vincentursus | Reading

http://www.sjgames.com/ill/a/2025-12-11

A second edition of Toon: The Cartoon Roleplaying Game will be crowdfunded beginning on December 17!

Toon, designed by Greg Costikyan and developed by Warren Spector, is a family-friendly RPG that debuted in 1984. Since then, roleplayers have come to love the zany hilarity of a game inspired by the nostalgia of classic Saturday morning cartoons. Finally, there's a new edition, revised by Steve Jackson and Jay Dragon.

Players will build custom characters for a campaign of cartoon craziness. The possibilities are endless. Characters in Toon can never die . . . even if they're squished beneath a plummeting elevator or zapped by an excess of electricity! They'll bounce back for the next scene, ready to make more mischief.

The physical first edition is out of print and has been for some time. Fans can back this Second Edition project in just a few short weeks. Visit BackerKit today to sign up for notifications and be among the first to pledge!

– 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!

http://www.sjgames.com/ill/a/2025-12-11

xkcd_feed

https://xkcd.com/3179/

'That's definitely above the catch-and-release size minimum for planetesimals.' 'I'm going to throw it back anyway.'

https://xkcd.com/3179/

white_aster

Not...dead...yet....

What I've read lately:
- Katabasis by RF Kuang - Two analytic magic grad students go to Hell to try to retrieve their terrible mentor. This was inventive and ponderous and kind of inherited the kind of pretentiousness you'd expect when the main characters were Cambridge grad students. The main character is incredibly flawed and I didn't always understand her mood shifts. Still, I finished it and ended up liking it more than I disliked it.

- The Great Mental Models Volume 1: General Thinking Concepts by Shane Parrish, Rhiannon Beaubien. A good, originally-indie book on...common sense, really. Philosophy and logic and reasoning. Most of this I already had heard of and use, but it was a good rundown of things that folks might need to be reminded of, lest they fall into fallacies and such.

- Quit Like A Millionaire by Kristy Shen and Bryce Leung. Current events this year have left me crunching a lot of numbers, and this was one of the first financial independence/retire early (FIRE) books to come out. I feel like it's a bit glib in some ways, and it is a bit dated now since finance and the economy move so fast, but it did have a great discussion of investing and how to calculate when you have enough to retire.

Reading now:
- The Last Watch by JS Dewes. Unsure on this one. Ragtag group of misfits and malcontents save the universe is one of my fave tropes, but temporal shenanigans are not my fave, and I don't know if this has enough oomph to hook me yet.

ffutures

This is a new bundle of role-playing material for the introductory RPG / Story telling game Magical Kitties Save The Day from Atlas Games:

https://bundleofholding.com/presents/MagicalKitties

Atlas Games have published some very good introductory RPGs and story telling games - this one is very much in that genre, with some fun supplements for different settings and styles of play, from film noir to alien invasions. It's never been offered in these bundles before, it's cheap, and it's being run to promote a forthcoming kickstarter for a superhero rules supplement. Better buy it, or Streaky the super-cat will spit hair-balls at you at mach 5...

nine_star_hegemony_feed

https://www.wuxiaworld.com/novel/nine-star-hegemon/nshba-chapter-6598

nine_star_hegemony_feed

https://www.wuxiaworld.com/novel/nine-star-hegemon/nshba-chapter-6597

nine_star_hegemony_feed

https://www.wuxiaworld.com/novel/nine-star-hegemon/nshba-chapter-6596

irregular_comic_rss3_feed

https://www.irregularwebcomic.net/2974.html

The background photo is Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike by Doc Searls. It shows some buildings that didn't exist in 1940, but more importantly it shows the Tower Bridge, so you know it's London.

This strip is therefore licensed as Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike.

2025-12-10 Rerun commentary: I suspect firing a flintlock pistol on board a zeppelin filled with hydrogen might not exactly be the safest thing you could do. Of course neither is boarding a Nazi war vessel with intent to take it over.

https://www.irregularwebcomic.net/2974.html

daily_illuminator_feed

http://www.sjgames.com/ill/a/2025-12-10

Munchkin Digital – Pathfinder from Dire Wolf Digital is now available for download on Steam! Based on Paizo's Pathfinder Roleplaying Game, this stand-alone DCL with 168 cards brings your favorite characters and monsters to Munchkin.

Your character can be one of two unique classes – Witch or Alchemist – then join the Red Mantis Assassin faction. Wear your Armor of Insults before battling Level 4 Undead Ghoul Friday or Level 20 Lamashtu.

Want even more Achievements? There are 18! Hoping for new challenges? You can look forward to an additional 10, including a Draft Challenge. Like Avatars? Try 12 new options!

What are you waiting for? Head over to Steam today and start playing Munchkin Digital – Pathfinder!

– Michelle Richardson

Warehouse 23 News: Why Is The Darkness Blinking?

