Steve Jackson's Blog

Did you know that today is National Shakespeare Day? No? Well, why not?!? It's only the day one of the greatest writers in history was born! It is also, coincidentally, the day he died. That's right! William Shakespeare was born on April 23rd, 1564, and died on that same date in 1616.  What makes Shakespeare so great? For one thing, he was a prolific poet and playwright. There's a reason why, 400 years after they were written, Shakespeare's plays and sonnets are still taught in schools and performed on the stage. The Bard beautifully captured the essence of the human condition in his writings. That is a big part of why Shakespeare's plays and sonnets still appeal today. For another thing, The Bard's writings were so prolific that we still use many of the words and phrases he coined! Have you ever been on a wild-goose chase? Do you wear your heart on your sleeve? Maybe you are a night owl who burns the candle at both ends? Have you been told you're too big for your breeches? Could it be that you've told a bad joke to break the ice? You can have too much of a good thing, and that is not for the faint-hearted.  So, how does one celebrate National Shakespeare Day? Attend a Shakespearean Performance - Find out if there's a theatre troupe performing a Shakespeare play near you. Get tickets, then enjoy the show! And if you think those plays are only for High Society, think again. Shakespeare wrote most of his plays for the commoner It only seems highbrow now because the way we speak English has changed. Read a Sonnet - "Shall I compare thee to a summer's day? . . ." Shakespeare's sonnets are probably the most accessible way to get a little of The Bard into your day. Sonnets are short poems, and you are likely more familiar with them than you might think. Talk Like Shakespeare - This is similar to talking like a pirate, but with more "thee" and "thou" thrown in. If you happen to have a ruff you can wear and a large quill and scroll to carry around, that would help drive the point home. Play a Shakespearean Game - Okay, this one is blatant pandering, but Munchkin Shakespeare  Deluxe is a lot of fun! Not only does it have all the bad puns of Munchkin (Shakespeare loved puns, bad or otherwise), it also has a ton of cards based on phrases that were coined by The Bard himself! You could also play it fast and loose in the Globe Theatre  . . . playmat, that is.



Remember - the world is your oyster on this National Shakespeare Day! 

 

– Bridget Westerman

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!

Try as I might, I cannot see this as anything but fair political comment.

– 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!

The location is Grantsville, West Virginia. The year is 2000 . . . or is it? Residents of this quaint town suddenly find themselves transported to 1632 Germany during the Thirty Years' War. What happens next? You'll need to play GURPS Ring of Fire to find out!  GURPS Ring of Fire is based on 1632 – also known as Ring of Fire – an alternate history story that takes place over a series of 30+ books and anthologies. It's the largest alt-history setting ever written! The series was created and spearheaded by Eric Flint, and the tale has now been adapted into a GURPS supplement. Steve Jackson Games collaborated with Baen Books on the project, and it features contributions from several writers of the series – Griffin Barber, Charles E. Gannon, Walter H. Hunt, and Robert E. Waters. Award-winning fan-favorite GURPS author William H. Stoddard edited and adapted the series to be compatible with GURPS Fourth Edition. The cover art was created by Larry Elmore.

In the RPG, players are told about the Ring of Fire event and how the world changed because of it. It includes information on scores of characters and nine famous organizations from the book series, giving players and GMs a starting point for planning campaigns and adventures. They'll build their characters using the GURPS system. Weapons, important equipment, and vehicles are described, and they can be copied or reinvented. Thorough timelines give players a way to add extra flavor and details. Maps help add visual elements.

This tabletop roleplaying game is perfect for GURPS enthusiasts and alt-history buffs alike. Fans who would like to learn more can visit GURPS Ring of Fire 's BackerKit page and sign up for project notifications.

– Michelle Richardson

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!

This post is about a link I've had open in my "too many tabs" horde for a while that has merits . . . and a caveat. I'm sharing it as a half-baked "this is interesting" idea.

Behold: The Hummingbird Clock . The idea behind this 2016 project by artist Lawrence Abu Hamdan is that minute fluctuations in the hum of the U.K.'s power grid make it possible to pinpoint exactly when any audio recording was made, based on the background noise of that electrical flow. This "fingerprint" could help determine if a video file has been tampered with or its timestamp altered.

