A Tale Wegziotic

Happy New Year!

2011-01-03T09:03:00.000-05:00

Check Out The Platinum's Paladin!

2010-11-12T11:06:00.003-05:00

The Platinum Warlock has posted his notes on how to Multi-Ark one of the classics:

The Paladin

WEGS on Facebook

2010-10-12T08:22:00.005-04:00

WEGS Old Skool has its own facebook for those of you who want to start following our antics and keep in touch between cons. Chances are that we will use that channel to post notes of where to find the product, new product updates, con schedule, and misc freebies.

Go check it out and jump into the fray!

I'll be posting a little less on this blog (if that's possible) as I hunker down this fall and get rolling on the new products. Looking forward to some new releases in 2011.

Two Months and Three Cons Ago...

2010-08-31T08:36:00.008-04:00

The Summer of Redux kicked off, as all those who follow this little blog will recall. Since then, GameWick Games has had the best June, July, and August sales for our little game system, WEGS Old Skool. Releasing the newly revised rule set (Redux) along with the advanced rules of play (Dice Rule!) certainly helped in this regard. During this time, we've hit the three big summer cons: Origins (June), Historicon (July), and Gen Con (Aug).

Aside from the encouraging sales, the cons provide that great opportunity to catch up with our friends and fans who have supported us along the way (some from the pre-release stage, circa 2006). In a strange way, the GameWick Games booth is becoming a sort of tavern where folks pop in to catch up, take a break from storming the exhibit hall, swap gaming stories and brag about their WEGS triumphs and dastardly dice rolls. It's the one place where you can say "I was out of spoints and needed two to Spante for my spells, so I burned my last Phew! point..." and folks follow each and every word of your story.

We've got a little over three weeks to go before the end of summer. With no cons on the radar until after that point, September shall be a challenging month for our momentum (but that's always the case). These last few weeks of summer provide me some time to focus on the internet publicity. Speaking of which, it's time to do an official press release of the products we just released "two months and three cons ago".

Yeah, I'm a wee bit behind...

Just One Month Ago...

2010-07-23T09:42:00.005-04:00

... the Summer of Redux officially kicked off when WEGS Old Skool Redux and WEGS Dice Rule! went on sale at Origins 2010. Since then, the books have been sold at our booth at Historicon and also at Dexcon (thanks to Professor J), not to mention a few direct email requests from fans who just couldn't wait for the GameWick Games website store to start offering the new swag!

I'm happy to say that we've taken in more sales this first month than we did the entire last year. This is hugely due to our rabid convention fan base (you know who you are) who have been waiting three years (cough. cough. sorry. cough.) for something new to buy!

I thank you all for your support!

Gen Con 2010 is the next and final stop for our summer con-hopping hijinks. For those of you waiting for the GameWick Games store to go live, that will be very soon. Due to the limited stock (we only ran 300 of each book), I did not want to go live with it until post-Gen Con. However, I think we have enough copies remaining to throw open those internet flood gates and still have enough stock for the last con o' the season.

Besides, if we sell out at Gen Con, all the better (less to pack back into the car)!

Now go out and play some WEGS!

Old Skool Orange

2010-06-18T07:59:00.006-04:00

Remember cheeze doodle and dorito stains on character sheets?

The tell-tale sign that the character was experienced and used in prior play.

That color orange I tried to recreate for the Old Skool branding - a burnished orange/gold that has a friendly richness about it. Without the oily blotches, of course.

Now don't wait to get you snack-coated fingertips on the new products coming out this summer! They go on sale next week at Origins.

Bring your own snacks, though...

(Wizard on Die by Kennon James)

Needless to Say...

2010-06-14T10:10:00.003-04:00

I've been nutzo busy since the last post getting three new products out the door: WEGS Old Skool Redux, WEGS Dice Rule!, and the new technicolor Old Skool Skill Deck. This means that unlike last year where the GameWick Games booth had no new product to sell at the summer conventions, we hit the ground running with a trifecta of fantastic offerings.

Hopefully over the summer I can find time to regale you all with the tales of getting these three products out the door. It was a heap of work from beginning to editing to end. The end products though are amazing!

Can't wait to show off our WEGS this year!

Hunting Oftens & Ladders

2010-05-14T08:57:00.005-04:00

As Dice Rule! suffers its final death throes, one of the last tasks is hunting for orphans and ladders in the text. Orphans (or "oftens" for GS fans) are solitary words that are dangling at the end of a paragraph who take up a full horizontal line for themselves. These gotta be shoved back up into the paragraph right proper (or the tracking of the paragraph tweaked so it flows to the next line). Ladders are more insidious. These are visual clusters of similar words that appear directly above or below each other (like the word "the" vertically lining up with itself on different horizontal lines).

There's been one pass on these suckers by the team project editor, but since the various final edits, there's plenty of text shift that needs review. This is the final bit before we put this beast down for good.

Then we turn our sights on the second book, Old Skool Redux!

Dice Rule! Draft

2010-05-01T18:01:00.002-04:00

With unbelievable timing, I received the draft copy of Dice Rule! in the mail today. All I'll say is that it looks sweeeeeet! From the two-column spread to the fun-loving old skool art, it's geeked out to the gills!

Let May begin!

Good Fortune, Bad Fortune...

2010-04-28T10:02:00.002-04:00

This was in my fortune cookie last night:

"Slaying the dragon of delay is no sport for
the short-winded"
Now about getting those two books done by Origins...

64

2010-03-26T11:07:00.004-04:00

The first pass at content and layout is complete for Dice Rule! and the page count has come in at that magical pagination mark of 64! This was purely unintentional, but a great sign that we're in that enchanted page zone that so many early hardcover rpgs hit. My understanding is that page count needed to be divisible by 16 as that's how many cuts were on the printer's sheet.

AD&D Monster Manual, 112 pages (16 x 7)

AD&D Players Handbook, 128 pages (16 x 8)

AD&D Dungeon Master Guide, 240 pages (16 x 15)

Now, I still have to add the Table of Contents, preface, and other fun stuff, so that wicked 64 mark is just a temporary page count.

But a good omen that we're solidly on the road to print!

First OS Review for 2010

2010-02-20T10:10:00.003-05:00

A review of Old Skool has been posted over at the Ogre Cave.

"Just what the heck is WEGS? Demian had a close look at the Wickedly Errant Game System in his review of WEGS 101: Old Skool by Gamewick Games. In a rather saturated fantasy roleplaying market, does WEGS manage to rise above the pack, or does it blend in with the rest of its competitors? Read on to find out."

Check it out!

Dreamation Begins With A Big Bang!

2010-02-19T10:40:00.004-05:00

Big Bang Mudang, that is!

Dreamation, the first con on our sched this year, began last night. I went intentionally light on the WEGS Old Skool schedule this time around, running only three events (one of Fri., two on Sat.). The exciting news is that two of these events are the new playtests for the Badderlands series.

B3 Grim Reapings, wherein the party explores the crypt of a not-so-dead Grand Warlock.

B4 Druids Ruins, wherein the party messes around with the forces of nature while searching for fabled treasure.

To add to the excitement, I kicked off the con with a super-secret playtest of Big Bang Mudang, my cosmic time-travelling witch-seer game. Details on this twisted little game will trickle forth over the course of the coming months.

And now it's time to start working on all the other con event submissions...

About That Long Winter's Nap...

2010-02-08T14:20:00.008-05:00

Right...

No rest for the wicked(ly errant).

Much of January was consumed with initial layout/design of Dice Rule! (the advanced rules for WEGS 101 players) and the start of Old Skool, 2nd Edition. Both must be ready for the summer convention circuit that officially kicks off with Origins in June. This means that the books must be to the printer by the end of May.

