked surprisingly well in playtest.
Congratulations, John! Your prize is on its way.
Warehouse 23 News: The Roots Of Horror
No one ever did horror quite like H.P. Lovecraft did. Return to the classic work of horror gaming with the sixth edition of Call of Cthulhu: as much horror as ever, and fewer errata. If you want your horror even darker than that, take a step backwards in time with Cthulhu Dark Ages.
May 22, 2004: No! GURPS Ultra-Tech Is NOT Our Product Catalog!
Every so often, some joker calls Warehouse 23 and tries to order something out of the pages of a GURPS book, for example the Chameleon Cloak on page 85 of GURPS Ultra-Tech. That attempt might have been funny once. Maybe.
Of course now that we've found a potential supplier maybe we'll stop laughing too. . .
The BBC has details on this cloak, a computer game with a neural interface, flying cars, and other things GURPS said would be available at midnight, January 1st, 2000. They're just a little behind schedule. . . (And yes, before everyone sends us e-mail, we know some of the things in that article are assigned to TLs later than eight, and that none of these inventions are ready for practical use, yet.) And NO, you still can't order a Chameleon Cloak from Warehouse 23!
Warehouse 23 News: Another Round, Barkeep!
Because one book for a series is never enough, now there's even more setting and system goodness for two of the anime series available for Big Eyes, Small Mouth. Get some more vampiric action with Hellsing Volume 2, or toss around toastier spells with The Slayers Next.
May 21, 2004: Illuminated Site of the Week: When Privacy's At Stake, Keep Your Chin Up
If you think you've never had a close shave with people trying to invade your privacy, think again. You may be only a hair's breadth from secret surveillance. Boycott Gillette tells us the razor company is a leader in the implantation of Radio Frequency Identification (or RFID) technology in their products. Pick up their razor and they may track you to the register - but can we really be sure it stops there? Guardian Unlimited has the story. -- Suggested by Martin Brummell
Without those rousing battles, space would be nothing but a bunch of mass floating around in a vacuum. BITS: Power Projection - Fleet gives you the rules and counters you need for major ship-to-ship battles in the depths of space, designed to work with the Traveller setting.
Joshua Turton wrote a PHP version of the handy fnord generating perl program we use on our web site. Don't know what a "fnorder" is? You can read about (and download) them here. Fnord.
Black clothing, silver jewelry, depressing poetry . . . If they call themselves Goths, where were they when you were doing all the work pillaging the cities of Europe? Make a statement with the Goth Crop Top in its tight-fitting new silvery version.
May 19, 2004: Upgrading To Next Year's Model
Of yourself, that is. Betterhumans.com is an extensive and regularly updated site for news about advances in medicine, materials technology, computing, and other fields that will someday let us live longer, smarter, and better.
Warehouse 23 News: Cuter Death Every Day
If you want your death cute, there's plenty of plush out there to choose from, but it doesn't get much cuter than Plush Anubis, God of the Dead. Look at those cute soul-reaping hands! Those charming dead eyes! That adorable little ceremonial sceptre! Don't you just want to go meet him right now?
Here are the latest SJ Games releases, on their way to the distributors and then to a game store near you. Ask your local retailer when he expects these in:
Knightmare Chess
(Reprint)
Chess will never be the same! Knightmare Chess is chess
played with cards - and what cards! Each card breaks the rules in a wild
and unpredictable way, giving the game more twists and turns than a roller
coaster. A translation of the popular French game Tempete sur
l'Echequier by Pierre Clequin and Bruno Faidutti,
Knightmare Chess has 80 big, beautiful cards - each with an
individual color painting by
Brazilian artist Rogerio Vilela.
Some Knightmare Chess cards affect a single move, while some
change the entire game! Each card is assigned a point value, so you can
build custom decks based on an agreed point total, or handicap the match
so the better player has fewer powerful cards. The possibilities are
endless - and so is the fun!
80 oversized (4-1/2" x 2-1/2") cards and a rulesheet in a 8" x 4-7/8" x 1/2" box.
Stock #1321,
ISBN 1-55634-332-9.
$16.95.
Chez Goth
Angst. Nookie. Roommates. Just another Friday night at Chez Goth.
This stand-alone game puts a new spin on the award-winning (and all too realistic) Chez Geek. You're still living with a bunch of roommates . . . but now you're a Goth!
