The Daily Illuminator
February 1 through February 28, 1995
Feb. 28, 1995
All our hard work of the past few weeks is finally bearing a little fruit --
we got the advance copies of GURPS
Voodoo in today, and boy, does it look hot!
When the printer finishes with a job for us, they ship boxes and boxes of it
by regular motor freight, which takes around a week. A select handful of
copies, however, get popped into an overnight package, and that's what we
got today.
GURPS
Voodoo should ship in about another week, which means it
will be on game store shelves 2 to 3 weeks from now.
-- Scott Haring
Feb. 26, 1995
Oops, forgot to do an Illuminator on Friday . . . this weekender will have to
make up for it.
We've posted the revised, final, Official INWO Tournament
Rules for everybody's amusement. Just follow the links.
On an unrelated note, it's good to know that after 20 years of playing
these games (and 12 years as an "industry professional," a term that is
sometimes synonymous with "jaded burn-out"), a game can still cross my
desk that gives me an itch to drop everything and play it immediately.
Friday, that game was Iron Dragon, new from Mayfair. It's a
train game in the mode of Empire Builder and
Eurorails, but with a fantasy twist -- Magical cargos! A
vast underground kingdom! Sea travel! Construction foremen of different
fantasy races that give you different types of game bonuses! It looks
really cool . . . I'll let you know how it plays as soon as I can get
a game up.
-- Scott Haring
Feb. 23, 1995
All quiet on the SJ Games front today. Although one of our lost sheep
has turned up . . . S. John Ross, who has turned in a first draft of
GURPS Russia and is ready to start on GURPS
Warehouse
23, has been out of touch for a while. He moved, and we lost
track of him. Well, the Illuminati have found him again, and the books
will go forward.
-- Steve Jackson
Feb. 22, 1995
Every Wednesday, at 3 p.m. sharp (more or less), we have an editorial
meeting. We put out the most dangerous fires, look a little ways down the
scheduling road, and try to set a few priorities for the next week.
We have several staffers on death marches -- but unlike last week,
instead of a production crunch, writing deadlines are the bugaboo. Steve is
laboring mightily on The INWO Book -- 144 pages of
card art, designer notes, rules variants, war stories from the playtest
front lines, and more. And Derek Pearcy is finishing the final draft of In Nomine; once he is finished, production begins in earnest, and the game will
be out! When? May, I figure . . .
-- Scott Haring
Feb. 21, 1995
Horrible news . . . we just heard that freelance game designer and author
Nigel Findley has died of a heart attack in Vancouver, B.C.
Nigel was one of the most prolific and dependable freelancers in the
business, and on top of that, one of the best. He wrote GURPS
Illuminati and GURPS Supporting Cast (with Fraser
Cain) for us, but was probably best known as the definitive
Shadowrun writer. If a Shadowrun
supplement had his name on it, you bought it. Even people (like me) who do
not play Shadowrun regularly loved to read his work. He
also wrote for just about everybody in the industry, both game
supplements and novels.
Most recently, Nigel was involved with a group of Vancouver-based
writers, helping them with their craft and giving them advice on breaking
into the game business. The new Adventures Unlimited
magazine is published by many of them. His loss will be felt throughout
gaming by everyone who knew him or enjoyed his work.
-- Scott Haring
Feb. 20, 1995
One more late night . . . and it all goes to the printer! Thanks to the
production wizards -- Rick Martin, Jeff Koke and Derek Pearcy. We got the
INWO Unlimited rulebook, GURPS CthulhuPunk and the last
bits of Pyramid #12 out the door.
Now what? First, we find a way to not ever again force a watermelon-
sized chunk of work like that down the garden hose that is our production
pipeline. Plus, I need to get Pyramid #13 together, plus make
sure that the next GURPS release, GURPS
Robots, comes out on time . . .
In other news, we have acquired a couple of new friendly faces around
here: Steve hired Rebecca Bross (becca@io.com) as his new
Executive Assistant, and Will Fisher has come on board in the bookkeeping
department. Welcome!
-- Scott Haring
Feb. 19, 1995
Here I sit, hacking away at the INWO Unlimited rulebook. It
will go to press tomorrow, it will, it will. I'll probably try to
upload what I have before I go home, but it's in Quark format now,
with non-ASCII characters galore.
Derek came by and we played with our new QuickTake camera. He shot
me in my TEAM INWO shirt, and we stuck it on my web
page.
The whole thing took less than an hour, counting time to find some
slightly missing disks. Neat.
-- Steve Jackson
Feb. 18, 1995
The long-suffering Mr. Haring, along with Mr. Pearcy, Mr. Martin,
Mr. Koke and Ms. Stephens, sacrificed their Saturday on the altar
of Making That Deadline. (A visitor from FASA pronounced herself
impressed.) And how did it go?
Pretty well. Time Travel went out. The
Voodoo
blueline corrections came in today, and they got done.
Pyramid
12 went in, though not completely (it's going to be beautiful - thank you,
Richard Meaden!). And CthulhuPunk . . . didn't quite get all
finished, though not for lack of anybody's trying.