For Dice Rule!, I'm drawing much inspiration from the old AD&D Dungeon Masters Guide, opting to go with an 8.5 x 11 two-column format. This layout allows for much more content to be placed on a single page, which means a lot less page turning for mid-game rule look-ups. While such an occurence is minimal for WEGS 101 play, much like the old DMG, Dice Rule! has the potential to be a valuable in-game reference point for the Kreator.

Now it's just a matter of beating these books into shape! Truth be told, I'd like to wrap up the initial layout by the first day of Spring (March 20th).

So much for that Winter's nap!

Make Way For The Mino!

2010-01-10T09:49:00.003-05:00

The second installment of the Badderlands series has arrived!

Minotaur Meat Has Arrived!

2010-01-09T12:15:00.003-05:00

The long-awaited second module for the Badderlands series has arrived! I can finally check it off my 2009 To Do list!

B2: Minotaur Meat is the next Old Skool adventure from GameWick Games and it's chuck full of fun and adventure. It follows the three chapter narrative format, allowing the game to be played in three encounters.

The module was started in early 2009 and offered as an event for the conventions that we ventured to (Origins, Gen Con, Dexcon, Ubercon). Bit by bit, the module was forged into what it is today. One thing stayed the same, though: it ends with an awesome encounter with a classic minotaur!

The minotaur is depicted twice in the module, once on the cover and later in the third chapter. Both illustrations are drawn by Jim Holloway, a fantastic sword-n-sorcery artist known for his great work during the early days of the role-playing game industry. The module also features the art of Tony Steele and Brian Thomas.

Check it out!

2010, An Ill Omen...

2010-01-04T11:48:00.004-05:00

Uh-oh...

In WEGS lingo, 2010 is back-to-back Bad Shots...

A 20 Bad Shot and -2 Strength...

A 10 Bad Shot and -1 Strength...

A harbinger for things to come?

I hope not!

Paper Golem!

2009-12-22T09:36:00.003-05:00

Whelp, I've merged Dice Rule! Book 1 and Book 2 into a single document. Book 1 housed Chapters 1 thru 7. Book 2 housed Chapters 8 thru 12. I kept two books because it was easier to navigate the document in this fashion (both were under 100 pages). I'm now facing a 189 page paper golem!

The merge is a significant step forward to publishing, but there is still a long road ahead. My next step is what I call the "SNR Stage". SNR = Search and Replace (that lovely function of MS Word). While working on the books I kept track of any key terminology, abbreviation preferences, changes to rules, clarifications, etc, and logged them in the back of the book. For wegsample, is it "Cold Roll" or "Cold roll", and "Per Level Bonus" or "PL Bonus". Little stuff like that that ripples through the book. I also have a list of frequent typos to scan, like "their" for "there" and any place that three successive blank spaces appear. Real exciting stuff!

Post-merge I scan the full-bodied document from the top, going down the list one by one. It's an arduous and boring process. A complete necessity for overall synchronicity. Some folks might even call this step "copy editing".

This step let's me move the oversized golem to the door to get it on its way.

Let's hope the dang thing doesn't topple over on me in the process!

Chapter Wrasslin'

2009-12-05T10:23:00.006-05:00

Back in September, I started the rewrites on Dice Rule from the top. With the busy summer con schedule, I couldn't find the time to focus on this final march toward copy editing, and the book needed one good read/re-write to get me there. When you lay aside a manuscript for a couple months, you are picking it up fresh with a new set of eyes. You see glaring errors. Your mind stumbles over all the incongruant sentences and trips across jumbled paragraphs. Your whole perception of what you thought you had written gets thrown up and the air and slammed down hard upon the surface of reality.

When you enter the ring with an unfinished manuscript, it is a wrestling match. You have got to know the strengths and weaknesses that your opponent (the manuscript) possesses. It's going to slam you hard with its brute strength and batter your ego. Every step of the way it's going to whisper to you that you don't have the strength to prevail and that you should just walk away. It wants you to leave it, as is, in the ring. That's the toughest part because, inevitably, this is true. You have to walk away from it.

The irony is that this beast is all of your own making. All of its power came from you, the writer. All of its weakness came from you, the writer. In the strangest twist of tactics, the manuscript's weakness is its most horrific strength, because they are your weaknesses. Despite all this, you have to squint at this beast through eyes bleary with too much staring at the screen and murmur that over-used heroic action line, "Let's finish this..."

I'm in a twelve round fight with this beast. Twelve chapters of nonstop slugging it out. And there's not a referee in sight.

Just me and a 180 page electro-imaginary beast.

Chapter wrasslin'...

The End of Cons

2009-12-03T08:50:00.008-05:00

With no more cons on my plate for 2009, I've launched the first annual End of Cons sale on the GameWick Games website. I've slashed prices like nobody's business and will keep these prices in place until we announce our 2010 con schedule. It just seemed like a great way to celebrate the end of the convention season and the end of the year.

What's on sale is the second printing of Old Skool (the first printing sold out at GenCon this summer). The second printing has only slight corrections to it, mostly glaring typos found in the first printing. Typos like Stealt instead of Stealth. Not to mention that ever embarrassing synonymic juxtaposition in the Pirates of Penzance lyric quote, "steal" instead of "steel".

Odd how the two most glaring typos both featured the same word...

Never realized that previously. Must have been the dread Curse of Schwenk for using his lyrics to make a not-so-clever point...

Anyway, for all twelve of you who read this little blog...

The End of Cons is nigh!

The Skinny On Dice Rule! (Part XII)

2009-11-16T08:27:00.013-05:00

With all cons behind me for the year, I've dedicated my "game time" to the next WEGS book, Dice Rule! Well, that and the next module, Minotaur Meat... And of course, the long overdue Minion of the Month... These are the big three on my plate right now.

Dice Rule! is the one that consumes most of the time, and last week I found myself in the never-ending cycle of reading, editing, reading, editing the final chapter in the book: Chapter XII, Adventure! This isn't the first time I've been through that process with this chapter - more like the VI-th. It's a chapter that just doesn't want to play well with the others. Come the end of the week, on the XII-th to be exact, I put the finishing touches on the chapter and put it to rest (once again). This doesn't mean that Chapter XII is done by any stretch of the imagination. It only means that I've gotten it to a point where it is drying. I'll rip it all apart again when I start layout and design. And that point should be coming very, very soon! Boxcars!

Ubercon XII Aftermath!

2009-11-10T08:39:00.004-05:00

Way, way back in the fall of 2005, WEGS Copper was unveiled at Ubercon VI. Six cons later, this little con holds a special place in my old gaming heart. It's the kind of con where you get to know everyone that volunteers, and can recognize all the folks who wander about the gaming areas. It's got that hometown feel (if your hometown is Geekville, USA).

I always have a blast hunkering down to game here. The rpg room is a mid-sized conference room, half of which is dedicated to the mysteriously important RPGA activities (a partition is put up so they have their own private playing space). The other half (the non-D&D-ers) holds about eight tables hosting a mix of classic rpg events and small press games. A good chunk of the events are run by game designers or small press publishers. It's one big mix of gaming goodness. There are plenty of other rooms jammed with misc. gaming activities (card, board, minis), but I tend to stick around the arena I know.

I ran three WEGS Old Skool events: Tale of the Trojan Pig, Minotaur Meat (the next installment of the Badderlands series) and WEGS Sucks! (a vampyric event). Trojan Pig is an intro level game whereas Minotaur Meat steps up the role-play aspects of the game. WEGS Sucks! is a short and brutal scenario designed to be a total party kill (destroy all players), which we clearly state before the game begins. You gotta set expectations in a TPK setting!

All scenarios were a blast to run with a great mix of new/returning WEGS 101 players. Not suprisingly, WEGS Sucks! ended 1.5 hours early. Once the Vampyr Lord appeared with his soul draining sword and started pounding on the Goblin Warrior, the other players ran off the battlemat...