Work at your dreary job. Spend your hard-earned money and precious time to accumulate Slack points . . . or collect Gloom when life turns against you. As it will! You can earn Slack for buying Clothes, Shinies, and Booze . . . or you can just Cough, Complain, or even Faint Dramatically, especially if you have an audience. And if you get very lucky, there might be some Graveyard Nookie in your future.
Yes, you can combine these cards with Chez Geek and have a house full of Goths AND slackers. Fortunately, it's just a game . . . isn't it?
112 cards in a tuck box.
Stock #1354,
ISBN 1-55634-728-6.
$16.95.
Cardboard Heroes Castles: The Keep
Put a castle in your backpack!
Cardboard Heroes Castles are great-looking 3-D structures that fold up for play, and fold down again for travel and storage! They're heavy cardstock, but they're die-cut and pre-scored to make them easy to build, and they're designed to fold and unfold without damage.
This set can be used by itself to create either a castle with enclosed courtyard or a massive towered keep. Or use it as an expansion to the Walls and Towers set. The more sets you add, the bigger your castle gets . . .
Cardboard Heroes Castles are full-color (of course), gorgeous, and totally portable. When the game's over, just fold 'em up and go!
16 die-cut cardboard pages plus instructions.
Stock #2151,
ISBN 1-55634-698-0.
$24.95.
Star Munchkin RPG
The Star Munchkin Roleplaying Game takes the Munchkin experience to a final frontier a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away where no one can hear you scream. But everyone will hear you laugh.
Now you can play your favorite races and classes from the Star Munchkin card game, including Mutants, Cyborgs, and Cat People . . . taking on Fanged Fuzzballs, Bionic Bimbos, and the fiendish Brain In a Jar with the latest in exotic and rules-abusive SF weapons, like the Vibrosword, Nova Grenade, and the ultra-powerful Laser-Maser-Bobaser-Bananafanafofaser. The Star Munchkin RPG will also include the new goodies from Star Munchkin 2 - The Clown Wars.
The Star Munchkin RPG is a little different in format from the original Munchkin RPG books. Rather than breaking the information into the now-traditional three volumes, Star Munchkin will be a single, 96-page hardback book. Star Munchkin will be produced under the Open Game License published by Wizards of the Coast.
Munchkin out . . . in SPACE!
96 pages.
Stock #3404,
ISBN 1-55634-670-0.
$19.95.
Warehouse 23 News: Eek! More Classes!
Fright Night: Haunted House brings a supplement about the classic horror movie setting to the d20 System. Spend a night in a haunted house, take a few levels in a psychic character class, mind your step around the madmen . . . You know the drill. Time to split up the party and search the house.
Due to disappointingly low demand, we are scaling back the GURPS WWII line. We will continue to release supplementary material in PDF form when the e23 project gets off the ground (it's still some months away).
This means that all current GURPS WWII projects are going on the shelf immediately. Not into the trash; we will save all files and hope to be able to release them someday. We will pay "kill fees" to writers right now, rather than making them wait for "someday."
When e23 is up and running, we'll take each individual title on its merits. Status, for those who want to know:
- Red Tide (Russia): We have a complete first draft, but getting it to final form would be a significant editorial project.
- Banzai (Japan): We have first drafts of some chapters.
- And we have several GURPS WWII sourcebooks contracted especially for e23!
Once GURPS Fourth Edition is out, we know that fans will immediately start work on conversions. We'll happily post a good one . . .
Warehouse 23 News: Anachronism Isn't What It Used To Be
Back when Queen Elizabeth ruled England with nefarious sorcerer Thatcher at her side, when Indians roamed the plains in their trucks and Wild Bill Gates was the best gambler this side of the Mississippi, who was out fighting against the evil god Landmines and the powers of darkness? Diana: Warrior Princess, of course!
Aaaargh. We had the Burn in Hell cards completely ready for the printer . . . and on the DAY that they were to go in, we decided to postpone publication for a few months. Nothing to do with the game . . . but its printing time and budget slot got pre-empted by massive Munchkin reprints. Snarl, grumble, moan. And we had that great little article in Game Trade Monthly, too . . .
It's now scheduled for September. Be patient . . . Hell can wait . . .
-- Steve Jackson
Back when Vampire: The Masquerade was just taking off, there was Virtual Lore, a magazine for dark modern fantasy. There were only three issues, but if you collect them all, you'll have the unofficial citybook for Albany, New York, plus articles for Call of Cthulhu, Vampire, Mage, and more.
