The Lay Of The Land... Part 1

When I began to get serious about taking WEGS to print, I had my core group of gamer friends and we were pretty content to just game amongst ourselves. WEGS was a system that was initially cultivated for my small gaming group. It was a system that I designed for myself and my particular gaming tastes.

Truth be told, I was extremely bored and disappointed with the way other systems had turned out and were being churned out. There was an endless stream of game supplements and world books and character class guides and minion manuals. The games I loved were becoming reference libraries. It was almost like subscribing to a mail-order encyclopedia racket - every month a new five pound book would be released. Some folks likened it to tax law. And the impact this had on the game play - ungodly! Games would come to a halt just so a player could find the right chart or reference table to use.

I was also at a point in my life were I didn't have time to keep reading game books. Most of my game group didn't like reading either. Some players never even owned a single copy of a published rpg. They just wanted to show up and play. They treated role-playing games like bowling. Just show up, grab a ball and roll - and this is where sports and rpgs connect in my mind. The game should be easy enough for anyone to play - they may not be very good at it, but they should get the basic concepts. Some folks will never hit a home run, but it's pretty easy to comprehend that if you hit the ball over the outfield fence that's a very good thing. So, ease of rules is the first connection. The umpire is the second.

The umpire is a gamemaster really. This is the person who controls the game and calls the shots at the highest level. The ump, just like every good gamemaster, must know the rules. They gotta be comfortable with their decisions. They have to keep the game moving. It's a tough, but critical job.

Umps, unlike game-masters, don't have to worry about rule variations and world settings...

A foul is a foul is a foul...

I was at a point in time where I wanted to be more umpy.