Shortly thereafter, the Goblin Warrior was no more.

A great end to the con!

The Skinny on Dice Rule! (Part 2)

2009-11-03T08:25:00.007-05:00

This past weekend, I split my time between reviewing the second half of Dice Rule! and watching some classic horror films, heavy on the Vincent Price. It was, after all, the season for the fiendish master of Poe. It's been a while since I've seen VP in all his glory and thoroughly enjoyed his brilliance in Tower of London (gotta love Richard the III stories) and The Haunted Palace (gotta love a movie set in Arkham even if it is a monster mash of Lovecraft storylines credited as a Poe story). I was also able to sneak in the final installment of the Blind Dead quadrilogy, Night of the Seagulls. More on these movies in a later post, though.

As noted in the post below, the second half of Dice Rule! is composed of five chapters and now comes in at text-only 88 pages. The bulk of the content focuses on the rules for minions (aka monsters), so it fit in well with the running weekend theme. I made it through 4/5ths of the book and knocking off the final chapter this week. Chapter 12 details adventure construction and includes topics on wave play, chapter play and campaign play. It's probably the biggest chapter in the book, which is the one dilemma I have right now: page count. I did not imagine that the book would grow to the size it is, but as the chapters unfolded, one topic led to another and another. Much of the content and rules covered in Dice Rule! was birthed at our convention game tables over the last five years. It's amazing to see how much WEGS 101 Old Skool has spawned.

It kinda creeps up on ya...

Just like Vincent Price...

The Skinny on Dice Rule! (Part 1)

2009-11-01T14:28:00.008-05:00

Way, way back in the early part of this year, I began composing the notes on the next WEGS book, titled Dice Rule! The subtitle was "How To Run A Wicked Game" and the book was to be a resource for all players. It was to include all sorts of tips/tricks for playing the game and also advanced options for Players (Arks), Kreators and Minion Masters. The content was primarily based on all the stuff we've been throwing down at our con games the last four years (stuff that isn't in (or excluded from) the Old Skool rulebook). I won't go so far as calling Dice Rule! an "advanced version" as I would a "companion piece". The advanced version is called WEGS Copper, and that ain't seeing the light of day (again) for a couple years.

By April, I had the first 7 chapters done in rough form. I was figuring the book would end up around the same number of chapters as Old Skool (twelve). There was, however, much more content in these first chapters than in all of Old Skool. I was looking at approx 80 pages of text. Way back in April I knew that this was going to be a big book! Now, the first 7 chapters dealt with the "bones of the system": the dice rules, the Ark Kard mechanics, spoints and skills. Stuff applicable to all players. The remaining chapters were dealing with much different topics: minion rules, encounters, tactics, and adventure design. The second half of the book was playing primarily to the Kreator side of the table (but it's stuff players should bone up on if they want to have an edge on the house).

By mid-summer, all 12 chapters were complete in their raw text form and weighing in at about 160 pages. This original manuscript was given a thorough drubbing by the Platinum Warlock and The Professor (two highly experienced WEGS mavens who know their way around the battlemat). Since then, I've been revising the content and getting it ready for its final death throes: layout, design, art and the final proofing. Once this process begins, it will probably be a couple months to a finished product.

Man, it'll be nice to have something new to sell at next year's conventions!

GenCon Everafter...

2009-10-23T08:25:00.005-04:00

Haven't posted since the end of Gencon, which pretty much summarizes how much the summer con season takes out of ya (physically, mentally, monetarily)! Gotta add even more conventions to the schedule next summer and see what kind of recovery time that incurs!

Since August, I've been working on the next book (Dice Rule!), the next Badderlands module (Minotaur Meat) and the next minion (Trolls). In order to make some headway, I went light on the fall convention schedule, details of which will be posted soon.

I'm back in the game, baby!

Gen Con 09 Aftermath!

2009-09-03T08:40:00.005-04:00

The summer con tour came to its exciting conclusion at Gen Con, as did the stock of the first printing of WEGS 101 Old Skool. We returned from Indiana with the last remaining copy of the original print run. We're pretty happy 'bout that! The rest of the con is a blur of waking up, walking over to the exhibit hall, working the booth and demoing, quick dinners and then the evening WEGS game. Rinse and repeat. Once you plug into a con, you don't unplug until the booth has been dismantled and all the stock is in your car ready to go home. Cheerfully, we had a lot less stock to go home!

We only had a single 10 x 10 booth, and that took some getting used to. Me and the Wegshogs are used to a double booth for our set-up and demos, so it took us a little time to get used to this new flow. After the first day of bumping into each other, we decided to totally reconfigure the booth , just to make it work better. At best, we could demo a game for four players no matter which way we configured the space. And that was probably best as it made us focus on quick demos for small groups.

We were surrounded by some hopping booths: Luke Crane and the Burning Wheel team were on one side and Crazy Egor was on the other. Diagonally across from us was Goodman Games and Wizards of the Coast. Directly across from us was a custom leather boot and jacket dealer, Son of Sandlar, selling some awesome renn-faire ware.

Not a bad neighborhood at all!

Q: Do You Want To Make A Small Fortune In The Gaming Industry?

2009-08-26T09:13:00.004-04:00

A: Start with a large one!

This little bit of professional advice was given to me at Origins from a seasoned dice professional. Given the expense of attending summer conventions alone, either as a game company or just an individual, this should be fairly apparent. I read this week that the average per individual cost for attending Gen Con was estimated to be around $900 (a real loose estimation). Travel, hotel, food, admission and purchases sure add up quick. I'd think it would come in more toward $600 (a sixth of that being admission fees/event costs!). Keep in mind, vendors typically get there a day or two before the con for set-up (one more day of expenses).

Anyhow, I've been a bit delinquent with my posting here. This was just a ping to let all twelve of my faithful readers know I'm still alive and rolling. The summer con season did not kill me, and what doesn't kill you just makes you stronger...

Gen Con Aftermath will be posted soon!

I Know I'm A Geek 'Cuz...

2009-08-07T09:25:00.004-04:00

Somewhat related to BoG, there are just things that make the inner geek tingle. Like knowing that a two handed sword does 3d6 damage in Advanced Dungeons & Dragons. And that such an item costs 30 g.p. (at least that was the going price back in 1978). Lots and lots of games geeks can spout out much more on the damage and cost of items, but I'm more surface level. I just know what appealed to me when I was introduced to the game. I have no clue why my brain has deemed that info important enough to retain...

As hinted in the earlier BoG posts, the inspiration for the Badge of Geekness material came from a little gem of knowledge from my travels with Tolkien. That's why those prior posts had the Hobbit and FotR depicted. It is simply this:

Chapter 1 of The Hobbit is titled: An Unexpected Party

Chapter 1 of The Fellowship of the Ring is titled: A Long-Expected Party

Tolkien begins both books with a party, of sorts. The unexpected party is the Dwarves who show up at Bilbo's doorstep thanks to Gandalf. The long-expected party is Bilbo's self-planned 111th birthday bash. Both mark points of departure from the Shire for Bilbo.

I just think that's cool JRR trivia.

And it only took me three posts to get that brain nugget out...

Badges of Geekness, Part 2 or 3

2009-08-03T09:01:00.006-04:00

Based on the last post(s), I'm guessing that there's going to be a need to define the different Badges of Geekness that one can acquire. Off the top of my head, there's got to be one for "The Order of the Ring" (Tolkien) and "The Society of the Elder Things" (Lovecraft). These are two authors who have been embraced by gaming geeks en masse thanks to the various incarnations of their works/themes in role-playing games. We can also add "The Pittsburgh Assemblage" for Romero and his monstrous zombie efforts. There's plenty of other badge categories, but these are the ones that I personally would have a shot at wearing.

