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November 30, 2001: 'pun My Word

Illuminated Site of the Week: Some things should remain outside man's domain. We tried to resist so evil an address, but now URL witness to our perfidy. The Illuminated Site of the Weak: BigPuns.com.

-- Suggested by Dan Riehs

Warehouse 23 News: Jungles, Savannah, and Desert

Rifts Africa includes everything you need (OCCs, new magic, adventure ideas, etc.) to roleplay on this wild and vast continent.

November 29, 2001: Warehouse 23 Improvements

Warehouse 23 now includes some shiny new code (thanks to Sage and Mark, with Michelle riding herd) that automatically gives you your shipping options and calculates price for each. Of course, if you give us a medium-big order, UPS shipping in the continental U.S. is free, but now we can make the rest of the calculations easier on you, and ourselves.

For our customers who cannot receive UPS shipments (or just prefer not to), a U.S. Postal Service option is also available.

Remember, games are a great Christmas gift. Give your friends the ones YOU want to play . . . And the game publishers can all stand a little bit of support right now. Zocchi Distributing, one of the hobby's oldest wholesalers, has closed, and between the inventory they dumped on the market and the money they owed publishers, a lot of people are hurting. Nobody wants a domino effect.


November 28, 2001: March Releases

Our March release announcement is up, and speaks for itself. Go, then, and marvel at what is in store . . .

November 27, 2001: Now That's What I Call A Video Game

3-D. Surround sound. Voice recognition. Even smell. Okay, so only the Army has it . . . now. Give it five years. Here's the CNN story.

Warehouse 23 News: Good Things Come to Those Who Wait

It's really late, but Classic Traveller Reprint 5 (Games 1-6+) is finally available!

November 26, 2001: After The Long Weekend

Several things ought to get finished up this week . . . hope, hope. This is one of the two times of year when things get very interrupted . . . as fall turns to winter, it's Thanksgiving and then Christmas, and in the summer, of course, it's convention season.

Went to see the "Harry Potter" movie over break. (Two films in one week! Can this be ME talking?) It didn't change my life or anything, but it was quite good, and did no violence to the original story . . . the author of the books is probably pleased with it. Now I'm reading about all the drum-beating from the people who want it suppressed because it contains witches and wizards and broomsticks and whatnot! That's our home-grown Taliban, hard at work to make America safe for fear and ignorance. The sad thing, of course, is if you were to tell those people that they have no magic in their lives, they'd agree proudly!
-- Steve Jackson

Warehouse 23 News: Legend of the Five Rings Jewelry

Part 5 of 5: the Shadowlands mon, as a pendant and brooch/pin.

November 25, 2001: Thanksgiving Continues . . .

and right now I'm giving thanks for one more quiet work day. Tomorrow I plan to attack Munchkin . . . upgrade the FAQ, work on the Unnatural Axe supplement, and decide if we should have Munchkin T-shirts, and if so, what they should say . . .
-- Steve Jackson

Warehouse 23 News: Legend of the Five Rings Jewelry

Part 4 of 5: the Unicorn Clan mon, as a pendant and brooch/pin.

November 24, 2001: Pretty Books Coming

A couple of proof copies of upcoming Cartouche Press books. They look beautiful, even in proof form, and with two in the office at once . . . John Zeleznik's Lightstrike and The Art of John Van Fleet - we had people coming by to ooh and ahh and poke through them.

While I'm bragging about new Cartouche stuff, I should point out that the first Postcards from Brom set will be showing up in stores soon. You're more likely to see all the Cartouche stuff in a comic store than a game store, but feel free to poke your friendly local game store owner to check out this art stuff. Some of us gamers DO have good taste, after all . . .

-- Steve Jackson

Warehouse 23 News: Legend of the Five Rings Jewelry

Part 3 of 5: the Phoenix Clan mon, as a pendant and brooch/pin.

November 23, 2001: Let's See It Open a Child-Proof Cap

Illuminated Site of the Week: Mysteries that have baffled mankind for centuries have been solved by LEGO® technology - well, "centuries," assuming the Mesopotamians had Rubik's Cubes®. JP Brown's CubeSolver sends the popular '80s toy home cryin' to mama.

-- Suggested by Mark Bassett

Warehouse 23 News: Legend of the Five Rings Jewelry

Part 2 of 5: the Dragon Clan mon, as a pendant and brooch/pin.

November 22, 2001: A Computer Made Out Of DNA

Want to create a really small computer? Try using molecules of DNA as your building blocks. Hey, it works for Mother Nature. And now it's worked for an Israeli research group, too. See the Reuters story on Yahoo.