Steve Jackson Games is pleased to announce the following releases for August, 2004:
GURPS Basic Set: Characters
With GURPS, you can be anyone you want -- an elf hero fighting
for the forces of good, a shadowy femme fatale on a deep-cover
mission, a futuristic swashbuckler carving up foes with a force sword
in his hand and a beautiful woman by his side . . . or literally
anything else! GURPS has been the premiere universal
roleplaying game for almost two decades. The new Fourth Edition makes
it even better!
GURPS Basic Set: Characters combines information from the
Third Edition GURPS Basic Set
and GURPS Compendium I, plus hundreds of new and
updated rules! This 336-page, full-color hardcover contains
everything you need to create and play a GURPS
Fourth Edition character.
336 pages. Hardback.
Stock #01-0001,
ISBN 1-55634-729-4.
$39.95.
GURPS Basic Set: Campaigns
With GURPS, you can be anyone you want -- an elf hero fighting
for the forces of good, a shadowy femme fatale on a deep-cover
mission, a futuristic swashbuckler carving up foes with a force sword
in his hand and a beautiful woman by his side . . . or literally
anything else! GURPS has been the premiere universal
roleplaying game for almost two decades. The new Fourth Edition makes
it even better!
GURPS Basic Set: Campaigns combines information from the
Third Edition GURPS Basic Set
and GURPS Compendium II -- plus our new core
setting, with infinite possibilities for timeline-hopping adventure!
(You don't have to play in the core setting -- there isn't
some game-altering metaplot -- but it's there if you want it.) This
240-page, full-color hardcover contains everything a GM needs
to create and run a GURPS Fourth Edition campaign.
240 pages. Hardback.
Stock #01-0002,
ISBN 1-55634-730-8.
$34.95.
Frag
(Reprint)
Game starts. Enemy in sight . . . Frag him! Grab his stuff! Run! Get a bigger gun! Grab some armor! There he is again! Frag him! Whoa, there's another one. Run . . . you're hit! You're down. Respawn! Grab a weapon! Start again!
Frag is a computer game without a computer. It's a "first-person shooter" on a tabletop. Move your fighter and frag your foes; draw cards for weapons, armor, and gadgets; move through the blood spatters to restore your own health! If you die, you respawn and come back shooting!
Easy to learn, fast-moving, fun . . . two supplements are already out, and more are coming!
Boxed game with cards and color game map.
Stock #1339,
ISBN 1-55634-651-4.
$29.95.
GURPS Lite
GURPS Lite is a 32-page distillation of the basic
GURPS rules. It covers the essentials of character creation,
combat, success rolls, magic, adventuring, and game mastering for
GURPS Fourth Edition.
The purpose of GURPS Lite is to help GMs bring new
players into the game, without frightening them with the full
GURPS Basic
Set and a stack of worldbooks! With GURPS Lite, you
can show your players just how simple GURPS really is.
We'll have printed copies of GURPS Lite available at
your local game store and in Warehouse 23 -- and it's included in the
GURPS GM's Screen -- or you can download a FREE electronic version from
e23.
You can download GURPS Lite for the Third Edition here.
32 pages.
Stock #01-0004,
$FREE.
Warehouse 23 News: Liberty And Recess For All
Metahuman children of the worlds (and other realities), unite! School is inevitable, but having fun is optional. Watch the superheroes of tomorrow handle over-patriotic classmates and sneaking through the school after hours in ps238 #5 and ps238 #6. ps238: the public school for special children.
May 14, 2004: Illuminated Site of the Week: Unburied, Uncovered, Unreal
Scenes of death and ghost photography. Disneyland and its phantom government. Strange facts, alien scribblings, and the skulls of humanoids who never existed. Some sites give lip service to the bizarre and unusual, but there seems to be no end to Anomalies Unlimited. Theirs is a fun and fascinating collection of the off-key that's not easily rivaled - nor, in some cases, meant for the faint of heart. -- Suggested by Marius Blomkvist
Warehouse 23 News: Probably Not WASTITS
Cute and cuddly Plush WASTEMS, direct to your door! These freshly-caught bundles of joy from the Human Occupied Landfill setting will cheerfully let you squeeze them half to death without complaint. Assuming they're not WASTITS. But they're probably not WASTITS. Really.