So it will go in Monday. We're probably still okay on the schedule. Also
Monday, the INWO Unlimited rulebook goes in. Busy, busy. People around
here will deserve a break next week. Hope they get it.
-- Steve Jackson
Feb. 17, 1995
What a week . . . A lot of long hours as we try to get five
projects out the door in one week!
The INWO Unlimited Cards went out the door earlier this week, as did
the GURPS Religion reprint. Still to go: the GURPS Time
Travel reprint (with all-new art!), GURPS
CthulhuPunk,
Pyramid issue #12, and the INWO Unlimited rulebook.
Steve is still mulling over the last of the rule changes and clarifications
for the rulebook -- check out the INWO home page for more
details.
-- Scott Haring, new Managing Editor, wondering at times like this why he
took the job . . .
Feb. 16, 1995
INWO now has a pair of mailing lists, maintained by Mike Dalton (gaucho@io.com).
You can read about them and subscribe from the INWO homepage.
As an aside, I'll be out of town and offline for about a week.
Until next time ...
-- Jim Cloos
Feb. 15, 1995
All the INWO card corrections and updates have gone to the printer.
The Unlimited Edition is still on schedule. And there was much
rejoicing.
-- Steve Jackson
Feb. 14, 1995
In Nomine artwork
-- and a lot of it -- is now available for browsing.
Warning: this is a big batch of files. Unless you have a fast browser,
you may want to go for coffee after you hit this link. But by all means,
come on by and let us know what you think!
-- Jim Cloos
Feb. 12, 1995
Hammering continues on the INWO card and rules changes. Not only has
the
rulebook gone to 20 pages, but the type will be a bit smaller as well ...
there
are just a lot of things to add, to answer every halfway-reasonable rules
question that's been raised and to do the other things we want to do.
-- Steve Jackson
Feb. 10, 1995
Today we saw - for the first time other than on a computer screen - the
way the Unlimited INWO cards will look. Very nice; sometimes you look
at
a proof and change it, but these are just right. The purple is brighter on
Resources, the italic type looks good on titles ... and instead of white
type, we went with the same pastel color that is in each text box. They
look really pretty.
-- Steve Jackson
Feb. 9, 1995
We got our distributor feedback on the INWO blank cards. Not only
are we going ahead with the project, we'll print at least twice as many
as the maximum we thought we might do ... This will be a June
release.
-- Steve Jackson
Feb. 8, 1995
You would not believe the fun we are having as we try to get the
whole office netted and on Windows. Computer 1 can only see Printer 1,
but Computer 2 sees only Printer 3 (which is downstairs from it),
while Computer 4 won't talk to the net at all ...
But slowly, bit by bit, it comes together. I think.
-- Steve Jackson
Feb. 7, 1995
Another death march, but this time a successful one. GURPS
Voodoo went to the printer, making the FedEx deadline by a
good three minutes. And the INWO stuff is coming under control.
-- Steve Jackson
Feb. 6, 1995
Just one of those days, today. We needed to get GURPS
Voodoo
to the printer, as well as a large batch of material related to the
INWO Unlimited Edition. And the day dragged on, and the day dragged
on, and it got late, and nothing got out. We hate it when that happens.
That probably blows our February ship date for Voodoo.
In INWO news, very large amounts of proposed rule and card
material have been posted to rec.games.trading-cards.misc, and the
FAQs on the web page have all been updated.
-- Steve Jackson
Feb. 3, 1995
Things are pretty slow around here today. Steve came back to the
office after spending two days at home reading net response to INWO
and making notes about the Unlimited Edition. He is over his illness
and looks positively chipper.
Today is the last day for our Print Buyer, Andrew Hartsock. He is
going back to school to finish his degree. Good bye, good luck,
Andrew, and thanks.
--Jeff Koke
Feb. 2, 1995
Happy Groundhog Day! I could have told you that winter was over ...
80 degrees here in Austin and skies so blue you could drown in them.
Anyway, the first INWO Press Sheet Auction is closed.
Congratulations to all the winners, and thanks. You helped raise over
$13,000 to be divided among the artists and colorists who worked on
the project (including me, thanks again).
The offices were pretty quiet today. Steve is at home slogging
through the thousands of INWO posts on the 'net, and Derek and I are
plugging away at the art for the Unlimited Edition. GURPS
Voodoo is set to go to the printer tomorrow, so it will be
back in time for a late February ship. Look for it in the stores in
early March.
--Jeff Koke
Feb. 1, 1995
Our fourth-quarter 1994 royalties were due yesterday. Our fourth-
quarter
1994 royalties were paid yesterday, too. This is a red-
letter
day ... it's been a long time since that happened. Between the cash
shortages from the Secret Service days, and then serious delays in
our
own accounting, royalties have been an embarrassment around here.
We
always paid, but we always paid late. Well, not any
more.
Huge thanks to Monica Stephens and Joyce Jackson for getting the
books
so caught up that we could actually compute all December sales
before
the end of January!
-- Steve Jackson