Now my knowledge of those topics above isn't very broad. The shards of information I possess on those topics were gained from my casual exposure to that particular genre. I have not spent hours memorizing every nameless horror introduced to this world by H.P., or tried to understand the Elven language of J.R.R. In fact, I've only read the Hobbit once and LOTR twice. I base my badge credentials on this one fact alone:

I can sit around a gaming table with a group of complete strangers and mutually enjoy the banter that flows forth from any one of the topics above.

A Badge of Geekness is like wearing a t-shirt from a place you've visited. You've been there, done that and want to share the excitement of the experience with other folks. Problem is that there aren't too many folks who have been to Middle Earth, Miskatonic U, or even to shopping mall chock full of zombies.

Geeks go to places that don't exist.

And all we get are these little badges...

Badges of Geekness

2009-07-31T07:32:00.005-04:00

As noted in the earlier BoG post, there's just some things that game geeks know. I'm not talking about the stuff that floats freely about the spheres, but that which bubbles below the crust of the Geek world. The stuff that's above the crust tends to be non-worthy of a BoG (like knowing the names of the secret identities of the most popular superheroes). This is the stuff that even the non-geek surface dwellers find out, thanks to summer superhero blockbusters, etc. That kind of pop culture stuff is all above crust. No more badges handed out for that info!

Anything of "ours" that has been jammed into a digestable movie format or tv series just ain't that special anymore. When most of the residents of a retirement community know that Bruce Wayne is Batman, it's over for that super. Ask them who Hawkman is though, and you'll get the normal glazed over stare...

But this post isn't supposed to be about supers. That's not the angle of my geek. It's just that supers have probably made the most cross-over to the surface, and so provide the easiest examples. There's not a whole bunch of sword-n-sorcery stuff that has made this journey. I'm hazarding a guess that if it has, it has gone from novella to comic to movie (like Conan), the exception being The Lord of the Rings. Surface dwellers were exposed to Hobbits, Middle Earth, the Ring and the Fellowship, thanks to P. Jackson and Co. This knowledge will be reinforced when The Hobbit is released as a blockbuster, too. So, some of the special warmth of our coveted secret knowledge will be sent to the ether for mass consumption.

This just means we have to dig deeper for our sword-n-sorcery badges of geekness. Now, this post went nowhere to the point I was trying to make, which was about my BoG for my limited Tolkien knowledge. And, as this post is on the brink of blather, I'll bail out pronto, quoting some Gandalf...

Keep it secret!

Keep it safe!

(And I have no clue who Hawkman is...)

Dexcon Aftermath!

2009-07-22T07:51:00.004-04:00

Part two of my summer con trilogy has come and gone! Dexcon marks the halfway point between Origins and GenCon. Unlike those other two cons, this one is located in NJ and too, too convenient to attend. It's also a great rally point for all our home hogs.

Dexcon was the most successful con to date from an event standpoint. Thanks to all the support from The Prof, Willy the Too and Spointer, we were able to run three WEGS sessions simultaneously, marking the most number of players to be WEGS-ing it the same time (17 players). Sure, someone might be throwing down WEGS for mass amounts of people somewhere else on the globe, but I haven't heard of it yet (and if they are, let me know so I can sell them some rulebooks!).

At Dexcon, the WEGS arena is set-up at the hotel side entrance in front of a cascading wall of water. The area is just big enough to fit three large tables, the WEGS banner and the product table. It's a great area for passing traffic, but standing in front of a waterfall for twelve hours is enough to bring down a SAN% test. Luckily, some non-con attendee decided to take a swim in the pool late Sat. night, resulting in the waterfall being turned off all day Sunday.

The con ended with yet another amazing game: 99 Low Level Orks! This was the final WEGS event on the schedule, and, truth be told, I thought there wouldn't be any player turn-out for it. Sunday con games are usually a bust. Not the case this time! Thanks to The Prof's tireless recruiting tactics, we had to set-up two tables side-by-side and run the game for 9 players. The game took us all the way up to the close of the con (6 pm).

As you can tell from the tardiness of this post, it took a little longer to recover from this one!

Next stop, Gen Con!

Origins 2009 Aftermath!

2009-07-07T08:12:00.003-04:00

Origins, the first of the big three summer cons, has come and gone! Thus the gap in my postings: a couple weeks prior to the con is prep time, a couple weeks after is recovery! Two remain, though: Dexcon, NJ and Gen Con, IN. The hardest one to prepare for is the first, after that it's routine pretty much.

GameWick Games had a corner booth in the center of the exhibit hall and, thanks to our friends and fans, was rocking all the time. The Bride of WEGS (as she is called by the King of the TTG), Willy The Too and Spointer were all on hand to assist with the demos, allowing me to stay sane amidst a sea of gaming hysteria. And then there was the Witthogs, who showed up everyday for the WEGS Power Play sessions (from 2 to 4 pm). Wicked, wicked fun!

At night, we convened at 9pm for our official convention events: these are the events that folks register for. These events were jam-packed every night, so much so that on Saturday we had to add a second session of Dingbitt's Dunge O' Doom (one session run by Willy The Too, the other by Spointer). I floated between the two tables as the disembodied Kreator/pit boss. I think that's the most players ever to wegzit in the same room, same time (just barely beating the single session at the Krystal Keep back in 2008).

All in all, a great way to start the summer con season!

Badges of Geekness

2009-06-17T07:44:00.005-04:00

There are certain things that gaming geeks know; like that GenCon is one of the biggest geek conventions held in the United States. True geeks know that the convention's title is short for "Geneva Convention", so titled for the fact that the first GenCon was held in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin (1968). As a miniature wargame convention, the title also paid homage to those same historical conventions of Geneva, Switzerland. I wonder how obscure this reference is to the folks who now attend GenCon, as it no longer has strong ties to its historical miniatures foundations? Sure there are still tried and true wargamers heading to GenCon, but these are only a small fraction of the attendee population. The con's primary purpose is not wargames.

And so it was that from those hex-based wargames of yore came Chainmail, the small booklet that was one of the first to outline sword-n-sorcery wargaming. Then Chainmail begot Dungeons & Dragons. And D&D begot the whole pen-n-paper rpg craze. And then all this morphed into online rpgs and tactical warfare games. Now, this is a big, bruising summary of the industry and history of GenCon, which has not been held in any town called Geneva for many, many years.

My initial point was that there are badges of geekness.

Knowing that GenCon is short for Geneva Convention is one of them.

Wisconsin, not Switzerland.

200

2009-06-05T09:07:00.004-04:00

Shortly after the last post and the comment about having a bean bag chair made of dice, I got a shipment of 200 dice delivered to my doorstep. This summer we're releasing the next wave of the WEGS Kreator Kit, which will include 5 dice per set. Dice are all stamped "Fabulous Las Vegas", appropriate for a night of WEGS-ing it up! The new Kreator Kit is pretty slick with an upgraded carrying case and heavier poker chips. It contains everything we use for our con games (pawns, markers) and will instantly let folks start playing along at home! It's everything a Kreator needs to get the game started in a jiff (and it's pretty handy for use with any adventure game). Folks might even just use the kit for their home poker games...

Play WEGS!

Dice Included...

2009-05-27T05:40:00.003-04:00

At Wittcon this year, I ran a seminar on game design and publishing entitled Dice Included. The basic premise of the piece was how each and every little thing you do along the way of taking your game from an idea to a published product is as much of an adventure as a business venture. Once you turn that page and say that you're serious about publishing and selling, you've got to watch every single copper piece carefully (thus the title of the seminar).

To include a set of dice (2d6 and 2d10 for WEGS) would be an awesome addition to the Old Skool bag, but doing so would add about $1 more to the cost it took me to put the package together. While that's only .25 a die, it's also 25% of the retail price. Taking just a buck off the margin is a dicey thing to do for a small press endeavor. Sure I could get the dice much cheaper, if I ordered a thousand of each type, but I'm not ready to add two big dice-filled bean bag chairs to my tv room right now...

