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Daily Illuminator Archive for May 2026
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May 1, 2026:
Spooky season is upon us . . . or at least it will be in 6 months! . . .
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May 2, 2026:
If you're reading this on Saturday, then – depending on what time it is – you might be able to shout "It's not too late!" like Ebenezer Scrooge as you sprint through the streets to your friendly local comic shop. Why? . . .
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May 4, 2026:
The Star Trek fans had their day on April 5th with First Contact Day. (The Vulcans were no-shows AGAIN . . .
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May 5, 2026:
How long-lived are specific games, in the continuum of their own art form and in the larger picture? When I write entries for the Daily Illuminator, I usually have some kind of thesis I'm building toward . . . but today's a bit more freeform, because my conclusion (spoiler alert) is that I don't have a conclusion . . .
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May 6, 2026:
Two economists recently wrote a paper proving the uniqueness of the Boltzmann Distribution - a specific formula used to describe probabilities in systems where things don't influence each other - using experiments featuring Crazy Dice. For 150 years, no one knew if this was the only distribution . . .
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May 7, 2026:
Remember The Guild? Felicia Day as a player trapped in a MMORPG, trying to deal with her game-addiction and with a guild of players as messed up, in different ways, as she is? Ran online from 2007 to 2013, and now almost impossible to find on the Web? . . .
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May 8, 2026:
Just not in the way you might think. An article published in Nature describes how meteor impact craters could have created "oxygen oases" that served as stable environments for early life to develop . . .
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May 9, 2026:
Today, May 9, is National Train Day. On this day, we celebrate . . .
• Long dresses that trail behind you.
• Teaching your dog to do tricks.
• Great big loud things that run on tracks.
• Wagons full of ammunition and supplies.
• The luminous line behind a meteor.
• Your posse.
• A series of gears.
• An innocent-looking trickle of gunpowder.
• A band that was hot in the late 90s . . .
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May 10, 2026:
Two of our favorite games are getting new editions this year. There's Munchkin Second Edition, of course . . . . .
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May 11, 2026:
I don't know if you've noticed yet, but I like to talk. I like to talk about games I've made, games I've played, games I love, and games I don't like much . . .
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May 12, 2026:
If you're of a certain age (or mindset) where high-tech computer graphics meant color ASCII characters, you've probably heard of NetHack, one of the defining roguelike video games of the roguelike genre. If you want a deep dive into its 39-year history, the Wikipedia entry does a thorough job . . .
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May 13, 2026:
If you're passionate about games and have always wanted to work in the gaming industry, now is your chance! Steve Jackson Games is looking for a part-time Retail Liaison . . .
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May 14, 2026:
I'm currently in the editorial dungeons preparing more Fighting Fantasy books for publication. One of the aspects that's crucial to me as the Line Editor of these American editions is getting the text as correct and polished as I can . . .
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May 15, 2026:
Last month I was honored to be invited to the American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies Conference (ASECS) held in Philadelphia. Dr . . .
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May 16, 2026:
The standard d6 is commonly known to have originated during the Bronze Age. But did you know that older dice have been found? . . .
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May 17, 2026:
By now, the PowerPoint party has achieved legendary status as a geeky get-together gimmick. I've been thinking about event themes in a similar vein, and I think I've come upon a fun one! . . .
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May 18, 2026:
This Kickstarter project closes soon. It's a social deduction game in which you are all members of a cult . . .
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May 19, 2026:
It's mid-May, which means tickets to our Gen Con events are now available for purchase!
This year, we're hosting more events than ever before, with 97 on the schedule. At the time of this publication, around 50 of those are already sold out, but you still have time to sign up.
These are some of the events you can join:
Learn to Play Munchkin Second Edition – If you've been curious about the new edition, this is your chance to learn from the experts . . .
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May 20, 2026:
I'm back with another post about music.
This time I want to point you toward an entire genre of music that I've recently discovered. It's called Dungeon Synth and it fits right into the vibes I talked about in my previous fantasy music entry . . .
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May 21, 2026:
We're rapidly approaching convention season! As I've begun mentally preparing, I thought it might be fun to see if anyone had a single tip or suggestion for getting the most out of the cons you go to that isn't one of the obvious ones ("get enough sleep," "shower every day," "make sure the alien pod that controls your actions has enough nutrient-rich slurry," and so on) . . .
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May 22, 2026:
Steve Jackson Games produces geeky games, meaning we're a bunch of geeks. I've steered the GURPS ship for 31 years – and been a gamer for 47 years – making me a geek among geeks . . .
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May 23, 2026:
I'm working on it . . .
Last year was an unusual and very awful year. We made it through! . . .
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May 24, 2026:
Monday evening I'll be on the red-eye to London (does it count as a red-eye when the flight is long enough that I can sleep?), and thence soon after to Birmingham for the UK Games Exposition. I've enjoyed this show every time I have visited . . .
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May 25, 2026:
Part of preparing a game for release includes writing copy for the back of the box or book. It's not something we take lightly . . . it's part of the very first impression a potential player gets of the title . . .
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May 26, 2026:
If you're of a certain mindset, you'll probably see nothing better today than James Harbeck's translation/interpretation of the opening lines of the classic Old English epic poem Beowulf into the vernacular of Western Canadian English. I cannot stress enough that the language is exceptionally salty and not safe for work (as befits a blog called Strong Language, "A Sweary Blog About Swearing") . . .
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May 27, 2026:
It's time to hop aboard a boxcar and take a journey on the Last Train to Bremen, because pre-orders for the box set are now open on Warehouse 23!
Last Train to Bremen, from our friends at Possum Creek, is a thrilling one-shot RPG that follows four doomed musicians who made a deal with the Devil some 13 years ago. Now the Devil has come to collect on his due . . .
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May 28, 2026:
Gen Con opened ticket sales on May 17 and tickets to our events have been selling rapidly . . .
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May 29, 2026:
Events eventuated, unexpectedly and perversely, and I will be spending this weekend at home rather than at a great convention in Birmingham, England. Apologies to those who wanted to see me there . . .
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May 30, 2026:
As nearly every gamer knows, watching how-to-play videos online is a great way to learn new games. The videos can help explain not just the gameplay, but also the game's intricacies and strategies for winning.
We'd like to know: Which how-to-play channel is your favorite? . . .
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May 31, 2026:
I just backed Howard Tayler's "Doodling as a Hobby: The Retrospective Sketchbook of an Accidental Career." As you know (or really ought to), Howard is the self-taught artist who created the science fiction webcomic Schlock Mercenary and kept it running without a single break – with both daily and Sunday strips – getting better and better every year – for TWENTY YEARS before bringing it to a tightly-scripted close. If he has something to say about "doodling as a hobby," we should listen! . . .
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