They're trapped between the realm of the living and the dead . . . and they're not too pleased about it. The Book of Unlife adds 44 unliving monsters to your The Fantasy Trip campaigns, along with a complete adventure setting. Live like there's too many tomorrows thanks to Warehouse 23!

http://www.sjgames.com/ill/a/2025-12-10

bewareofchicken_feed

https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/chapter/2834480

Guan Chyou of the Azure Jade Trading Company loved what was becoming a semi-annual journey north; it was a full third of her year that was spent traveling, and yet, every moment was worth it.

The wind in her hair, the strain of travel, the feeling of adventure… all of it was fantastic. She could tell why her ancestors chose this profession. It was freeing.

They traveled light, making very good time on their horses… and better time on their carts. Their last trip north had allowed them to purchase some miraculous new equipment from Mengde’s Crystal Emporium.

Master Jin had shown them Lady Biyu’s newest creation, the Partial Storage Array. They had tested the new arrays extensively… and now the trading company was buying as many of them as the crystal carvers were selling. The demand was so high they were using their new contacts outside the province to purchase both defective storage crystals, and any spare scraps people had.

Another lucrative venture for them both. They increased the speed at which the caravans could move by over fifty percent when fully laden. Axle and wheel breakdowns were being reduced to a fraction. Animal wear? The beasts practically skipped along the road, and now they could run while fully laden, in case anything went wrong.

It also took nearly five days off the trip north. The gates (...)

https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/chapter/2834480

nine_star_hegemony_feed

https://www.wuxiaworld.com/novel/nine-star-hegemon/nshba-chapter-6595

nine_star_hegemony_feed

https://www.wuxiaworld.com/novel/nine-star-hegemon/nshba-chapter-6594

nine_star_hegemony_feed

https://www.wuxiaworld.com/novel/nine-star-hegemon/nshba-chapter-6593

irregular_comic_rss3_feed

https://www.irregularwebcomic.net/2973.html

I'm sure if time travel was a competition, this would be the scoring method.

2025-12-09 Rerun commentary: I suspect as a story writer I've killed more Hitlers than most. So I'm pretty well placed in that competition too.

https://www.irregularwebcomic.net/2973.html

darths_and_droids_feed

https://www.darthsanddroids.net/episodes/2711.html

Episode 2711: Order Gave Each Thing View

Information is something that can be either extremely difficult to come by, or be essentially free for the taking. In the modern age, and for non-dystopian future science fiction settings, you can pretty much find anything online and download whatever you want. If you want to keep things unknown, you need to come up with reasons why the knowledge wouldn't already be widely spread. It can be top secret, guarded by governments or other institutions, or perhaps lost to civilisation and only recoverable through a perilous expedition.

In historical or fantasy settings, information can be a lot harder to find. Great quests must be made to learn precious trickles of fact. Perhaps only wizened old sages have the knowledge you need, hidden away in dusty tomes of yore. Or it can be magically concealed or erased from people's minds.

Either way, a quest for information can be just as good a goal as a quest for riches.

aurilee writes:

Commentary by memnarch (who has not seen the movie)

Oh, well, there we go. One set of coordinates, ready to use. And we're definitely heading there next judging by Chewie's comment. I'll bet the planet's major feature is city ruins. I think we've covered just about every other kind of planet, even with some repeats. Imagine the Resistance having to explore a place like Coruscant that's empty of people or visibly in disrepair? It might even be that industrial mirror place the Falcon accidentally jumped into!

And of course Poe causes the next problem. No surprise there. What is interesting is that Kylo appears to have been entranced by the wall pipes. Is there something on display just out of the panel? Was Kylo trying to use the Force for tracing the protagonists? Is he finally losing his mind and/or has run out of minions to vent his anger at? Who can say!

Transcript

https://www.darthsanddroids.net/episodes/2711.html

daily_illuminator_feed

http://www.sjgames.com/ill/a/2025-12-09

Here's a fun article about reindeer roaming the busy streets of downtown Rovaniemi, Finland – a rarity – complete with pictures.

Now, I could take the opportunity to plug some of our holiday offerings to tie into the . . . um . . . reindeer games. But I'm not that crass.

– Steven Marsh

Warehouse 23 News: The Autodueling Continues . . .

. . . with the Car Wars Pocket Box Bundle 2! Visit Midville and Black Lake to see its sights and colorful citizens, or take your chances in the Armadillo Autoduel Arena! Will you find glory or defeat? Find out by picking up this Pocket Box from Warehouse 23 today!

http://www.sjgames.com/ill/a/2025-12-09

xkcd_feed

https://xkcd.com/3178/

Our models fall apart where the three theories overlap; we're unable to predict what happens when a nanometer-sized squirrel eats a grapefruit with the mass of the sun.

https://xkcd.com/3178/

ffutures

This is a new bundle of independently-produced material for the popular Forged in the Dark rules-set, also including Blades in the Dark, the game that originated the system. Blades... has been in several previous bundles, the others are new.

https://bundleofholding.com/presents/Forge3rd

The mood of these ranges from zany comic-book comedy to gritty crime realism, heroic and not so heroic fantasy, and far-futures cyberpunks and transhumans. If you like more than one of the genres it's worth buying the whole bundle, you'll save money.