There's a video at the link above that goes into more detail, although the website it connects to – hummingbirdclock[dot]info – no longer works. However, that site has been saved at archive.org . . . here's a link to the last capture they had in 2025. THAT WEBSITE MAKES NOISE! Beware if you're – say – wearing AirPods cranked at an overly loud level. Hypothetically.

The accompanying archived "About" page offers a smidge more info.

One reason I haven't shared it in the past six months I've had the tabs open (along with the fact that the page itself doesn't work) is that I can't quite figure out if this is a legit science-type phenomenon or a hypothetical "makes you think"-type art project. I haven't been able to find any real-world applications of this tech. Moreover, it doesn't have a Wikipedia page, which makes me question . . . well, everything.

Still, true or not, it's a cool possible idea, which makes it ideal fodder for (say) a bit of high-tech flavor for an adventure in GURPS Action or near-future cyberpunk.

– 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!

If you've been on a bit of a space-nostalgia kick for the past while, may I humbly suggest this video from the Gary Friedman archives of a tour of NASA's computers from the 1980s. It's sobering to think that the systems behind the Voyager and Galileo programs were the merest fraction of the computing power I waste Rickrolling people.

– 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!

During my trip to Japan I was interviewed by Mr. Seki, aka "Mr. Urban Legend." He pulled me right in, and we had a great time. It is now on YouTube, and you can see the interview here!With the release of this video yesterday (Tokyo time), the Japanese edition of INWO Assassins , with its four new cards illustrated by Dan Smith, has climbed to 11th on the book section on Amazon.co.jp. https://www.amazon.co.jp/dp/4868011367/







– 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!

The Red Dragon Inn has once again welcomed Spyke and Flower to the pub in an already-fully-funded(!) campaign that just launched on Kickstarter. Fans of starting a round of gambling, buying your opponents a drink, and messing with their fortitude can choose between the original 2018 art and the new art, updated to match the regular cards from The Red Dragon Inn . . .  or grab both at a discounted price!There's even an all-new prize: the Six-Fingered Glove, made famous by Count Tyrone Rugen.

– Michelle Richardson

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!

Ahoy, Me Hearties! If you pre-ordered  Brigand's Bluff , you should be receiving it any day. We know you'll be thrilled to gather your band of pirates for a game night to try this all-new, dice-based social deduction game. Because each session is different and you might run out of score sheets from playing again and again all day long, we have a free PDF download for you. The printable scorepad sheets come two to a page, and you can even choose to use it if you'd prefer to keep the original in unused condition. Brigand's Bluff is now shipping, so set sail to Warehouse 23 to plunder your copy!

– Michelle Richardson

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!

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart recently featured a segment on the Electronic Frontier Foundation, interviewing their Executive Director, Cindy Cohn. She's also the author of Privacy's Defender: My Thirty-Year Fight Against Digital Surveillance.

Following the show, the EFF shared an interesting article to help folks learn more about their history, their mission, and how they're protecting your Constitutional rights in the digital era . . . and we're mentioned!  By now, you've probably heard that Steve Jackson Games was raided by the U.S. Secret Service in 1990, with agents seizing the company's computers. No charges were ever filed against us. However, private company emails were read, and customer information was deleted. The loss of revenue due to the raid was substantial, so Steve took them to court for damages and the illegal seizure of property in Steve Jackson Games, Inc. v. United States Secret Service. Click here to read a more detailed account of the raid and the years that followed.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation was formed around the same time. They were instrumental in the case, providing funds that made it possible to challenge the government's illegal actions. The nonprofit, whose mission is "to ensure that technology supports freedom, justice, and innovation for all people of the world," is now over 35 years old and has helped countless organizations and individuals safeguard their rights.
 
To this day, we're deeply grateful for their support. Please visit their website to learn how they're helping you – and consider donating to their cause.

– Michelle Richardson

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!

For tabletop RPG gamers, here's an easy recommendation: dCode.fr. This website has a heaping helping of tools to decode (and encode) just about any variety of cypher . . . including being able to identify them (or at least run through various permutations).

On the GM side, it's useful for creating interesting codes so that your criminal masterminds aren't all using a basic substitution cypher. On the player side, it can easily solve codes once you know – or guess – certain details. This can represent smart heroes with the skills to break codes on their own, or speed up gameplay when the players know what the code is and how to solve it but don't want to spend game time actually implementing the decipher algorithm. Whether you want to mess around with a periodic table or decode something written in the Scream Cypher, we're sure you'll find something AABAB BAABB ABBAA.

– 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!