Hiya, folks! I've got two changes to announce, followed by Stuff.

=== TWO CHANGES

First, the Cumberland Fontworks pages have just undergone a _major_ expansion:

http://www222.pair.com/sjohn/fonts.htm
http://www222.pair.com/sjohn/fonts2.htm
http://www222.pair.com/sjohn/fonts3.htm

I've bulked up the fonts by about 75% (from twenty-something freeware fonts to
nearly 50, now), added graphics and cheeky copy for same, and so on. Some of
these are fonts I haven't posted in ages, but they're all favorites selected
from the history of the fontworks. It still mildly astonishes me that the
Fontworks _has_ a history ... it's all just kind of dribbled together over the
years, but I've made around 200 fonts when I wasn't paying attention. Eek!
Anyway, there's now a much more eclectic selection of the better ones (and a few
of the more endearing crappy ones) at the Fontworks. Hopefully the links all
work. Fingers crossed.

Second, the Playtest approach is officially changing:

http://www222.pair.com/sjohn/playtest.htm

This is in response to a couple of things. First, as you might have noticed, the
output speed of a one-S.John-band is a lot slower than anyone (including the one
S. John) might wish for. Such is life, but it's become a bit silly to maintain a
list of hair-trigger on-call blindtesters for that (as in, everytime I _do_ have
something ready to test, everyone has a new email address anyway and I have to
rebuild the list). That's point one. Point two is the _incredible_ success of
the recent testing rounds for Treasures of a Slaver's Kingdom, which produced
fantastic results by supplementing some of my die-hard testers with an open
invitation here on the list. So, henceforth, I'll be using a combination of
(sing along with me, now) my die-hard testers and an open invitation here on the
list. So, you're all auxiliary Fire-Eaters, now! If you empty the coffee machine
in the break-room, please refill it.

=== STUFF

And on the heels of THAT, here's a new open invitatation:

If you're a medieval gamer who knows history or a medieval gamer who doesn't but
who wants to, you may be just the reader/tester I need for a brand-new Lisa
Steele title I've got almost ready to go, about medieval town life (tangential
reminders that Medieval France isn't out yet will receive my sympathy but will
otherwise have no effect). I've already sent it around to the die-hards (if you
think you're a die-hard and didn't get a copy, I probably have an out-of-date
email addy for you - let me know!) and now I'm opening it here.

I'll take up to five volunteers on this one; deadline for comments will be
around the end of June. If you want to thrash around what promises to be a very
useful little tome (very much in the vein of Fief, but urban rather than rural)
drop me a line at sjohn@..., and be sure and read the revised Playtest page
first to see what details I need from you! This invitation CLOSES in 48 hours'
time (from the date-stamp on this hyar e-mail), so if you want in, let me know
soonish :)

Oh, and for those who ran into the "we're moving again, expect delays" warning
on the ordering page ... We're still mid-move, but nearly done. Got all the
boxes here at the new place, got the computer up and running ... now I just need
to find everything _in_ the boxes again :) Almost ...

Hope this finds you well, and gaming! Best -



|| S. John Ross
|| Husband · Cook · Writer
|| In That Order
|| http://www.io.com/~sjohn