As of 14 May 2004 I will be changing status at SJ Games from full time employee to freelancer. I will be taking over (again) as editor for JTAS, the online Traveller magazine, and I will be resuming the day-to-day management of the GURPS Traveller line, but I will be doing these things as an outside contractor.
I plan to continue writing books for SJ Games, but I will also be looking for freelance assignments from other companies in the gaming industry. I am looking into some sidelines that will enable me to make use of my hobbies in a more profitable way, and make some tentative steps into e-commerce. I’ll be posting the details on my website at www.LorenWiseman.com.
-- Loren Wiseman (loren@sjgames.com)
Warehouse 23 News: If Only I Had A Brain
The Hero System is marvelously detailed and complex. Perhaps a little too marvelously detailed and complex, for some of us. Fortunately, the Hero Designer program for character creation is out in version 2.0. Flexible and easy to use, it's just what you need to get the system doing what you want it to do.
May 12, 2004: SJ Games Nabs Nine Origins Nominations
The final ballot for the 2003 Origins Awards was announced Monday, and Steve Jackson Games is proud to have received nine nominations. Only WizKids got more.
The SJ Games nominees are:
Monday's Pyramid story has all the details, or you can check out the list at the awards website. Information on how to vote has not been announced yet, but we'll be sure to tell you when it becomes available.
New Glory Naval Base satisfies the need for military base supplements. Designed for the d20 System but made of maps and information for any game, it's filled with military conspiracies and clear floorplans useful for . . . peaceful, lawful entry into the base. That's right. Of course the PCs will get proper clearance first.
 
And here they are . . . the new covers for the two volumes of the GURPS Basic Set. We based it, of course, on Victor R. Fernandes' winning entry . . . black background, a variety of images in "puzzle" format, and large, modernistic text. Production artist Justin De Witt, aided by most everyone in the office, selected favorite images from the last 15 or so years of GURPS. We even retained Victor's typeface for everything but the GURPS logo itself. The logo was re-rendered in Korinna, which we discovered by experimentation complements both modern and "antique" typefaces . . . it looks very good with the Mason that's used for the titles of GURPS Magic and GURPS Fantasy.
In fact, we like the "puzzle" look enough that it's going to become the signature for the whole line, though we haven't reworked any of the other covers yet. We shall . . . It's a great solution to the problem of "how can we pick one image that tells the whole story?", and it'll stand out from everything else in the stores.
Our renewed thanks to Victor and to everyone else who participated in the discussion and the contest!
-- Steve Jackson
"Your cream pie got on my jaguar guard!" "Your blood magic got on my juggler!" The Way of War gives you rules and a rationale for mixing any type of miniatures you can come up with in a wargame, and then gives you the miniatures to use. Clowns and Aztecs together at last: wargaming doesn't get much better than that.
The Cassini probe to the Saturn system is now sending back images of Titan's surface . . . images as good as anything we have from Earth-based observation . . . and they'll get better over the next few weeks.
Warehouse 23 News: Your Ichor Is In My Green Slime!
If oozing zombies and disgruntled demons are your cup of tea, we request that you finish your lunch out of our line of sight. But RPG Blues, Vol. 2, a compilation of RPG-related comic strips and gags, just might be for you.
Another entry in the "Is this cool, or what?" department. It's a functioning computer.
May 8, 2004: Paging Mr. Marconi . . . Paging Mr. Guglielmo Marconi . . .
Wireless has come a long way, baby. I'm writing this Illuminator in The Green Muse coffee bar, five blocks from my apartment, which I located thanks to the good folks at Auscillate.com. (As the name might imply, it started off as a list of Austin hotspots -- in fact, if you leave off the "cities.php," it still is -- but it's grown a lot since then.)
So far, three of us in the Austin office have wireless cards in our laptops, and we're discussing whether to install a wireless router so we can all sit in Steve's office and send e-mail in the middle of meetings.
(Or play Puzzle Pirates. But I didn't say that.)
-- Andrew Hackard, Managing Editor
Warehouse 23 News: Stat Storage System
Tired of toting tons of troublesome texts to the table? The Arcanis Character Folio is a convenient compendium for keeping character compilations quickly catchable. Find facts fast!
May 7, 2004: Illuminated Site of the Week: Thus Ever To A Few Guys In Canada
No man is an island, but a handful of them could be their own country. The Aerican Empire strives to make itself known in a world where the little guy gets pushed out of all the good summits. Think of them as the Fourth World. -- Suggested by George Rendel
Chat This Evening!
