Slashdot Mirror

Sounds like a more advanced version of Killer.

Plagarized without attribution from SJ Games.

I mean, come on. At least change around the text a little bit.

+5, Star Munchkin reference!

This looks like an online version of Car Wars. Which was a fantastic game on paper, I hope it's done justice online.

To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;

Another big hit was Four Player Chess, formerly purchaseable at 4playerchess.com but is now managed by a domain-name squatter. :/ Anyway, mine has always been a big hit amongst the Coffee Shop Crowd. it's not too hard one of your own. Take a normal chess board then add three rows to each side (making the board look like a big Plus sign). Add two sets of Chess pieces (preferably all distinct) and you're off!

Steve Jackson Games' Knightmare Chess. It's a card game played while playing chess. Play a card, move a piece. The cards change the rules as you go (e.g. "All Pawns attack forward and move diagnal until this card is banished"). This game in conjunction with Four Player Chess is hours of insane fun. A quick search revealed one for sale elsewhere.

Lunch Money is a sick and masterfully done game of kill-thy-neighbor. Always a big hit amongst those with a ken of violence.

Hot Death UNO. My personal-favorite diversion, an extension of Crazy Eights (UNO), this card game add almost 30 new cards to the game of UNO. For example: Mutual Assured Destruction, Fuck You!, Harvester of Sorrows, The Shitter, Glasnost.... This game is not for the meek and merciful. There's also a PC version here and a Sourceforge project desperately in need of a programmer with mad (motivational) skillz.

Another big hit was Four Player Chess, formerly purchaseable at 4playerchess.com but is now managed by a domain-name squatter. :/ Anyway, mine has always been a big hit amongst the Coffee Shop Crowd. it's not too hard one of your own. Take a normal chess board then add three rows to each side (making the board look like a big Plus sign). Add two sets of Chess pieces (preferably all distinct) and you're off!

Steve Jackson Games' Knightmare Chess. It's a card game played while playing chess. Play a card, move a piece. The cards change the rules as you go (e.g. "All Pawns attack forward and move diagnal until this card is banished"). This game in conjunction with Four Player Chess is hours of insane fun. A quick search revealed one for sale elsewhere.

Lunch Money is a sick and masterfully done game of kill-thy-neighbor. Always a big hit amongst those with a ken of violence.

Hot Death UNO. My personal-favorite diversion, an extension of Crazy Eights (UNO), this card game add almost 30 new cards to the game of UNO. For example: Mutual Assured Destruction, Fuck You!, Harvester of Sorrows, The Shitter, Glasnost.... This game is not for the meek and merciful. There's also a PC version here and a Sourceforge project desperately in need of a programmer with mad (motivational) skillz.

Well, it's a *more* modern incarnation, but even so it's out of print.

Steve Jackson Games is the perfect place to check out for the geek board gamer.
The assorment of games is great, and fill lots of niches. Alot of my non-geek friends enjoy Car Wars, my D&D friends like Munchkin, illuminati appeals to my political friends (its great when "the federal reserve" takes over "girlie magazines"), and everybody loves Ninja Burger.

There's GURPS Bunnies and Burrows, which is based on an earlier non-GURPS PNP game. Pretty fun :)

I've always thought that Illuminati is poker for geeks.

Alex

By the time the company turned around and declared that it would allow people to review their games and share the screenshots, it was too late.

For what it's worth, I've been a follower of SJG for a long time, and I admit that SJ has some particular notions of defending his intellectual property. But overall, it hasn't hurt them over the long haul. If SJG's peculiar stance on their properties shows anything, it's how well SJ understands how bent copyright law is, not how greedy or IP-happy SJ is.

To drag this kicking and screaming back on topic, it raises a question: how far does the copyright on one of those games stretch? The source code? Source code and specific images? Because saying that the copyright applies to not only the source code but to any possible image that might emerge from playing it seems unreasonable. Specific presentation images may be covered by that, but general screenshots probably shouldn't.