I read earlier this week on the Grognardia blog that when the D&D box set was sold over in the UK, the fact that the books came with dice caused the product to be taxable; adding dice established it as a game and not a set of books (books are not taxable). Supposedly stores removed the dice to increase sales. I say supposedly because this was only mentioned in a reply to a post and I can't verify it.

While adding dice would strongly establish the Old Skool bag as a game, I think the inclusion of the card deck has similar results (as does the beefy barbarian warrior chucking dice at you).

Dice Rule!

2009-05-23T08:37:00.005-04:00

This month has flown by (and with very little posting). This due mostly to the summer con preparations and getting everything in place for the booths and promotional side of things (like advertising). This stuff sneaks up on me every year and though I might be smarter about these things, I don't know if I'm better at it.

The other thing that has been consuming most of my time is the writing of the next WEGS 101 installment: Dice Rule! (or How To Run A Wicked Game). Pre-Vegas it was 8 chapters big and 88 pages long (or 8/88 in WEGS lingo). Since then, I've added 4 more chapters and about 44 pages (4/44). So, this is becoming a healthy sized tome. It should be ready for a Gen Con release.

I'm obsessed with finishing the first draft of the book by the end of this month, just as I turn the page on another mortal year.

One week to go!

Tips For Freelancers

2009-05-04T09:22:00.007-04:00

One of the GTS seminars I attended was run my Mike Stackpole, who is "a science fiction and fantasy author best known for his Star Wars and Battletech books" (according to the opening line of his wikipedia bio). You can find out more about him via his personal site; he's done a lot more in the industry than that, being one of the early champions of D&D during its commercial demonization.

The seminar, titled the same as this blog entry, focused on how to find work as a freelancer in the gaming industry from a writer's standpoint (and a bit for artists, too). I don't have any plans nor the time for freelancing, but from a game company standpoint, it gave me some insight on how to navigate working relationships for future projects. Lots of good points and laughs throughout the seminar; two quotes I wrote down:

"When you enter the game industry, you take a vow of poverty; game companies will help you keep that vow every step of the way."

"Sufficiently advanced stupidity can sometimes be mistaken for malice."

Both are paraphrased, but the first quote illustrated that the game industry is notoriously impoverished (unless you create the next Magic The Gathering) and no one should delve there with prospects of getting rich quick (or at all). The second quote was just advice to not sweat the small stuff (like publishers who edit the heck out of your piece and strip it of all the cool stuff).

So much for my get rich scheme...

Beer and Peanut

2009-05-02T11:08:00.003-04:00

Ever since I saw the news story on the NJ hit man who hid one of his victims under a hotel room bed (and the body wasn't discovered for a couple of weeks), I take a quick peek under the bed of any hotel room I stay in. Quirky precaution, but it reveals a world of info on just how thorough the rooms are sanitized (or not). So, imagine my horror when checking under my Vegas bed and finding an empty bottle of beer and a solitary peanut. It's not so much that they former tenant left the empty beer bottle, but what were they thinking about by leaving only one peanut?!? That's not even worth cracking the shell for...

At least it wasn't a pair of eyes looking back...

What's GTS, El Willy?

2009-04-27T08:56:00.005-04:00

Glad you asked, man!

GTS is Gama Trade Show, a game industry convention that is a mix of seminars and exhibitors that spans four days in Las Vegas. Basically, game companies set-up their product lines in booths and attendees (mostly retail store owners looking to see game offerings from said companies) wander about and look at all the cool stuff. GameWick Games does not have a booth; with a single product (called WEGS 101 Old Skool for those of you who don't know) and no distribution, there's really no point in me shelling out all that cash (yet). This is the same reason I'm not even a member of GAMA (the Game Manufacturer's Association). I attend in my professional capacity as GameWick's Chief Gaming Officer and network the best I can with fellow CGOs and the ilk. Between industry seminars and exhibit hall introductions, I keep busy during the daylight hours in Vegas. The more time I spend at the con, the less time I have for the tables.

A win/win situation in my book.

Casino ala Kubrick

2009-04-23T09:07:00.010-04:00

This is the second year that the GTS (Gama Trade Show) was held at Ballys, which has the strangest entry portal of all casinos. Like something out of Kubrick's 2001, this neon swirled entrance tube sucks people up from the Strip and eventually deposits them inside the belly of the casino. The first leg of the journey is via conveyor belt that ends abruptly at an escalator up. The second leg is via said escalator, up and over the main hotel and casino entrance (driveway/valet) to a sales pitch arena where you are effronted with the oft said lure line "Are you folks in town tonight and looking to see a free show?". Navigating this trap, you find another escalator down and into the casino lobby. The three-part journey takes about five minutes as the conveyor moves just slow enough to make you wish you walked.

Most folks don't realize that there are gardens to the left and right of the entrance tube with a secret sidewalk that leads directly to the front of the casino itself. The catch is that you have to walk the entire way (gasp!) instead of being mechanically casino-herded. The walk through the Bally gardens passes like warp drive compared to the conveyor belt attraction. The gardens themselves are a bizzarre shamble of poorly manicured hedge animals (think Kubrick's The Shining gardens that have gone to pot). There's just enough left of the plant to discern that it is in an animal shape; the only reason you are drawn to this conclusion is that there has to be some purpose to the chicken wire wrapped around the plant itself. I think Ballys had much grander hopes for the gardens, but as almost everyone uses the futuristic (for the 1970s) tube, no one ever sees these little topiary beasts. I saw plenty of them each day as I bypassed the tube.

The Land of Showgirls & Buffets

2009-04-22T20:51:00.005-04:00

Well, I'm back from Las Vegas and happily return with some cash in my wallet. It is not my cash though, that disappeared somewhere past 1am last Saturday at a craps table at the Imperial Palace. No, the money that is in my wallet is my wife's, who managed to stay comfortably ahead of the house edge via her penny slots (disastrous when a table player has to concede victory to a slots player)! But I wasn't out there for the gambling or the craps or the pool or the drinks... I was there for the GAMA Trade Show (Game Manufacturers Association), the fine folks that bring the world the Origins Game Fair in Columbus. And I have a ton of restrospective posts coming all based on this strange Wegziotic adventure in paradise!

NDE & Taxes

2009-04-13T08:04:00.002-04:00

Two things that can't be avoided in life, and thankfully, I'm only dealing with the latter of the two. Once a year, just about this time, I get to revisit all my prior year expenses for the game company and get it all down on the tax form. It's almost as much fun as rolling the dread NDE. Can't wait to get filed and back to the game table!

March Madness!

2009-04-01T08:39:00.003-04:00

March was a hectic month and I was scattered all over the place on the WEGS map. The early part of the month I was wrapping up the summer convention schedule and also began work on the next Minion of the Month, The Blind Dead. The Prof and I went back and forth on the skills in a mad attempt to make these bloodsuckers worthy of zombie-dom, and it took a full month to get 'em out the door. Mid-month was Wittcon, a good, little con hosted by the Wittenberg University Role Playing Guild where I ran games and gave a brief seminar on game publishing (appropriately entitled Dice Included). The trip to WU ended on a high note as the Platinum Warlock and crew took me to an awesome gaming store in Fairborn (Ohio) Bookery Fantasty. The store is now a WEGS retailer! On top of all this, I've been focused on the content for House Rules! and trying to get the first pass done; at this point I find myself with at least two chapters to go before the first read-thru.

April is going to be another mad month!

The Gen Con Cut Off!