Warehouse 23 News: Legend of the Five Rings Jewelry

Part 1 of 5: the Crab Clan mon, as a pendant and brooch/pin.

November 21, 2001: Our First CD

We got the CDs in today for the GURPS Character Builder. Very cool, to see our first CD. Imprinted and everything. Reminds me of the thrill when, say, Raid on Iran came back from the printers. (And no, that title's not a link. We don't have pages for the products released in 1981 . . .)

It's 20 years later, and while it's still neat to see a game come back from the printer, it's no longer a RUSH. But our first CD . . . that's neat!
-- Steve Jackson

Warehouse 23 News: Modeling Clay for Minis

Customize your miniatures, or create whole new ones, with Kneadatite Brown/Aluminum Epoxy Putty Tape, an easy to use putty that cures, at room temperature, to the hardness of metal.

November 20, 2001: The Weather Adds Insult To Injury

Tomorrow night it's probably going to freeze. I realize that is not exactly Vitally Fascinating Company News, but it's very much on my mind at the moment . . .

Eeeeuuuuuw. I do not like cold weather. I suppose we should be grateful that the flood and freeze did not actually hit together. That would have been . . . special.

Okay, now a bit of good news: Monsters, Inc. is very much worth seeing. Trust me on this.
-- Steve Jackson

Warehouse 23 News: Weird Science, Pulp Style

Add weird and wonderful inventions of the pulp genre to your Gear Krieg campaign with the just released Gear Krieg: Superscience.

November 19, 2001: GURPS WWII Signing In Austin

GURPS WWII will be on sale in retail stores starting December 7 . . . Pearl Harbor Day. The author, Gene Seabolt, will be signing copies at both Dragon's Lair locations on release day:

In Round Rock: noon to 2pm.

At the original Austin location: 4pm to 6pm.

Warehouse 23 News: Cinematic Fleet Combat

The newest Jovian Chronicles title, Lightning Strike Companion adds further detail to the space fleet combat system.

November 18, 2001: Don't Make Us Come Down There

Illuminated Site of the Week: Angel, God, gods: "Elohim" has been misread so many times. They're aliens come from the sky to visit their creation, the human race. They're disappointed at all the violence mankind engages in, but they're willing to forgive and forget (we didn't listen to their prophets). In fact, they'll mediate if we'll build them an embassy (with a swimming pool, natch). The Raelian Revolution has started.

Makes you wonder what else went wrong in translation.

-- Suggested by Scott McNair

Warehouse 23 News: Monsters and Magic Galore!

Rifts Mystic Russia takes classic Russian mythology and gives it the ol' Rifts touch.

November 17, 2001: Funnel Cloud Follow-Up

The office definitely got wet. We had a small electrical fire Friday morning, where the upstairs air conditioning unit took on water. No major building damage other than that (and fixing the air conditioner was expensive but not really major). A tree fell across the driveway that leads to our storage units, quite thoroughly blocking them off; it'll be chainsaw work to get that taken care of.

I had floodwaters very close to my own doorstep, but they didn't quite come in. Monica did get flooding in her garage. Everybody else seems to be OK. However, my across-the-street neighbor says he saw a tornado go over our houses, and from the state of the mobile home park a mile to the west, I believe him.

The really good news is . . . it's not over. Rains are continuing upstream of us, and the ground is already soaked. We're under flash flood watch till tomorrow afternoon.
-- Steve Jackson

Warehouse 23 News: Arena Champions

The brand new Miniatures Tactical Dueling Rules, for Heavy Gear, details the world of professional dueling after the end of the Interpolar War.

November 16, 2001: Funnel Cloud Madness

Very, very heavy rain today . . . it was dark before 4 in the afternoon. Then it got really interesting.

"Attention, everyone. There is a funnel cloud forming near the building. You might consider going home."

But by the time we got downstairs to look west, it had disintegrated. So it goes.

* * * * * * *

The above was written about 6pm. It got REALLY interesting after that. We had rain that made the previous stuff look like a shower . . . solid sheets of water, sometimes going sideways. The driveway was a solid sheet of moving water halfway up the tires of the smaller cards. Water was leaking through the roof in several places, coming up to the doors . . . the power never died completely, but it browned out enough that most of the fluorescent lights quit. Central Austin lost power completely, taking IO, and all our colocated systems, off the net for a couple of hours.

It's now 10pm, and the rain has stopped for now, but the flash flood watch is still on. The TV says that parts of Austin got 10 inches today.
-- Steve Jackson

Warehouse 23 News: Gift Certificates

If you've been postponing your holiday shopping (only 5 weeks left!) because you aren't quite sure what to get, try our brand-new, one-size-fits-all Warehouse 23 Gift Certificates.