By the time the company turned around and declared that it would allow people to review their games and share the screenshots, it was too late.

For what it's worth, I've been a follower of SJG for a long time, and I admit that SJ has some particular notions of defending his intellectual property. But overall, it hasn't hurt them over the long haul. If SJG's peculiar stance on their properties shows anything, it's how well SJ understands how bent copyright law is, not how greedy or IP-happy SJ is.

To drag this kicking and screaming back on topic, it raises a question: how far does the copyright on one of those games stretch? The source code? Source code and specific images? Because saying that the copyright applies to not only the source code but to any possible image that might emerge from playing it seems unreasonable. Specific presentation images may be covered by that, but general screenshots probably shouldn't.

That's just the joke version. Everyone knows that they keep the real one in a different location.

10. Steve Jackson Games is a computer game company.
9. GURPS Cyberpunk is a computer game.
8. We're out of business.
7. We were raided by the FBI.
6. Some of our staff members were arrested by the Secret Service and charged with hacking.
5. This was part of Operation Sun Devil.
4. The raid was after GURPS Cyberpunk.
3. There was a hacker threat to sabotage the 911 system.
2. We have an employee named Lloyd Blankenship.
1. Steve Jackson Games is the second largest game company in the USA.

10. Steve Jackson Games is a computer game company.
9. GURPS Cyberpunk is a computer game.
8. We're out of business.
7. We were raided by the FBI.
6. Some of our staff members were arrested by the Secret Service and charged with hacking.
5. This was part of Operation Sun Devil.
4. The raid was after GURPS Cyberpunk.
3. There was a hacker threat to sabotage the 911 system.
2. We have an employee named Lloyd Blankenship.
1. Steve Jackson Games is the second largest game company in the USA.

In the process of fighting the Secret Service, even with help from the EFF, Steve Jackson Games almost went under.

BTW, I'm not saying that the Steve Jackson case is the same as the FBI's current screw-up. But law enforcement makes mistakes, and sometimes they make big mistakes because they're simply not clued in to popular culture, not to mention computer technology as it is actually used in society.

They've already kept steps to keep this dangerous terrorist from getting his hands on a handbook for computer crime.

I wonder why Car Wars was never turned into a PC or Console game? It's a ready-made extensive system with a lot of source material that would seem to be ideal for a strategy game.

The pizza chains, with help from the CIA, are going to take over the Moral Minority. Fnord.

That's nothing. You should check out the new 2005 Fnord's coming out next year. Reactive armor that propels shrapnel in a 10' wide cone, autotracking and -firing weapon mounts, even a self-destruct mechanism.

You can check 'em out here.

• Developer Tools
• fink, and then:
  • $ fink install nmap;
  • $ fink install osxutils
• Next is Carbon Copy Cloner,
• Transmit or some other ftp file browser.
• Finally, to make it "home", I'll install Windowshade X and Xounds.
• Also will edit my .bash_profile, naturally, and have been known to put a fnorder in the login script.

• I daresay that, unlike before, women members are appreciated. It makes the experience less of a circle jerk, and more of a social club.
  
• You might consider, or be willing to try, playing anything other than D&D. Still the most popular, it nevertheless requires the reading of hundreds of pages of rules, which I just can't get into anymore. The Worlds of Darkness, best known for their Vampire games, really encouraged the roleplaying over the dice rolling; but there's lots of other, and I think, stronger games out there. The site linked is for Steve Jackson Games, best known for GURPS, probably the second-most popular gaming system. (He also did Car Wars, which got a lot of press in the day, but is now pretty stale.)

Hehe - It's actually a quote from my roommate while playing Munchkin.

Five seconds is probably not long enough to know what really happened.

I seriously doubt that.

For every 10 mph a car is moving it will move 15 ft/s. So a car going 60 mph covers 90 ft in one second. Five seconds gives you 450 ft of data at that nominal speed... at which point I seriously question your observational skills if you needed more time to evaluate the situation.

I'd like to thank Steve Jackson Games and Car Wars for that odd bit of knowledge, and for bothering to even do the physics right in a game that largely ignores physics otherwise.

