The past eludes us and our view of the future is shortened every day, leading The Long Now Foundation to suggest a new way of looking at history and the perpetuation of knowledge. They refuse to confine their views and ambitions with any kind of mortal timeframe, acknowledging the limitlessness of intellectual pursuit. They even have to build a new timepiece to accommodate their vast tapestry, and they want your help.
-- Suggested by Edward MacGregor
There's no problem so large that it can't be whittled down.
You're going to lose a few units along the way, maybe a lot; accept it.
A bunch of minor problems, if you don't stamp them out, can wear you down and kill you.
Teamwork is essential. Nobody has all the attributes to succeed on their own.
If your movement is high and your defense is low, don't let them shoot at you.
If your defense is high and your movement is low, don't run.
In the end, only one thing matters. Know what it is, and be prepared to sacrifice anything for it.
Time is always running out.
(Thanks to Andrew Walters for this.)
GURPS In Nomine promised an online supplement with the "gearhead mechanics" showing just how the various celestial powers were designed in GURPS terms. It's now up, for those who want to see exactly how Walter Milliken worked it out. Click on the happy demon: >:-)
Spotting a flying saucer is all about playing the odds. Does that mean you have to wait around in the desert, a slave to Area 51's weird magnetism? Not at all. The National UFO Reporting Center can tell you who's seen what, where they saw it and what it looked like. Gear your voyeurism to your tastes. Then again, if you like the desert, you can play the odds there, too: Las Vegas has had over 40 sightings of its own.
-- Suggested by Brett Slocum
-- Michelle
Steve Jackson Games' liberation of stifled gamers from cramped corporate cubicles continues with the hiring of William Toporek, our new Grand Marshal of the South Wing, Minister of All Things Stocked and Shipped, Connoisseur of Automatic Weapon Fire Rules, and Rosicrucian Knight Tempura. (Otherwise known as Traffic and Warehouse/Shipping Manager.)
Former military intelligence officer, repo man, and commercial debt collector, we don't expect William to have much trouble with the roaming armed security drones. Welcome aboard, Airborne!
Traveller Deck Plan 1: Beowulf-class Free
Trader
The Free Trader Beowulf is under attack! Help retake the ship with our first set of Traveller Deck
Plans. Thirteen double-sided maps join to form the full Beowulf - with hexes on one side and squares on the other, every Traveller fan will be able to use them! And there's a sheet of Cardboard Heroes miniatures with crew and pirates - start adventuring
immediately!
Hang in there, Traveller fans . . . help is on the way . . .
13 two-sided maps with a 4-color cover insert, with 1 sheet of Traveller-specific Cardboard Heroes in ziplock bag.
#6617, ISBN 1-55634-460-0. $20.95.
Awful Green Things from Outer Space
The crew of the exploration ship ZNUTAR just wanted to cruise around the Galaxy, discovering strange new worlds and playing pool. But
then their ship was invaded by the Awful Green Things . . . and suddenly they were fighting for their lives!
In this wacky two-player game, one player controls the Awful Green Things. They grow and multiply every turn... especially if they can gobble up a crew member! The other player commands the crew, frantically trying weapon after weapon (pool sticks, fire extinguishers, cans of Zgwortz) in hope of finding something that kills the monsters.
This great game was created by Tom Wham. It first appeared in Dragon Magazine, and was later released as a boxed game from TSR. When they let it go out of print, SJ Games picked it up! This edition includes Tom's "Outside the Znutar" rules and counters, for going out the airlocks and fighting on the surface of the ship.
Rule booklet, counter sheets, map, and dice in a video box with a cardboard slip cover.
#1335, ISBN 1-55634-462-7, $14.95.
And skis and teeth and bottled water. If you're not sure whether your more unusual gift choices will get there in time - or at all - check out HotAIR's Postal Experiments. Jeff Van Bueren has sent it all for you, and listed the surprisingly competent results.
-- Suggested by Josh Marquart
Hasbro, the parent company of WotC, has had a bad year, with slumping stock prices. Recently it agreed to sell its Hasbro Interactive and games.com divisions to a French company, Infogrames. For more about the woes of Hasbro, see the CBS Marketwatch story. It reports, among other things, that "faltering sales of Pokemon trading cards could push the company into the red."