Tonight, at 7 p.m. Central Time, Sean Punch will be leading a chat in the Pyramid MOO on "Skills and Techniques." Don't miss it if you want to be the first kid on your block with the latest information on the new edition of GURPS!
Warehouse 23 News: Unspeakable Horror!
Literally, in this case. Whatever is terrorizing The Village of Oester in this d20 adventure leaves refugees unable to articulate any helpful information for the PCs to use. Of course, being PCs, you know they're just going to go charging in to attack the problem anyway, so why complicate matters with the facts?
Production artist Alex Fernandez just hit his five-year anniversary here. We celebrated with cake. Fittingly, today is also the day that GURPS Dragons, full of Alex's beautiful color illustrations, goes to press. Yay Alex.
Warehouse 23 News: Point Of No Return
Follow the storyline of the Babylon 5 series with The Point of No Return, the supplement for the third season: episode information, game mechanics for the death of personality, statistics for Shadow ships . . . This season is also the perfect time to take a closer look at the haughty, flamboyant Centauri Republic.
May 5, 2004: Don't Fret, It's All Just 1s And 0s
Later this year, Gibson will be coming out with a new digital guitar. Read the CNN story here.
(And no, we aren't ashamed of the title of this Illuminator at all.)
What's a fantasy game without a nefarious thief accompanying the brave and honest adventuring party for no apparent reason? If your ne'er-do-well is getting bored while the fighters and mages get the spotlight, try Player's Advantage: Rogue, a book full of new tips, tricks, and crunchy bits to make your thief really shine.
May 4, 2004: Coming Soon: The GoogleSignal And GooglePhone!
Taken, with permission, from Randy Cassingham's This is True (very highly recommended by all the Managing Editors we surveyed):
BONZER WEB SITE OF THE WEEK: http://www.googlealert.com -- GoogleAlert. Sure, everyone in the world now knows the power of Google, but wouldn't it be great to get an "alert" when something new on a subject of interest gets indexed by Google? This does that. Put your favorite searches in at this site, which is not run by Google, and you'll get an e-mail with the links. It's a great tool for writers, say, who (ahem) want to know when someone's posting their stuff without permission.... http://www.thisistrue.com/bonzer.html archives the Bonzer sites.
Thanks to Randy for letting us borrow his description, and for pointing out the site in the first place.
-- Andrew Hackard, Managing Editor
Warehouse 23 News: Origins Of The Powers
Every superhero has to start somewhere. If you've been having trouble getting into the swing of saving the world, try the Mutants & Masterminds Starter Pack. With three books and a GM's screen, it's better than a diseased animal bite for getting your superpowers going.
Another science fiction concept moves toward reality . . . armor that is flexible until it's impacted. Read the Fox News story.
Warehouse 23 News: By The Fans, For The Fans
Nothing but good, solid crunchy gaming goodness: the EN World Player's Journal #4 brings another issue of articles from both fans and industry professionals for the d20 System, including supplemental materials for published fantasy settings like Morningstar.
As of around 5 a.m. this morning, the mailing lists look to be working correctly once again. It would seem that the downtime we suffered Wednesday left us with a lot of mail to be delivered, and the mailing list system got clogged. The messages that were showing up in the archives but not being sent via email were simply queued. It's unclogged now, the queued messages have gone out, and the lists are running smoothly again... but if you happen to see further problems please report them to sage@sjgames.com.
-- Sage
Warehouse 23 News: Administrate Your Way To The Crown
The emperor has finally kicked the bucket, and now it's time for the civil war. Scramble your way to the ultimate prize as one of five different factions in Crown of the Emperor, an expandable card game of conquest, exploration, and good business sense.
Apparently something broke during our recent switch to a new mail server; most of our lists are not sending out mail. Messages are being archived, and list members can read messages there.
Our IT staff has been notified; there's no need for anyone to contact them. We apologize for the inconvenience, and expect to have the problem fixed on Monday.
We don't normally link to puff pieces, especially those which masquerade as actual news, but this CNN story about a new book, Eats, Shoots & Leaves, is worth reading. As, no doubt, is the book.
Hey, I'm an editor -- what do you expect?
(Note to my family: I know my birthday is eight months from now, but this goes on the list.)
-- Andrew Hackard, Managing Editor
Check out Warehouse 23's best selling items for February, March, and April on the Warehouse 23 Top 10 page.
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