Five seconds is probably not long enough to know what really happened.

I seriously doubt that.

For every 10 mph a car is moving it will move 15 ft/s. So a car going 60 mph covers 90 ft in one second. Five seconds gives you 450 ft of data at that nominal speed... at which point I seriously question your observational skills if you needed more time to evaluate the situation.

I'd like to thank Steve Jackson Games and Car Wars for that odd bit of knowledge, and for bothering to even do the physics right in a game that largely ignores physics otherwise.

As far as systems go, I don't think you can get simpler than GURPS 3d6 for everything (except damage ). I tried picking up AD&D a while ago and got bogged down in the system. GURPS I picked up in about 10 minutes.

Of course, I'm much more into the actual role playing rather than the numbers, so that works for me. When I'm in a munchkin mood, I just play Munchkin.

The goal of a system should be a good compromise between simplicity, realism, and ability to facilitate role playing.

As far as using a P&P system on a computer, well, I'm not so sure about that - it depends on how you want to do things. Generally computers aren't limited to P&P systems as far as mathematical complexity, but they do tend to be more limited in adaptability. This, in my opinion, is mostly due to the fact that computers still cannot compete with the human brain on things of non-deterministic nature.

Suffice it to say that P&P RPGs and CRPGs cater to different crowds, and the merits / follies of both are too subjective to categorize in a difinitive manner.

I always thought a TRUE Car Wars computer game would be great. The closest was Interstate 76, too bad I82 was a waste of time and development. Autoduel was great, but we need a more updated version.

Some people haven't thought through this "roleplaying" thing enough to realize that it's not just about them. People who try to play the absolute bestest of the bestest need to realize that what they're doing is not just aggrandizing themselves, but putting great effort into upstaging others with their wishfully wondrous accomplishments.

On the Bartle scale, I'd have to qualify someone like that either as a KS- or a SK-. They couldn't care less about the world, all they want to deal with is the people, and the preferred form of dealing-with is "oohing and ahhing."

These people need a dose of balance, and not necessarily administered orally either. There are no shortage of point-based systems (like Hero or GURPS) which will enforce power level restrictions through scarcity. They will try to build their ubercharacter, fail, and then say that this is a stupid game, of course. (Sour grapes make the best whine.) Coerce them however you can to build something that fits in with everyone else, and then remind them repeatedly that it's an ensamble game, and that everyone else has a part in it too.

Yes, I know, those aren't MU* systems. But there are places that run them. As I run one of them, I won't publish any links; I don't want to slashdot myself!

BZZZT! And thank you for playing. Here's your lovely parting gift.

1 + 2 + 4 + 8 + 16 + 32 = 63.

You were blocked because your computer was broadcasting an IP address. To learn how to stop this, fix your clock, remove spyware, and increase that certain part, Click here!

Of course, lack of registration makes it hard to see. Try this other site for the real story.

If you see this game at your store, pick it up, along with the two expansions.

In addition to the two expansions, there's Frag PvP, an expansion based on the comic, and Frag Deadlands, a stand-alone game that can be combined with the original.

The homepage at www.sjgames.com/Frag, and has the rules in PDF form, and some fan-created variants.

Who needs this? We have Frag. :-)

Though sadly looks out of print...

An online version of GURPS, aka GURPS Online is in development. The first settings will be the Wild West and a semi-near future setting known as Transhuman Space.

Nonesense! I checked the membership page and you're not listed.

It was bad enough that the directive slid in as a "fast track". The directive needs to be cancelled, perhaps so does the "fast track" program itself seeing as the woman who initiated this directive did so despite conflict of interest.

BTW While y'all are fussing about SCO and other MBA monkey business, there is an attempt to change how U.S. laws are interpreted, which is much more harmful that just changing the laws themselves.

Actually, it was a guy from England named Steve Jackson, who was no relation to Steve Jackson Games.

Too many Jacksons, too little media coverage.

