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Steve Jackson Games (SJG) is a game company that creates and publishes role-playing, board, and card games. It was founded in 1980 by Steve Jackson.
History
Founded in 1980, six years after the birth of Dungeons & Dragons, and before the height of role-playing games, SJG created several role-playing and strategy games with sci-fi themes. SJG borrowed and expanded upon ideas pioneered by strategy game companies such as Avalon Hill and TSR. Despite these similarities, SJG had a unique feel all their own and became popular with their releases. SJG's early titles were all microgames initially sold in ziploc bags, later in similarly sized plastic shell cases. Games such as Ogre, Car Wars and G.E.V (an Ogre spin-off) were popular during SJG's early years.
Today SJG publishes games of various varieties (card games, board games, strategy games) and genres (fantasy, sci-fi, gothic horror); they also publish the book Principia Discordia, the sacred text of the Discordian religion.
Raid
On March 1 1990, SJG's offices in Austin, Texas were raided by the U.S. Secret Service. The manuscript for GURPS Cyberpunk was confiscated although this was merely coincidence and not the actual purpose of the raid at all. The raid is often thought to have been related to Operation Sundevil, a nationwide investigation of computer crime, however Sundevil was based in Arizona and the Steve Jackson Raid was coordinated out of Chicago. More than three years later, a federal court awarded damages of $50,000 and attorneys' fees of $250,000 (amounts in USD) to SJ Games, ruling that the raid had been careless, illegal, and completely unjustified. Cyberpunk popularizer Bruce Sterling discussed the affair in his book The Hacker Crackdown: Law and Disorder on the Electronic Frontier. The case also helped motivate the formation of the Electronic Frontier Foundation.Games published by Steve Jackson Games
Card games
- Battle Cattle The Card Game, a card game, compatible with the Car Wars card game, based on the Battle Cattle miniatures system
- Burn In Hell, an educational game centered around collecting 'circles' of historical and contemporary people's souls sharing common characteristics
- The Card Game, a card game version of the Car Wars miniatures system
- Chez Geek, a card-game parody of Geek culture with many spinoffs and expansions
- Chez Dork, a card game centered around geeks collecting the objects they obsess over
- Cowpoker, a card game partly based on poker mechanics with a central theme of old west cattle ranchers
- Hacker, a modern-day card game based on the mechanics of Illuminati
- Illuminati, a conspiracy game, the original game on which INWO was based
- INWO, Illuminati: New World Order, the trading card game of world domination
- Illuminati Crime Lords, a mafia-based variation on Illuminati which combines gameplay elements of the original Illuminati and INWO
- King's Blood, a Japanese card game originally published by Kadokawa Shoten
- Munchkin, a card-game parody of hack-and-slash roleplaying with many spinoffs (all able to be mixed with the original) and expansions
- Ninja Burger, a fast-paced ninja delivery card game based around the Ninja Burger website
- SPANC, short for Space Pirate Amazon Ninja Cat Girls, a light-hearted competition between starship crews of cat girls in search of toys and loot
- Spooks, A Halloween-themed card game where players try to get rid of cards from their hands
Board games
- The Awful Green Things From Outer Space
- Car Wars, futuristic battles between automobiles
- Frag, "a first-person shooter without a computer"
- GreedQuest, a light, randomized romp through a simple dungeon to gain loot
- Knightmare Chess, a chess variant played with cards
- Ogre, the classic simulation of future war involving a cybernetic armored juggernaut firing nuclear weapons. Designed by jackson, and originally published by Metagaming Concepts
- Ogre: G.E.V., a spin-off of Ogre focusing on futuristic but "conventional" infantry, artillery, and armor units
- Proteus, a chess variant using dice to represent normal chess pieces
- Snits, two classic Tom Wham games, Snits Revenge and Snit Smashing
- Strange Synergy, a simple but complex game where teams of warriors battle with a different set of powers each game
- Tile Chess, a multiplayer chess variant which can be played without a chess board
- XBugs, a combat game where futuristic bugs are represented by colorful tiddly winks
Roleplaying games
- GURPS, the Generic Universal Role Playing System
- In Nomine, a game about Angels and Demons based on the popular French roleplaying game In Nomine Satanis / Magna Veritas
- Killer (game), a variation on the assassin game
- Munchkin RPG, a series of D20 supplements based on the Munchkin card game
- Toon, the cartoon roleplaying game
- Transhuman Space, a near-future science fiction setting spanning the Sol system
- Tribes, players play cave men (and women) trying to protect and nurture their descendents
Miniatures
- Ogre & G.E.V have also been published as in miniatures wargaming format.
External links
- Steve Jackson Games' official web site
- "Fantasy for Fun and Profit": an article about the company from the Austin American Statesman, April 18 1988
Board game publishing companies | Card game publishing companies | Role-playing game publishing companies
"Steve Jackson Games"