November 15, 2001: GURPS Vorkosigan

Playtest for GURPS Vorkosigan - based on the Miles Vorkosigan stories by Lois McMaster Bujold - is now taking place on Pyramid. Forward momentum!

Warehouse 23 News: Everything A GM Could Need

Game Master's Utilities Volume 1 is a feast of props and information for any RPG and is available in both paper and electronic formats.

November 14, 2001: Laid Off!

The angst and horror of joblessness, as told by one who knows. If you don't laugh at this cartoon, it says something about you. If you laugh too much, it says something about you. So watch it in private and giggle however much you please. We are not here to tell you how to react.

Kira and I both laughed ourselves sick, though . . .

Update . . . oddtodd.com had so much traffic he can't afford to actually display the cartoon any more, but the above page still has a pointer to a site where you can download it.
-- Steve Jackson

Warehouse 23 News: The secrets of the Coalition States revealed!

Rifts Coalition War Campaign contains everything you need to join in the Coalition War, including O.C.C.s, power armor, robots, and details of the Coalition Army.

November 13, 2001: Ghost Town

Maybe we've been fooling around with too much Deadlands stuff - at any rate, the place was a ghost town today. Three folks out with various forms of the Creeping Crud, one down with a game leg, and one stuck at home with a sick horse . . . err, car. So I have to hope everyone is recovered by next week when we playtest Frag Deadlands again.
-- Steve Jackson

Warehouse 23 News: Adventure! Romance! Mad Science!

Follow the steampunk adventures of Agatha Heterodyne, heroine of the Girl Genius comic book series.

November 12, 2001: Big Pix Of Big Ogres

John Hurtt has massively updated his Ogre site, including an Ogre Macrotures battlereport from DragonCon 2001 (complete with photos and turn-by-turn maps), fantastic painted minis from John Douma, J.P. Hyde and Kurt Edelmann, new convention info, and more.

Warehouse 23 News: The Ultimate Rifts Magic Reference

The brand new Rifts Book of Magic lists every spell ever published for Rifts, plus new spells, magic items, and Game Master advice.

November 11, 2001: More Good Words For Frag

Frag continues to strike computer gamers the right way. Check out the review on The Wargamer: "The sole object of the game is to spread as much gratuitous violence as possible, and Frag makes no apologies for it . . . By not taking itself too seriously, Frag puts itself in that rare category of games that succeed both as satire and entertainment.

In other news, we playtested a new Frag expansion today. It went well. BOOM.

Warehouse 23 News: Happy Entrails To You

Fresh off the presses, Knights of the Dinner Table, Issue 60 is now available.

November 10, 2001: More About WWII

RPG Action, a new online publication for roleplayers, just interviewed Gene Seabolt about GURPS WWII. Which, incidentally, went to press Friday! So see what Gene has to say . . .

Warehouse 23 News: No! Not a reserve price!

Brand new from Journeyman Press: eBay: the Card Game. Experience all the fun and excitement of online auctions without turning on your computer.

November 9, 2001: The Lord Downloadeth

Illuminated Site of the Week: When demons come a-callin', deliverance is just a click away at Demonbuster. Know thine enemy; threaten unruly demons with "The Box"; learn more with the FAQ:
Q: Can demons transfer from person to person?
A: YES! They kinda CLONE.
-- Suggested by Geoffrey Brent

Warehouse 23 News: This Month's Guide to the Megaverse

Just in, The Rifter #16 is chock full of material for all Palladium roleplaying games.

November 8, 2001: Bounty Hunters Playtest

GURPS Traveller: Heroes 1 - Bounty Hunters The first of a new series of GURPS Traveller books: GURPS Traveller: Heroes 1 - Bounty Hunters is scheduled for a January release. The playtest files are up now on Pyramid.

Warehouse 23 News: What Webs We Weave

A multi-part adventure for 7th Sea, Tangled Strands presents a Vodaccean criminal mastermind and the pair of innocents who hold the key to his demise.

November 7, 2001: Plan For Next Year's Halloween . . .

with wonderful, disgusting props like the Bottled Deep One and the Thing In A Jar.

Warehouse 23 News: Exploits of the National Archaelogical, Geographic, and Submarine Society

Terra Incognita is a brand new roleplaying game of exploration, intrigue, and mystery that utilizes the popular FUDGE system.

November 6, 2001: Icontest

Do you know how to create desktop icons for Windows? Are you an artiste at it? This is a really QUICK contest. We just found out the hard way that we lack the necessary skills to create an icon that will meet our own standards :-)

This is for the GURPS Character Builder program. We would prefer the icon to show the standing figure on the cover (look at the web page and see what we mean). Other ideas will be considered, but we know what we want . . .