A data center adds this risk, which needs to be considered in a disaster recovery plan. Do you have off site backups at your hosted site? If the hosting site has the tapes, they may included when the warrant is executed. Your equipment may be swept up in a search of the datacenter, your first notice may be the watchdog scripts

Paranoia is awesome. But if you're looking for another RPG that's fast and fun, check out TOON.

In the TOON RPG, you are a cartoon and you are rewarded for doing bizarre and hillarious things. Just like Paranoia - the more you think outside the rules, the better it is, it's endless fun. Both games are still on the shelf behind me. I'll probably never play either of them again, but they're the most fun I ever had playing an RPG.

Basically, if in either game you could survive for longer than 15 minutes, you weren't doing it right. Of course, destroying the other player characters was the unstated objective for everyone.

The answer is right here.

Because through evidence holding laws, they can take them out of business without them being guilty of anything. Just ask Steve Jackson.

Full details can be found here.

Silly? Maybe, but let's take each of these individually. I bet we can learn something from them anyway.

Chess,

Illogical? Chess is such a logical game that it risks being boring. Except for one or two exceptions (en passant captures and castling), each piece's moves are the same throughout the game. The board remains constant. (And while there are variations from Steve Jackson Games, even they have their own internal logic.)

Tron,

That depends which version of Tron you're talking about. The premise of the movie may have been far-fetched, but the arcade game was a collection of minigames. They don't necessarily have to have anything to do with each other; the story serves as a unifying theme.

The later arcade game Discs of Tron was also very highly logical. It was a shoot-em-up with various challenge elements that had to be dealt with, including barriers appearing across the playing field and varying levels of platform.

I can't speak for Tron 2.0, but it probably has its own internal logic too. (Would some poster confirm this please?)

and Warioware.

Ah, now this is an interesting choice of game to bring up under this topic. Like Tron (the original), it's a collection of minigames. But where Tron has four games, Warioware's number in the hundreds. And it's hard to demonstrate any logic, internal or otherwise, when the games are changing so quickly.

Or rather, it's hard to find the logic in Warioware until you step back and take a look at the big picture. The mini-games are individual challenges which seemingly have nothing to do with each other. In fact, they seem intentionally disassociated from one another.

Here's a game to compare it with: Trivial Pursuit. The questions fall into categories, but they don't necessarily have anything to do with one another. The questions aren't the game. The game is an overall test of knowledge. Likewise, in Warioware, the minigames themselves aren't the game. The game is an overall test of mental agility and the ability to switch quickly from one task to another.

Someone else posted, and I generally agree: the games need some sort of internal logic in order to be comprehensible. In the case of Warioware, though, the game itself is the ability to deal with the apparent illogical barrage of activities.

As Steve Jackson will tell you, this guy is pretty much screwed. Anything they seize in the course of an investigation is pretty much theirs now and there's nothing you can do about it. Federal Law Enforcement is basically untouchable. Welcome to Amerika.

Huh, funny -- Steve Jackson told me something entirely different:

most (but not all) of the hardware was returned. The Secret Service kept one company hard disk, all Loyd's personal equipment and files, the printouts of GURPS Cyberpunk, and several other things.

In early 1993, the case finally came to trial. . . . And we won. The judge gave the Secret Service a tongue-lashing and ruled for SJ Games on two out of the three counts, and awarded over $50,000 in damages, plus over $250,000 in attorney's fees.

Yeah, it was a hassle, and yeah, it sucks, but you started with a good point and took it to the point of bullshit. I'd say $50k would cover a hard drive, some miscellaneous equipment not worth enumerating, and some printouts. Wouldn't you, or are you too mired in Amerika-Angst to think clearly?

Actually they're back in print as the deluxe edition.

Geez, spend two seconds with Google: SJ Games vs. the Secret Service

IIRC, Steve Jackson Games was raided because the government suspected that the GURPS Cyberpunk RPG was a "handbook for computer crime". At least that was their excuse.

Read all about it here.

Poor bastard got Steve Jacksoned.