2009-03-20T08:59:00.006-04:00

Today, the first day of spring, is the cut off for event submission for Gen Con. In the past, I was always excited by getting the WEGS schedule submitted early. This year, I waited until the last possible moment. Priorities have changed since we now run a booth there, and we pour all our energy into our convention floor demos. Last year we ran 10 events and had a total of 63 players jump into the fray; we also ran two after-hours games for inner circle 'shogs and 'shogettes. This year, sad to say, I've submitted just 3 events (Weds, Thurs and Fri, 9pm - midnite) and left Saturday night open for another invite only event (probably WEGS Sucks!).

Here's the three events:

The Tale of the Trojan Pig

Keep on the Badderlands: Minotaur Meat!

Dwarf Walks Into A Bar

It's with regret that I've pulled Dingbitt's Dunge O' Doom off the schedule; I could only run one repeat event given the abbreviated schedule, and just love running Dwarf Walks. Always have a blast with that one; never, never, never plays the same way twice!

And that's why Turdschmeer is featured in today's post!

B1 Hobgobble's Eve

2009-03-06T08:03:00.007-05:00

Are you ready for wicked adventure?

After four months of rigorous playtesting, the first adventure module is launched: Hobgobble's Eve! As this is an intro to the WEGS Badderlands series, it's also lovingly called B1. This module is jam-packed with some great Old Skool art and tons of hobgoblins (like every intro adventure should be). To call it an intro is a little misleading though; it's going to be quite challenging for new players to "beat". There are only three chapters in the adventure, each one gets progressively harder. The module also contains its fair share of wacky WEGS lingo, and I'm hoping the casual reader will have their curiousity peaked by how different the Wickedly Errant Game System is from other sword-n-sorcery game systems.

Dreamation Aftermath!

2009-02-25T07:59:00.004-05:00

Dreamation was like getting my own stimulus package for WEGS: the energy of the con and all the great games we ran got the creative juices flowing just in time for spring. After a long winter of limited play, it was fantastic to sit back and play one game after another after another. With The Prof as Minion Master, I was able to take the overlord position and sit on high watching the action go down. Mucho gracias to The Prof! From running through the final test of Hobgobble's Eve to throwing down the initial pass at Minotaur Meat, we were able to gather gamers for every WEGS offering on the schedule (with the exception of our Sunday Pirates of Penzantium demo).

We took some chances with new rules, like allowing folks to burn 6% Rank for a Phew! at the Spante*; this made the end game go on forever! This, though, is part of the fun of going full throttle at a con; for the House, it keeps the game interesting and also allows us to test out and tinker with enhancements. I'm all about trying to break the system, giving it too much gas and flooding the engines. The downside of this is that players may get caught in the crossfire and walk away with a different view of what the game is about. One big thing learned: keep the intro games intro (no tweaking rules one jot).

One last thing on Dreamation... awesome location. GameWick Games was given three tables at the hotel entrance in front of a cascading waterfall; it was like being poolside at the Flamingo. Word is that we're in same location for the summer con. It will be awesome.

*"burn 6% Rank for a Phew! at the Spante"... A line that only a Wegshog could comprehend!

All work and no play...

2009-02-16T13:16:00.004-05:00

Feb's been a busy work month for me, thus the first posting happening mid-month. There was some headway on the WEGS front in the fact that I was able to launch the first Master Minion, Mushpot the Great! The first WEGS module, B1 Hobgobble's Eve, will arrive on the wegsite later this month. And speaking of work... The Origins and GenCon event schedules are due this month, too. Hard to believe that it's that time of the year already! I always forget that Feb is a big push month for getting everything lined up for the spring and summer cons (this stuff just sneaks up on you). On the game front, the first convention of the year is hitting this week: Dreamation. Looking forward to throwing down some WEGS this weekend; it's the first chance I'm going to get to sit back and have fun in some time (and hopefully sell some product, too)!

Hobgobble Cover Art!

2009-01-27T08:24:00.008-05:00

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

2009-01-22T08:20:00.006-05:00

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

2009-01-15T08:15:00.004-05:00

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!

2009-01-06T22:50:00.004-05:00

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!

Playtesting: Hobgobble's Eve, Chap 2.

2008-12-20T10:02:00.005-05:00

Me and The Professor threw down Chapter 2 for the Garden State Gaming Society this week. Unlike the first session where we had 2 players, this round we had 7 players (the perfect number of WEGS players in my book). This allowed me to step out of the game as a player and into the role of Kreator (judge). The Prof was fully in charge of the minions and innings. All players were new to the game with the exception of the 2 who returned from Chapter 1. Arkreation took about a half hour, then we plunged into the game. The Arks were:

3 Gnobbit Tricksters
2 Warriors (1 Humnz, 1 Goblin)
1 Elf Mage
1 Elf Ranger

Chapter 2 starts the Arks off in a cave prison, the entrance to which is guarded by 7 Hobgoblins and a Giant Rat. The chapter took about 2 hours to finish, and was wicked fun from the start. The players were a great mix of solid board gamers and rpg veterans; all had plenty of game experience under their belts and took to the game system far too well, far too quick; making the game that much more challenging for the Minion Master. The players were having a rollicking time of it, and the only thing that slowed the game down was the deliberation by the players as to what course of action was best (and that was a blast to watch).

From a playtesting standpoint, I'm considering this one Santa's gift to me! With a table full of new players, a couple who now own book-n-card sets, this was a great way to end the year.

Playtesting: Hobgobble's Eve

2008-12-05T08:41:00.006-05:00

Last week, me and The Professor threw down a Hobgobble's Eve playtest for the good folk of the Garden State Gaming Society. We only had two players, so I jumped in on their side as a Sage (imagine that!). The Prof had the job of Kreator/Minion Master and did a great job of beating us down in the first encounter with a trio of fowl turdragons (turkey-dragons). I did my best as the team's Sage, but by encounter's end found myself quite low on spoints; alack, the problems of liberal spell-tossing! All said and done, I had a blast jumping in on the player side, which I don't get to do very often. There's something to be said for this from a playtesting standpoint: it's easy to run the game and be in control, but it's critical to see the game from a player's view. You gotta know how the dice feel on that side of the table, too!

Hobgobble's Eve

2008-11-26T09:40:00.006-05:00

Spent the last couple weeks cranking out a mini-venture for WEGS called Hobgobble's Eve; basically a "turkey hunt-in-the-swamp-gone-bad-real bad" scenario. It's been sent around to a couple of the royal Wegshogs to run for their friends (you know who you are), plus I'm running it tonight for a local group. Should be a blast (literally, as there's a weapon in it called the Blunderboomer)! The hope is that I can get the adventure on the site in pdf, so folks all around the globe can download a little bit o' wegs for their year-end enjoyment.

Have a great Thanksgiving folks!

The Wegziotic Triangle

2008-11-13T08:14:00.005-05:00

"Had you stepped on board the Pequod at a certain juncture of the post-mortemizing of the whale; and had you strolled forward nigh the windlass, pretty sure am I that you would have scanned with no small curiousity a very strange enigmatical object..." I'm blathering, of course, about the Wegziotic Triangle...

As I was pondering this year's WEGS tour, I've come to realize that we've established a triangular playing zone; from Stony Brook NY to Indianapolis IN to Greensboro NC. The center of this triangle is somewhere in the middle West Virginia*. It's my hope that many gamers start getting sucked into this zone, mysteriously disappearing off the radar of conventional game systems, only to reappear shouting "Spante!". If nothing else, the Wegshogs now know our field of battle and can start conquering the gaming world one geek at a time.

(* It's my suspician that there's some kind of eerie, glowing, multi-sided monolith here... )

Yar?

2008-11-05T09:00:00.004-05:00

With the final con of the year hitting this weekend (MACE, North Carolina), it'll be time to get back into the swing of things with the 2009 product offerings. As most of ya know, WEGS 202 Pirates of Penzantium was shelved over the summer due to the sheer bulk of con-hopping we did; there just wasn't enough time to get it all together for a GenCon release. So, that's something to look forward to next year! Also in the works is WEGS 101 House Rules!; a sequel to Old Skool that's gonna include all the tips/tricks/traps that the Wegshogs having been throwing down at conventions these last phew years... Rumor has it that it's gonna include the rules for Dingbitt's Dunge O' Doom, too (insert the sound of a dozen or so WEGS players going wild over this news...). In the meantime, here's some POP art to keep you occupoddo...

