Possum Creek Joins Steve Jackson Games as New RPG Imprint

wanderhome rpg.jpg


Possum Creek, the award-winning publisher behind Wanderhome, is now a Steve Jackson Games imprint. Steve Jackson Games announced the news today, with Possum Creek's editorial director Jay Dragon becoming SJ Games' Lead Game Designer and board member, and Ruby Lavin becoming SJ Games' art director. Possum Creek will retain full creative and editorial control of its games while assisting SJ Games design and visual branding teams. Wanderhome, described as a "pastoral fantasy RPG about traveling animal-folk", won the Best Family-Friendly Game and Best Cover Art ENnie back in 2022.

While Steve Jackson Games is probably best known for publishing the long-running Munchkin series of card games, it's also the publisher of GURPS, a game system meant to be used with any genre of story. GURPS Fourth Edition was released back in 2004, although Jackson has long hinted at developing a 5th edition of the game system. SJ Games continues to publish new GURPS material on a regular basis.
 

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Christian Hoffer

Christian Hoffer

I really like the SJG website as is. It doesn't require lots of mystery 3rd party scripts, loads fast, and doesn't complain that I am using the wrong browser plus it isn't loaded up with tons of data mined 'relevant' ads.
The wrong browser, in this case, is anything after Netscape Navigator. ;)

I don't think it needs a bunch of scripts running the show, but an aesthetic upgrade would be great. Even for the time, Times New Roman in teeny tiny type wasn't the best browsing experience. (At least use Verdana, which dates to the same era!)

I also suspect using a late 20th century publishing platform -- unless they're coding each page by hand in HTML -- is wildly insecure.
 
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While Steve Jackson Games is probably best known for publishing the long-running Munchkin series of card games, it's also the publisher of GURPS, a game system meant to be used with any genre of story.
Funny, I know them best as the former publishers of both the Space Gamer and Pyramid, two of the best gaming magazines ever made. There was also Car Wars and several iterations of Ogre/GEV, the latter being one of the few surviving vestiges of Metagaming's microgame catalog and the overall industry fad for small-format games that we saw in the late Seventies and Eighties.

But sure, Munchkin and the Chez Whatever games have kept them afloat for a couple of decades now. Not my thing, but it ultimately got us a new printing of Triplanetary so that's cool. Now if they'd just revive some more of the old GDW catalog. Asteroid doesn't deserve to languish in obscurity.
 

SJ Games feels like a dead end when it comes to game design. I'm glad for Jay Dragon et. al. and hope it works for them but does SJ want to do anything other than iterations of Munchkin?

I would love to see SJ Games publish a big new rpg that has nothing to do with Gurps (which also feels like a dead-end). Hopefully this is a step in that direction.
 

SJ Games feels like a dead end when it comes to game design. I'm glad for Jay Dragon et. al. and hope it works for them but does SJ want to do anything other than iterations of Munchkin?

I would love to see SJ Games publish a big new rpg that has nothing to do with Gurps (which also feels like a dead-end). Hopefully this is a step in that direction.
If they can become a publisher of smaller studios, using their reach to help little games reach a wider audience, that's a worthy new phase for them to enter into, IMO.
 

I really like the SJG website as is. It doesn't require lots of mystery 3rd party scripts, loads fast, and doesn't complain that I am using the wrong browser plus it isn't loaded up with tons of data mined 'relevant' ads.

+1

The new update to the store was needed. I'm glad it was done.

But other than that? I prefer a simple and intuitive site over a bunch of ads and videos that I don't need to see.
 


SJ Games feels like a dead end when it comes to game design....

I would love to see SJ Games publish a big new rpg that has nothing to do with Gurps (which also feels like a dead-end)....
Dare I ask why? They continue to produce new titles: both reprints of older games and fresh newcomers. And GURPS still has regular new releases and a devoted (albeit small) fan base.
 

Why would it? You might as well ask whether it would change to The Fantasy Trip, or rules from Munchkin cards, or the mechanics of Ninja Burger.
Because in the history of RPGs, most new ownership situations do NOT preserve the existing game's mechanics, usually porting them to an existing system of the publisher. Take Ninja Burger...
1st edition was a custom system (same mechanics as Kobolds Ate My Baby)
2nd edition was licensed to a different company, and immediately revised it to be their in-house favorite, PDQ#. (and lost me as a potential customer; the system didn't feel right for the setting to me.)

Or Starships and Spacemen... when it was purchased from the author, the new owners dissembled about what mechanics would be there... they opted to force it into their Mutant Future rules (essentially a D&D BX variant) instead of the original 1d20 roll low attribute driven equally old school game... and then added a bunch of new races without a way to backport them cleanly. It fizzled. The original had sold a bunch when they got it into a really good scanned+OCRed PDF... then the new one, a few third party licensed bits... and it died.

