From Newsgroup: rec.games.frp.dnd


Yeah, it's not really D&D news, but Steve Jackson has been such a
fixture in the tabletop gaming industry he deserves a mention. He's
stepping down as CEO of his own company, Steve Jackson Games, passing
the torch to Sabrina Gonzalez. He still intends to keep his hand in
things though, focusing instead of game development and design, so
it's not like he's out of the industry entirely.*

Mostly I know him for his work on GURPS, but I've fond memories of
Munckin, Car Wars and Ogre too. I'm not really aware if he's done
anything since then of note, though.

I'll be honest; I didn't even know Steve Jackson was still involved in
the company. Actually, until the announcement I wasn't even sure
Jackson was even /alive/ anymore. Good on him for keeping at it for
this long!






* announcement
https://www.sjgames.com/ill/archive/2026-09-11


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From Newsgroup: rec.games.frp.dnd

On 9/17/2026 2:18 AM, Spalls Hurgenson wrote:

Yeah, it's not really D&D news, but Steve Jackson has been such a
fixture in the tabletop gaming industry he deserves a mention. He's
stepping down as CEO of his own company, Steve Jackson Games, passing
the torch to Sabrina Gonzalez. He still intends to keep his hand in
things though, focusing instead of game development and design, so
it's not like he's out of the industry entirely.*

Mostly I know him for his work on GURPS, but I've fond memories of
Munckin, Car Wars and Ogre too. I'm not really aware if he's done
anything since then of note, though.

I'll be honest; I didn't even know Steve Jackson was still involved in
the company. Actually, until the announcement I wasn't even sure
Jackson was even /alive/ anymore. Good on him for keeping at it for
this long!

* announcement
https://www.sjgames.com/ill/archive/2026-09-11

Did you know that the American game designer Steve Jackson is not the
same as the British game designer Steve Jackson (who co-founded Games
Workshop and brought DnD to the UK in 1975; ha, there we have a DND connection!).

The British Steve Jackson also developed the Fighting Fantasy line of
game books, which the American Steve Jackson wrote three books for just
to make stuff even more confusing. (I suspect they did that intentionally)

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From Newsgroup: rec.games.frp.dnd

On Thu, 17 Sep 2026 09:25:49 +0200, kyonshi <kyonshi@wilderland.ovh>
said this thing:

On 9/17/2026 2:18 AM, Spalls Hurgenson wrote:

Yeah, it's not really D&D news, but Steve Jackson has been such a
fixture in the tabletop gaming industry he deserves a mention. He's
stepping down as CEO of his own company, Steve Jackson Games, passing
the torch to Sabrina Gonzalez. He still intends to keep his hand in
things though, focusing instead of game development and design, so
it's not like he's out of the industry entirely.*

Mostly I know him for his work on GURPS, but I've fond memories of
Munckin, Car Wars and Ogre too. I'm not really aware if he's done
anything since then of note, though.

I'll be honest; I didn't even know Steve Jackson was still involved in
the company. Actually, until the announcement I wasn't even sure
Jackson was even /alive/ anymore. Good on him for keeping at it for
this long!






* announcement
https://www.sjgames.com/ill/archive/2026-09-11

Did you know that the American game designer Steve Jackson is not the
same as the British game designer Steve Jackson (who co-founded Games >Workshop and brought DnD to the UK in 1975; ha, there we have a DND >connection!).

I /did/ know that! ;-)

I didn't know that the UK guy founded Games Workshop, though. Mostly I
knew he had a connection to the Fighting Fantasy books. I never really
got into gamebook/choose-your-own-adventure stuff though, so Steve
Jackson UK (Steve J-UK-son?) never was big on my radar.

American Steve Jackson may not have had a direct connection to D&D,
but a lot of his work revolved around it. His "Fantasy Trip" system
was basically a reaction to the problems he saw inherent in Gygax's
system, and "Munchkin" was a loving tribute to D&D. He also ran Space
Gamer magazine for a while, before selling it to TSR. Similarly, Steve
Jackson games took over the rights for "The Awful Green Things from
Outer Space", as well as "Snits" and "Snits Revenge", all of which
were board games originally published by TSR.

The last Steve Jackson Games title I played was "Zombie Dice", a game
which (and this will surprise you, I'm sure) involves dice and
zombies. American Jackson was the designer of that one too.


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From Newsgroup: rec.games.frp.dnd

On 9/17/2026 9:01 PM, Spalls Hurgenson wrote:

The last Steve Jackson Games title I played was "Zombie Dice", a game
which (and this will surprise you, I'm sure) involves dice and
zombies. American Jackson was the designer of that one too.

I don't play much GURPS, but the sourcebooks are quite essential for
genres and settings. Got to have an overview of old west stuff? Gurps
Old West. Ideas for a Mars game? Gurps Mars.
Ideas for when you end the session with a character hanging off a
precipice? Gurps Cliffhangers.

(just kidding, the latter is a genre sourcebook for Pulp style games)
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From Newsgroup: rec.games.frp.dnd

On Thu, 24 Sep 2026 13:23:40 +0200, kyonshi <kyonshi@wilderland.ovh>
said this thing:

On 9/17/2026 9:01 PM, Spalls Hurgenson wrote:

The last Steve Jackson Games title I played was "Zombie Dice", a game
which (and this will surprise you, I'm sure) involves dice and
zombies. American Jackson was the designer of that one too.

I don't play much GURPS, but the sourcebooks are quite essential for
genres and settings. Got to have an overview of old west stuff? Gurps
Old West. Ideas for a Mars game? Gurps Mars.
Ideas for when you end the session with a character hanging off a
precipice? Gurps Cliffhangers.
(just kidding, the latter is a genre sourcebook for Pulp style games)

I have to admit, I was never all that impressed with GURPs as source
material. I was impressed at the range of the material, since they
covered a lot of licensed material otherwise overlooked by other
systems, but when it came to the content itself I rarely was impressed
by the style or details. I almost never found anything useful in the
books I looked at... or at least, it was never more useful than stuff
I'd find from other books

But that's a purely subjective opinion. I'm not saying GURPS wasn't
any good, just that it never suited my particular tastes or need. I
mean, my god, I preferred Paladium stuff to GURPS so take my opinion
with a grain of salt! ;-)




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From Newsgroup: rec.games.frp.dnd

Spalls Hurgenson wrote in article <n8kabl5vdi7s0rhhus125iehgn7tc9pai5@4ax.com>:

I have to admit, I was never all that impressed with GURPs as source material. I was impressed at the range of the material, since they
covered a lot of licensed material otherwise overlooked by other
systems, but when it came to the content itself I rarely was impressed
by the style or details. I almost never found anything useful in the
books I looked at... or at least, it was never more useful than stuff
I'd find from other books

But that's a purely subjective opinion. I'm not saying GURPS wasn't
any good, just that it never suited my particular tastes or need. I
mean, my god, I preferred Paladium stuff to GURPS so take my opinion
with a grain of salt! ;-)

GURPS was as much a freewheeling philosophy as a set of rules.
Every action was modeled as a FEAT, which was a lame acronym
whose expansion I've forgotten. The rules were so simple that
roleplaying had to pick up a lot of the slack.
--
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United States of America - North America - Earth
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