Ubercon Aftermath!

2008-10-28T08:25:00.006-04:00

Despite pre-convention ominious portent, Ubercon was an uber-blast! Worries that (a) our events were only publically posted the day that player registration closed (two days before the con) and (b) our events were not included in the on-site program, had me concerned that this con was going to be disastrous for us; if no one knew we were going to be there, would there be any players for our games?!? Merrily, the answer was "yes"; if you build it, they will come... It wasn't all "phantom all-stars to cornfield baseball diamond" magic for us; players just didn't materialize out of thin air. Pre-game and post-game, Jason (The Professor) was in full scouting mode for extra players and betwixt-game stragglers to fill in the ranks of the Arks.

We had four games on the sched: one on Friday night and three on Saturday. The Friday night game, Tomb of Horrors, had six players (2 noobs and 4 prior Uber players). This game was so enjoyable that we all agreed to continue the game into the Saturday morning time slot. During this transition, we lost one player but picked up two, bringing the player count to seven. The Saturday afternoon slot, Minotaur Meat!, had a solitary player, but then three players from Tomb of Horrors returned for even more WEGS-ing. This four-player game gave The Professor and El Willy some much needed respite from the prior seven person game. It also gave these players more WEGS action! The day concluded with From Dusk Til Dead, another seven-player game (4 returnees and 3 noobs). All in all, the games were a great mix of new players and experienced Wegshogs. We sold a couple of WEGS 101 sets and a bunch of skill decks.

We played... We sold... We conquered... Actually, the players were the conquerers. We got our butts kicked pretty bad in each game. The dice gods were not favoring our side of the table this time 'round!

Ubercon and Us...

2008-10-26T09:20:00.004-04:00

Spent Friday night and Saturday at Ubercon, the "home" con of the mighty, mighty Wegshogs! Considered our home con because (a) it's in our backyard (not literally, just in NJ) and (b) was the con that we officially unveiled WEGS at many a-many year ago. That was in October 2005 (or Ubercon VI), a scant three years ago. We've hit every Ubercon NJ since. Despite this consistancy, I can't say we have a rabid following at Ubercon; we always have strong carry-over from the prior attendance (so folks that played at the last con generally show up to play some more at the next), but there's a big drop-off two cons out. I attribute this to the normal turnover from attendees. I just don't see the same players from two/three years ago at the cons. Ubercon has a tendency to jump around a bit in its location and scheduling; sometimes they've held a fall and a winter con, sometimes they've moved it out to the Great Lakes, and they seem to jump to new hotels every other con. Still, it's a persistant little con with a great home feel. It's small enough to feel like a high school graduating class; you could get to know everybody. That's a good-sized con for our merry WEGS-ish endeavors. (Aftermath notes will follow in next post!)

In Store Demo: Brothers Grim, NY

2008-10-16T08:21:00.002-04:00

On GenCon Sunday, a guy named Gil came up to the booth and introduced himself as one of the owners of Brothers Grim Games and Collectibles on Long Island, NY. He had heard about WEGS from the local NJ/NY cons and was interested in having me demo in his store. I actually heard about the store, too, from one of the Jersey Hogs who frequented their booth at Dexcon (and who told them they need to stock WEGS). Thanks, Jason! As fate would have it, I had a wedding to attend on Long Island this month and so coordinated the demo for the day after. I arrived and set-up on a huge game table in the front of the store. The store had many game tables, there was a-plenty of space to play (huge asset to the store). The back of the store was jammed with Yu-Gi-Oh players from the time I got there until I left. The game tables around me were jammed with miniature guys painting their armies and getting ready for a huge throw-down tournament in a couple of weeks. It was great to see a store jammed with gamers all day long, and to hear the banter of a bunch of folks who all are part of the store's energy. As for the demo... I ran one demo that lasted about three hours. Had a total of five players who kicked the butt of everything I threw at 'em. There was nothing I could do to get them on the run! It was hard to show them the system had some bite to it, as they all handily dispatched everything that came their way. I had a great time - just frustrating for the guy who created the game!!! Arrggghh! As I left, I promised to return with more minions...

Con on the Cob Aftermath!

2008-10-09T08:29:00.004-04:00

Games, Art, Freaks and Fun! That's how the con is billed on the COTC website, and it had plenty of each (me adding to the freak factor). GameWick Games set our banner up in the corner of the large gaming hall and then hunkered down for some WEGS-ing. The gaming hall was a big hotel banquet room that had about 20 tables set up for rpgs, boardgames, cards, etc. Relatively small, but tabletop gaming is not the primary purpose of the con; there's a whole music, movie, art blend, too. A very eclectic little con.

We had scheduled two demo slots and three full length games (5 events total). We had players for both demos, but only one game ran (Friday night's Dwarf Walks Into A Bar) . When no one showed for one of the games, I hung around the table a bit and managed to round up some players for another demo. Actually, the players rounded themselves up: a lady who played a demo at Origins saw me standing there, asked if I was doing anything and then summoned a couple of friends to see what WEGS was all about. Sad to say, we only sold a single book; but on the bright side, that's one more book sold at this con than we did last year (this being the first year we've attended)... The Cob is a good con to geek-out at, especially for local gamers. There's a good chance we'd do it again next year.

Got Hot?

2008-10-02T09:19:00.006-04:00

If you can't stand the heat, get out of the cucina... A bounty of hot peppers from the gardens of El Willy. Assortment of habaneros, cayenne, peanut chiles, hinkelhatz (chicken hearts) and Czech black (which are actually red). This is what I do when I'm not rolling bones. Speaking of which, the fall con season begins. Three cons on the hit list: Con on the Cob (Akron), Ubercon (NJ) and MACE (North Carolina).

GenCon08: Signage at Origins

2008-09-17T20:25:00.004-04:00

This is a photo of the Origins booth, the test-run booth as it were (or was...). Not that we weren't prepared for Origins, but it was our first logistical con; we never did this before. You can prepare all you want up front, but until you hit the ground running at the actual convention site, you have no idea what to expect. Heck, yeah, we were nervous about Origins, but it was the same type of nervous actors/directors get the week before opening night. One thing you can notice between this pic and the one below is that, aside from one more Wegshog on our side of the demo table, the WEGS sign in the background is rippled. This was due to the fact that the sign was hung on hooks from the curtain rods at the back of the booth. Not the optimal way to hang a sign, but lots of folks do it. The ripple effect was remedied at GenCon as the pvc standing unit was added and fixed the problem completely. Small, but exciting, victories...

GenCon 08: Signage

2008-09-16T08:30:00.006-04:00

Once you commit to getting a booth, you gotta get a sign that let's folks know who you are. Pre-Origins, we only had small 2x4 foot WEGS signs which would not fill the 10x10 booth area very effectively. So, $200 later, I went to print with a 4x6 banner (shown here). And once you have a banner, you have to figure out a way to hang it. Many vendors use pvc pipe for this purpose. I followed suit; it took me the better part of a weekend to cut/assemble/spray paint the frame (about $50 in materials). I designed it so it is free standing, with the use of two picnic table umbrella stands (the ones that anchor the umbrella pole under the table). Found the perfect type at Sports Authority ($15 each), but the stands are flippin' heavy! Sue topped off the whole assembly with two burning braziers (using tissue paper for the fire effect). We framed the signage with copper pots and WEGS 101 Book-n-Card combos. (Yeah, that's me and Fwill running a demo.)