Or Warhammer FRP... every new publisher has tweaked the rules heavily to complete rewrite - save one. First it was Citadel/Flame. Then first was licensed to Hogshead. This is the only time it didn't change mechanics. Then it went to Black Industries, who had Chris of Green Ronin write it... but BI banned people from the playtest for "this doesn't work" comments. When the fanbase noted that BI was not doing things justice, it got passed off to FFG. FFG kept WFRP and Dark Heresy in print... and built the other promised DH-compatibles, but did a new WFRP... with custom dice. (I actually like it.) Then, their license ended, and C7 got it. Yet another new system, strongly grounded in 2nd ed, but not really compatible. As with 1e to 2e, 1e to 4e and 2e to 4e are convertible, mostly on the fly, but it's much more limited a set of choices...

Some companies did this to their own game lines... GDW did it several times. CT2 to MT is convertible, largely on the fly, same attributes and scaling and skill level range. But totally different combat mechanics Then They ported it to a different engine in Traveller: The New Era.
Now, they also did it to Twilight 2000... 1e was a 3-18 stat range, percentile skills derived from atts. 2e was a 1-10 (2d6-2 min 1) att range, with skills being rolled on 1d10 ≤ skill × Diffimod. 2.2e, they changed it to 1d20 ≤ (stat + skill) × Diffmod, and added two more difficulty levels to match the levels used in MegaTraveller. Note that T2K 2.2e was the basic ruleset used for Traveller: The New Era... and while it wasn't a flop... surveys at the time showed less than 10% of MT players migrated to TNE... but the TNE player base was 40% the size of MT. (and MT was half the size of CT, despite CT being out of print at the time.)
Marc tinkers... he did T4 based upon his at home tinkering, and so when GDW closed, he launched it with a new company. Again, most didn't convert, but it still sold decently. Mongoose later got the license, and new ruleset that's convertible on the fly with CT/MT (less so for TNE and T4)... then they revised it to a convert-on-the-fly (different skill list) and different ship building rules. (They did errata cleanup and new look last year, essentially MGT 2.1)

Changing the mechanics at buyout or new licensee is just about standard. It's more notable when it doesn't... such as Pendragon. Or Hero Wars/HeroQuest/Quest Worlds are iterations of both the design team and the core mechanics, but largely compatible on the face. Or the just errata of Prince Valiant 2e.

Hell, just look at D&D and Pathfinder.
The core mechanics for combat in D&D changed rather abruptly with 3E, after WotC bought TSR, and Then was themselves acquired by HasBro.
The core mechanics of AD&D 1e and 2e are largely the same, but there are differences - convert on the fly and/or use as is mostly compatible. But the move to 3E? the attribute scaling changes because atts suddenly got to improve. Non-combat skills were even more integral, and some even had combat applications.
4E kept the attribute list, the scaling, and that it used skills, hit points, and leveled spells.
5E did the same as 4E. 5E2024 is less a change, but there are a bunch of little things, and it's confusing the audience... and the DDB subscribers? most haven't even used the 5e-'24 character gen. It's selling a lot... but is it getting used?
For 5E fans, one can be happy Elon Musk got distracted by a brownie and politics; he made dismissive comments about WotC and then inquired about HasBro's valuation.
 

Dare I ask why? They continue to produce new titles: both reprints of older games and fresh newcomers. And GURPS still has regular new releases and a devoted (albeit small) fan base.
And per the CEO, GURPS isn't profitable itself. The GURPS Traveller line had been, and Dungeon Fantasy is, but the rest is because the Owner (SJ) wants it still supported. And because they can do PDF only and POD in-house.
They're making money on TFT-LE... which isn't really GURPS-Light, but is GURPS' older sibling... with minor tweaks from its 1981 condition.
Their big money maker? Card games, most notably (but not exclusively) Munchkin.

But SJ is one of the exceptions to "we bought it and are going to port it to our in-house system."... wait, no, no they aren't... In Nomine got both a new edition of the d666 mechanic and a GURPS port. They did ports of a few of other people's RPGs to GURPS (Traveller, Vampire, Mage, Castle Falkenstein) under license.

So, it's unlikely that SJ would kill the original if it still moves product. If they can cheaply port it to GURPS, it's likely to also get a GURPS port.
 

The wrong browser, in this case, is anything after Netscape Navigator. ;)

I don't think it needs a bunch of scripts running the show, but an aesthetic upgrade would be great. Even for the time, Times New Roman in teeny tiny type wasn't the best browsing experience. (At least use Verdana, which dates to the same era!)

I also suspect using a late 20th century publishing platform -- unless they're coding each page by hand in HTML -- is wildly insecure.
Seems you are a bit outdated yourself. They migrated to a new website a couple years ago.

 

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