Moe Lane

It’s not entirely dissimilar in layout to the classic silhouette of an OGRE.  Which makes sense. As I noted on Twitter, this picture is insanely evocative of Gary Larson’s classic cartoon How nature says “Do not touch.” It’s like they had a contest.

The crazy looking wattle cup caterpillar has an extremely painful sting. pic.twitter.com/lGq0kAvge0

— Strange Animals (@Strange_Animals) March 21, 2017

UPDATE: My wife says It’s like Scooby-Doo meets Mad Max.  …I married well.

This one is gonna be a gift for my sister-in-law.  She will have no idea that Munchkin Shakespeare exists, but she will love it on sight. So, hey, win.

Basically, Amazon Createspace allows companies like Steve Jackson Games to release titles (in this case, GURPS titles) for softcover print-on-demand. They’ve already tried this with three existing titles: now SJG is going to try three more. If there’s enough demand, SJG will start assigning staff to convert more titles. There’s the faintest possibility of a suggestion of a hint that ‘even older titles’ might be made available, which could mean 3rd edition GURPS, or – dare I hope it? – In Nomine.

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This is remarkably well-played. Shoot, Arby’s social media people apparently even have a small budget. Or at least somebody good at cutting up cardboard.

.@SJGames We had a similar expansion pack in mind. Trade ya’. pic.twitter.com/E6Y5CbkK9E

— Arby's (@Arbys) January 18, 2017

Shiny.

I think there's enough interest! This is a PROTOTYPE of an acrylic #Ogre! No specifics yet, but it's too awesome not to share! -HS pic.twitter.com/dJ9IcSnJOf

— Steve Jackson Games (@SJGames) December 14, 2016

If you’ve found my fan In Nomine stuff of interest and would like to know more about the game itself, well, Steve Jackson Games has put their entire e-line on mega sale for the next two weeks.

The @SJGames In Nomine PDFs are 40% off until December 15! https://t.co/ZHIiBd5lhp pic.twitter.com/Wws39pw9VO

— philipjreed (@philipjreed) November 29, 2016

For those who might find this of interest: I have playtest credit on a bunch of these, was the Lead Playtester for the Ethereal Player’s Guide, and have an additional Materials credit in Liber Umbrarum. …Hey, literary immortality is where you find it. Anyway, check it out.

‘Soon’ being defined as ‘December.’ …Well, that’s about eighty to ninety days from now, so I guess that actually counts as ‘soon’ in RPG terms. I mean, shoot, September’s half over already. Anyway, be sure to nag your Friendly Local Gaming Stores:

Print, fill out, and give this form to your #FLGS to preorder #GURPS #MarsAttacks! https://t.co/rlJ8sIQkBr -HS pic.twitter.com/WqCNRYg71R

— Steve Jackson Games (@SJGames) September 12, 2016

I liked the Tim Burton Mars Attacks!, almost in spite of itself. It entertained, even though most of the characters in it were kind of horrible and/or broken. But it didn’t certainly didn’t lack for chutzpah…

Ogre Designer’s Edition, of course, being that huge-as-heck wargame that I totally geeked out about when it got Kickstartered… a few years back? Sheesh, time flies, huh? Anyway: Steve Jackson Games will be putting out an expansion later this year, with a hard cap of $65 on the retail price. New maps, more buildings, possibly the Ninja ‘stealth’ Ogre.  And yes, the concept of a ‘stealth’ tank that’s bigger than my house raises eyebrows in-game, too.

More about it all here.

It’s all that I dreamed of, and more.

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It’s supposed to come today; and I have to say, I’m not happy with FedEx’s customer service on this. I don’t like being blithely told that something that belongs to me cannot be delivered the way that I want it to be delivered (I’m not a business; I want them to deliver the product without a signature if necessary so that I can pick up my kids from school and/or go food shopping and/or do any other household chores that involve leaving the house). And I really don’t like their refusal to give me any sort of time estimate for a delivery – or even a head’s up as to the likely delivery window.

They haven’t screwed up this order yet, but I am not confident that FedEx is going to avoid doing so, today.  And it won’t be the first time, either.

Steve Jackson reported that he’s not in need of a relief fund – but I don’t think that he’ll object if folks help out his less fortunate neighbors. Here are a couple of links:

• American Red Cross.
• Central TX Floods Relief Fund (part of the Austin Disaster Relief Network).

I tossed in some cash because, hey, I’m just going to spend it on role-playing games otherwise.

I just wanted to share this.  Background: I ordered a rather large and elaborate game called OGRE from Steve Jackson Games as part of a crowdfunding program known as Kickstarter.  This particular Kickstarter was very popular: too popular, in fact.  It was so popular that getting the game to print took an extra year.  But now it’s being shipped! Almost smoothly:

Many people have asked, in many different ways, when we will finish shipping. I can’t answer that until the shipping process is debugged. If we have to throw more bodies at it, we will, but right now it looks like we just need to throw more brains. There will be regular updates.

Apparently there were a couple of minor bugs in the initial rollout, but Steve Jackson Games is on top of them, retains a healthy awareness of what the actual problems are, has its top management fully involved in the process, is maintain full communications links among all levels of the company, takes responsibility for errors, and will maintain full transparency about the situation.  Because that’s how you stop small problems from becoming large ones.

Ah, the private sector.

Moe Lane