The winner will get credit in the product and a signed copy of GURPS Character Builder.

E-mail submissions to sage@sjgames.com, with the mail title of ICONTEST. Standard legal stuff: all submissions become property of SJ Games.

We assume that if you know how to build an icon you know what file format is required :-)

But this is a CRUNCH situation. The contest ends at 12:01 Friday morning . . . so if you're interested, start NOW.

Warehouse 23 News: Across Millions of Nights

Visit the El-Hazard: The Magnificant World with the deluxe, three DVD box set and the Tri-Stat based roleplaying game.

November 5, 2001: Hacker Is Here!

We're now shipping the new Hacker Deluxe Edition . . . This set includes all the cards and rules from the original Hacker and Hacker II: The Dark Side. (Both of which won Origins Awards . . . preen, preen.)

We did cap it at six players: the original Hacker II allowed you to get up to eight in the game, but few people were playing with more than six and the added components would have pushed up the retail cost.

Other than that, pretty much the same. We did improve the graphics on the various components, since we had to make new masters anyway.

This should put a stop to the original game selling for $80 or more on Ebay . . .

(By the way . . . if you have the original game but not the supplement, and you want to save a few bucks, you can visit Warehouse 23 for one of the remaining copies of Hacker II and add it to the game you have.
-- Steve Jackson

Warehouse 23 News: Holiday Shipping Alert

Just a friendly reminder to place your holiday orders early to ensure timely arrival.

November 4, 2001: Our Mason D'etre

A few weeks back, we turned Mason on. Most of you probably didn't notice, which is good, because you weren't supposed to. Mason is a component-based dynamic content system built on top of mod_perl; it will enable us to develop cooler web applications, faster. And it's 100% backwards compatible with all of our old code.

The first significant part of the website to run under Mason is the now-automated New Releases page. If you didn't notice much of a difference there, that's also good, because, again, you weren't supposed to. But it's better for us, because now scheduling and description changes propagate from our database without having to go through an intervening human.

Of course, we really just picked Mason because of the name. Fnord.
-- Mark Cogan

Warehouse 23 News: They Just Keep Coming

Another batch of Rifts books are now available from Warehouse 23: Rifts England, Rifts Pantheons of the Megaverse, Rifts Coalition Navy.

November 3, 2001: The All-Seeing Eye Knows No Blind Alley

Illuminated Site of the Week: So if you find yourself, say, here, don't be too sure that's not right where They want you.

-- Suggested by Kristian Madsen

Warehouse 23 News: Kung Fu Butt Kicking

The new Feng Shui adventure, Burning Shaolin, calls upon a band of honorable warriors to battle a demon sorcerer in a legendary mountain monastary.

November 2, 2001: Good Words For Frag

There's a new review of Frag at 3D Action Planet. They like it! Zapped us a bit on the price, but agreed it was worth it for the fun. (For the record, the price annoys US a bit, too. We had to charge that much because of the big color maps. We think we've found a reliable source at a much better price, and we may be able to charge less for things like this in the future.)

Anyway, I quote: "Frag is just like playing a first-person shooter, without the computer. A terrific concept, fast gameplay, and easy-to-learn rules combine to make this game one of a kind."

Good reviews are one thing that makes this job worth while . . .

One Last Bit Of Chaos

We sold all but one of the Chaos sets. So somebody want to buy that one? The Illuminator describing the Chaos stuff is here. According to Michelle, we also have 4 ball sets, 3 xylophone keys, 1 trampoline, 1 connector set, 1 ball trap, 1 loop de loop, 1 vortex, and 1 track set left. Somebody come clean us out . . .
-- Steve Jackson

Warehouse 23 News: Tactical Fleet Combat and Empire Building

Build an interstellar empire and defeat your rivals in Galactic Starfire, Fourth Edition, the newest version of the classic game from Starfire Design Studio.

November 1, 2001: February Releases

Here's our February release schedule. Finally, the new Munchkin expansion is underway . . . we think you'll really like Unnatural Axe, and if you don't, we'll send an Ancient Enraged Plutonium Dragon for you.

Here you'll also see a lot of rescheduled Car Wars stuff, the first supplement for GURPS WWII, and some reprints you've been asking for.

The neat thing about this page doesn't even show . . . it was automatically generated, from text and URLs in a database created by our Mercenary Code Monkey, Mark Cogan. Is he good? He's good.
-- Steve Jackson

Warehouse 23 News: Sustained by Faith

Church of the Prophets, for 7th Sea, details the history of the Vaticine church and provides information on characters and adventures based on it.

Past columns

Steve Jackson Games
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