Steve Jackson's Blog

I had the privilege and joy of spending a weekend playing  Seven-Part Pact  with Jay, SJ, and four other friends. This was my fourth time in Isha, but for most of the table, it was a completely new experience. Between Session Zero on Friday and 5 months of game time on Saturday and Sunday, we played for nearly 20 hours . . . and my brain is still reeling.

This time around, I got to play as the Sage, safeguarding the destinies of the Pact and weaving the disparate plot threads together into a grander cosmic narrative. This was definitely the trickiest game for me to get into so far, but when it finally clicked, it was totally exhilarating. 

So here's a non-exhaustive list of game highlights from our wizardly weekend.

The Warlock had some very complicated feelings for the Mariner, which he processed by punching the Mariner repeatedly in the face."We're wizards. We don't get to be normal."Our child Sorcerer convinced the Mariner to help him call upon the Kraken, only for them both to realize that they had no way to control the beast when it arrived because neither had looked up its true name first.I went to the Queen with the intent to kill her, but when it looked like she might reject her destiny (and blow up my entire board state), I instead had to negotiate with her. I ended up transforming her into the King so that she could replace him after faking her own death. And I swore to her that I'd never tell the Warlock about this plan.Also, the Warlock was her brother.We fought the Devil in his true form, and (mostly) lived to tell the tale.Deus Ex Slide Whistle.This roleplaying game is unlike anything else I've ever experienced. I can't wait to see what happens when it's out in the wild.

– Irene Zielinski

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!

Car Wars players who print in 3D have things fairly good: CARnage and CARnage 2 have STLs of all the cars (including unarmed versions), tons of weapons and accessories for conversions (there's even an Armored Beer Fridge!), arena items, and so on. But we don't have . . . roads! Dani Amengual, a Kickstarter creator from Spain, has solved this problem. They have a Kickstarter called On the Road . . . 58 assorted road sections, along with a sectional bridge that will be awesome in an arena. (My car can be shot into flaming wreckage from a whole new angle!)  Scale might be an issue – the pieces are in 1/48 scale. Car Wars is 1/72, so the railings on the bridge, the clips that hold the roads together, etc., might come out weak or non-existent, so I recommend printing the downscaled clips in resin. I've backed this project myself, so as soon as I get the files, I'll be able to make suggestions on how to address the scale problems. And the Kickstarter is only $7!

– Jean McGuire

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're like me, you've been a bit more into lunar travel in recent weeks, thanks to some lucky, lucky astronauts who got to go farther away from Earth than anyone's ever managed before. Well, everything new is old again, with Moonjs: An Online Apollo Guidance Computer (AGC) Simulator. It's a JavaScript-based web-browser simulation of the Colossus 249 computer that was used with the Apollo 9 mission. It's also a port of The Virtual AGC Project that wants to bring as much of that last-millennium spacefaring compu-tech to your own modern-day systems as possible.

Check out the Apollo Guidance Computer Wikipedia page for more insight on what travelers 6 decades ago were dealing with. And remember: When the moon hits your eye as you calculate pi, that's a-Moore's Law.

– 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!

I'm a huge fan of flavor details in my tabletop RPGs: If possible, I love it when I don't have to say, "The surveillance drone is cutting edge," but can add something colorful like, "The drone seems to be the cutting-edge Skyskreamer 7000 . . . Here's a picture."

To that end, I humbly offer a YouTube video from the channel Works By Design: "Making the most pickproof lock yet." The video does what it says, coming up with an interesting, innovative lock design that detaches part of the key, rotating it inside the lock to engage with the pins. This ensures there are no accessible components that can be picked or tampered with.

The project even discusses possible attack vectors, so that if your GURPS Action heroes encounter the "pickproof lock," they also have a couple of options that can be mentioned as flavor details for when they roll at a skill penalty. (And if that fails, well, they're action heroes; they may have other boomier tricks up their sleeves . . .)

– 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!

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!