Hobgobble Cover Art!

For all twelve of you who read this blog, there's some exciting news for our first adventure module: Jim Holloway is the cover artist! Jim was one of the original artists for TSR (the publishers of Dungeons & Dragons for those of you who aren't geeks). Check out his site and all his contributions to the hobby. His art has filled the pages of the early D&D modules (the B series) to AD&D covers for the Desert of Desolation, Oriental Adventures, Spelljammer and lots of interior stuff for everything in between. Outside of D&D-land, he's illustrated Boot Hill, Gama World, Star Frontiers and Gangbusters, too. If you spent any time perusing the shelves of a game store in the 80s, you know his artistic mettle! Hobgobble's Eve drew a lot of inspiration from the early TSR modules that shaped how most of us think of the sword-n-sorcery adventure game; having an Old Skool Master like Jim involved has really made this inaugural launch of the WEGS Module B1 very exciting!

And the cover is just amazing!

The Hobgobble Update

So, about two months ago I started working on Hobgobble's Eve, the first official WEGS 101 adventure. It went through numerous playtests and revisions, and then some more playtest. While all this was going on, I began contacting artists to illustrate the adventure. Three of the artists are from Three Headed Troll Art Wurks; guys who specialize in the old skool art form which is perfect for this module (check out the 3HT site). I came across their art while attending Con on the Cob, a con with a very heavy artist attendance. Tony Steele, who did some illustrations for Pirates of Penzantium and who also attended COTC, jumped into the Hobgobble fray as well. All the art is complete (with the exception of the cover which will be the topic of next post). I'm really thrilled with each artist's work; this module is jam-packed with cool art!

So, after two months, the first pass at the concept/playtest/art/layout/design is done. In my humble opinion, the end result is gonna be pretty fantastic. I've had a bunch of fun with the design on this, and the layout is inevitably for landscape, three-hole punch format (so you can throw it in a binder after you print it at home); the landscape design also takes up less table space during the game.

One more pass at text revisions and layout and this sucker is done.

This module is gonna ooze the old skool spirit that WEGS 101 is all about!

Playtesting: Hobgobble's, Chapter 3

We concluded the Hobgobble's Eve playtest with the good folk of the Garden State Gaming Society last night; the final chapter of the soon-to-be-released adventure is going to be a brutal one for players! I jumped in as a player, letting the Professor run the newly revised minions for this encounter. We had four players to face-off against his eight minions; with no Warriors in the mix for us, the odds were stacked against us. It was a struggle all the way to the final inning (14 innings!), but we managed to survive. We missed hitting the eigth inning "sweet spot", but my thoughts are the chapter could have concluded sooner if we had one more player on our side of the table. We're officially sticking a fork in this module, 'cause it's done (from a playtest standpoint)! We ran this adventure twice, as did the Platinum Warlock (thanks for the notes, A!). Time to start layout and design on the pdf. Hoping to publish this sucker before the end of the month for the whole darn Wegsworld to enjoy!

Time To Start Rolling!

With Christmas, New Years and all those other sweet gatherings in the past, it's time for GameWick to start looking at what's in store for '09; the clock is ticking away already! By the end of this month, the con schedules for GenCon and Origins will need to be in place, as will the schedules for any cons we plan on hitting before then. Even more important than that is getting a couple of new products out the door before the summer cons hit (that WEGS 101 book is getting awfully lonely all by itself). Our goal for 2009 is to get three new products out the door:

1. House Rules! The Kreators Guide for how to run WEGS.
2. WEGS 202 Pirates of Penzantium (yar!)
3. Dingbitt's Dunge O' Doom (mini wegsventure for 101)

Plus, we're hoping to post a monthly freebie wegsventure, the first of which will be Hobgobble's Eve! toward the end of January. Details on all this stuff will be blogged about in my next posts.

Health and Happy Gaming to all of you for the New Year!