Our new Chief Technology Officer is Ben Kimball of Austin, Texas. He enjoys music performance and composition, gaming, and
painting endless miniatures poorly. If you
asked him to play a game today, he'd probably suggest Ogre, Formula Dé, GURPS Operation Endgame, The Hills Rise Wild!, or SUPER GIANT MONSTER SHOWDOWN. (If you didn't like those choices, you could just ask again tomorrow.)Before coming to SJ Games, he worked for such mundane corporations as Motorola, TechWorks, and ecommercesoft. Fortunately, he did eventually manage to find his tinfoil hat and escape his cubicle cage.
Now we keep him under lock and key in the basement, where his responsibilities will range from maintaining our own techie infrastructure to working with SJ on (gasp) computer applications of our games.
I had fun.
Unfortunately, nobody thought to bring the camera, so we don't have any pictures of me flooring it in my shiny green kart (matched my Ogre shirt), or Phil and Alex grinning maniacally as they slammed each other on the bumper track, or Russell unmasking himself as the Air Hockey God, or Shawn and Dina striding through the House of the Virtual Dead, blowing little chunks of zombie-pixels in all directions. Or the peanut fight at lunch.
So you'll just have to imagine it.
-- Steve Jackson
GURPS Celtic Myth (reprint)
GURPS Celtic Myth lets you enter the world of the pagan Celts -- the people who lived
in western Europe before the Romans and Christians came. It delves into their mythological and magical lives and history.
128 pages, #6074, ISBN: 1-55634-195-4, $19.95
GURPS Supers (reprint)
The supers are here! Costumed crusaders fighting against the forces of evil . . .
monstrous villains terrorizing the world . . . your creations are only limited
by your imagination! GURPS Supers lets you create real heroes and real villains, each
fully defined in both power and personality - not just
combat monsters. The second edition of GURPS Supers introduces system improvements to
let you create superpowers the way you want to run them!
128 pages, #6017, ISBN: 1-55634-493-7, $19.95
Am I Hot or Not? gets 7 million hits a
day; me-toos could hardly be far behind. You can weigh in on its little brother
Am I Hot?, look over the black sheep of the
family at Am I Goth or Not?, or deci
de which father of our country you would like the best at Brunching Shuttlecocks
' Am I President or Not?Eh, you've probably got a better shot with one of your kissing cousins at the il luminated Monkey Hot or N ot?
-- Suggested by Brandon
The Rice administration has, on the flimsiest of pretexts, taken over and shut down (and even vandalized) the student radio station, KTRU. Yes, vandalized. Adding insult to injury, after they locked the students out, one of the University VPs ordered custodial staff to "clean up" the station's door, covered with bumper stickers left by generations of KTRU staff.
I wasn't a KTRU staffer - I was on the student paper, the Thresher. The radio station was the rivals, the competitors for staff, Those Guys Down The Hall. But we were all working the same beat and serving the same student body, and when something interesting happened, we worked together to report it. KTRU, like the newspaper, was a free student voice.
Well, no more. And what was this about? Well, it seems that the university is having trouble finding commercial radio stations that want to broadcast its athletic events. KTRU already gives university athletics a lot of air time, but the administration wanted twice as much, for starters. The student staff objected . . . a couple of DJs made the mistake of conducting a silly on-air protest in which they "compromised" by playing music and broadcasting a game at the same time . . . and BOOM. Padlocked doors.
And, unless they were massively misquoted in the Houston Chronicle story, the administrators' justifications are bald-faced hypocrisy, the kind we used to hear from Communist countries after they shot students. Well, at least nobody's getting shot here . . . but judge for yourself; the link is below.
Incidentally, the station is paid for by student funds. But the license is in the University's name. Nobody found that sinister . . . until last week. KTRU was, for 30 years, a student resource, a great alternative music station that featured campus news but could be heard off campus. Looks like it's about to become an arm of the Athletic Department.
If you happen to be a Rice alum, or thought you were a friend of the school, check out savektru.org, which has links to various news stories covering this in much more detail. You can also read about protest efforts set for this afternoon and evenings at Rice.
If I were in Houston, I'd go. Anybody want to go for me? This ex-Thresher editor really doesn't like what they're doing to Rice radio.
-- Steve Jackson
Our Assistant Webmaster Keith Johnson is now the proud father of a baby girl, Danica Lynn, born November 29th. Keith's already got a web page for her, and has even registered her own domain name. (We expect the illuminated borg implants will be next.)
Anyway, congratulations, Keith!
Silicon Graphics, Inc. recalls a little of the chaos of the 60s with lavarand, a groovy system for plucking random numbers out of lava lamps.
-- Suggested by Wayne West