GenCon 08: Pre-Ignition (Origins 08)

2008-09-10T08:16:00.003-04:00

At the start of '08, I knew GameWick Games would have a booth at Origins (OH), and decided that that would be the test-run for the feasibility of having a GenCon (IN) booth. The reason I could wait to make my GenCon decision was that GameWick had never attended either of these cons and, as a newbie, could book my booth last minute via the entrepreneurial rates (first-timer discount). Your first time as a vendor at a con is your cheapest (that's the buy-in). The second year you're not so lucky... Booth space at Origins is about half the price of GenCon (around $500 for a 10x10 booth); the catch with Origins though, is that booths come without any dressing: you have to rent tables, chairs, electric, etc from the contracted dresser. There was a rental special: a table, two chairs and a wastebasket for $60. Electric and Internet connections are additional costs. You can see how this all adds up. Luckily, GameWick did not need either; as a small company with a single product ($25), it was pointless to worry about credit card processing and those complications. If we had more product and folks were hitting the $75+ price point, that would be a different story. Long story short, being a vendor at a con is a costly proposition. When you're a company with a single product, it's a dicey proposition: the odds of you selling enough product to cover expenses aren't good. When you're a company with a single product, it's not about that at all. It's about the presence on the floor and the demo, demo, demo.

GenCon 08: The Road To The Geekhouse

2008-09-05T08:31:00.005-04:00

The road to GenCon began a long time prior to me packing the car the night before we took off for Indianapolis. It began seven months earlier, at the start of the year, when event submissions were due. In January 2008, I was coming up with the WEGS game schedule for GenCon. At that time I wasn't sure if GameWick Games would have its own booth, so I submitted a somewhat aggressive game schedule which factored in both me and Fwill as game masters (GMs). For the first time at GenCon, the two of us would be running games independently and at the same time. This plan allowed me to keep the number of events submitted high, while allowing some breathing room for the possibility of a booth. It was a pretty solid plan, I thought, at the time. With this task out of the way, I didn't have to think about GenCon for another couple months.

GenCon 08: Getting There, Half The Fun...

2008-08-28T08:27:00.005-04:00

The blog journey begins...

Over the course of the next month, I'm going to recount the GameWick Games crew journey to the center of Gen Con. The whole thing was a whirlwind from the moment we backed out of our driveway and got on the road to Indianapolis. And I want to bore you all (I think there's about 8 of you regulars) with a play-by-play, day-by-day travel log. If nothing else this is my attempt to remember what worked and what didn't for us. It might also help those of you out there who are dreaming of doing Gen Con in your own way someday. As this might be some of the most dang boring stuff you'll find on the internet, I'll try to keep the post shorts and the entries easily digestable. Here we go!

The trip, one way, was 680 miles door to door; that is my front door in NJ to the Indianapolis convention center. This was the first time we have driven to Gen Con, and with gas prices as they are, it was a hefty expense (around $200). Still, that's cheaper than airfare for two people. The drive took us on a journey that we were mostly familiar with, as we had driven to the Origins Game Fair in Columbus, Ohio the month prior.

All in all, a five state passage: NJ, PA, WV, OH and IN: an 11 hour journey with beautiful, but never-changing, scenery that is broken up a bit by four tunnels in the mountain passes of PA.

Gen Con here we come!

Gen Con Aftermath!

2008-08-19T12:55:00.004-04:00

OK... Haven't posted since the last con! That should give you a hint on how hectic things have been and Gen Con was no different. Gen Con rocked from beginning to end (and literally the dice didn't stop rolling at our WEGS booth until the "voice of god" came over the exhibit hall loudspeaker kicking out all non-vendors). Folks were still chucking dice at our table until the bitter end! I'll post stuff over the course of the next few weeks on the GenCon games/demos once I catch up... This con-hopping summer was nutz!!!

Historicon Aftermath!

2008-08-01T07:49:00.002-04:00

Historicon was last weekend, and like Dexcon, was a full-throttle WEGS experience. This is only our second time at Historicon (first was last July), though we did attend Cold Wars this past March (which is run by the same group). Historicon is a big, well-run con. Kudos to the folks who pull this off. Right down to the published event program, this con is clockwork. This has been my experience each time I have attended. As this is a historical miniatures convention, WEGS is the freak show here with our battlemat and D&D miniatures. As a non-historical game, WEGS is scheduled off-hours; we're not permitted to take up the prime-time slots (totally understandable). WEGS fills in the late-night slots, and that's something we do too well! The good thing about this is that it prevents me from creating a monster schedule and I actually have time to meander through the exhibit hall.

The games. We had five games on the sched: Fri night; Sat late afternoon; Sat night; Sun morning and Sun afternoon. Attendees get tickets for every event at the central Command Booth, a huge wall of hanging tickets that are handed out upon request. This registration may seem archaic, but it works - and works well! Prior to this con, WEGS always had tickets hanging on the wall. By the time I arrived on Friday, most of the WEGS event tickets were gone. Cool stuff! Come game time for any given event, there are usually no-shows, but not this time. Most of the events had folks waiting at the table to grab the no-show slots. Each game (except the Sunday PM) was filled to maximum capacity. All in all, around twenty people played in our games, the bulk of which were new. We did have some returnees from prior cons. By the Sunday game, the entire table was filled with folks who knew the system and knew if amazingly well.

Like Origins, it's a shame Historicon only happens once a year!

Dexcon Aftermath!

2008-07-29T06:27:00.004-04:00

Dexcon was non-stop WEGS action from start to finish! We ran four back-to-back sessions of Dingbitt's Dunge O' Doom and each session was rocking. The first three sessions had the maximum number of players. The final session had four, with Willy the 2 and Spointer jumping in on the side of the players, leaving me to reign havoc down on the battlemat for our last session. The games were a mix of experienced WEGS players returning from prior cons and new players (one session was completely filled with new players). I'm finding that games that have experienced players sitting alongside new players accelerates the speed of the game. The game plays entirely different when filled only with new players, turning into more of a demo for us on the "house side". It's hard jumping from one style to the next! Our first two sessions were power-plays, the game had a great mix of returning players and new players. The speed of those games was incredible. The third session slowed down a bit as all six players were new to the system. The final game had four players, all experienced, and it being the last session, it was my task to go full throttle against them. It was a great way to end the con! All in all, about 18 folks played WEGS at DexCon, about half of that number were new players. And only one of them made it out of the dungeon alive....

Dexcon Dunge O' Doom

2008-07-17T06:48:00.003-04:00

This weekend is Dexcon, a NJ gaming convention that has a strong indie game presence. Me and the Wegshogs will be there on Saturday only, running a non-stop session of Dingbitt's Dunge O' Doom, the WEGS dungeon free-for-all. We run Dingbitt's at almost every con we attend, and folks seem to love this one. It's one combat encounter after another, but the hook is that Arks progress rapidly during the game; Arks get a 6% Rank Bump for every completed encounter. Another hook is that there is a poker sub-game running; the players need a pair of Jacks or better to escape from the dungeon, and they can only do so when a magical door appears (another machination with the poker deck). The poker game adds another level of complexity to this particular scenario and I'm always a little concerned that players will think the poker element is a standard part of WEGS (which it really isn't). It makes Dingbitt's the Texas Hold 'Em of dungeon delving, though - and, so far, no players have been totally befuddled by the game within the game it creates. At Origins, we ran a six-hour session of Dingbitt's (it should have ended at midnite, but went until 3 am instead...). By the end of that session, no player had escaped the dungeon, but the few that survived were holding Jacks or better. They were just waiting for a way out to appear...

Gotta love Dingbitt's!

Origins Aftermath...

2008-07-04T13:28:00.004-04:00

Origins ended five days ago...
I am only just eating the peanut butter and chocolate sandwich that Sue got me for lunch last Sunday. Yes... I brought the sandwich home with me, then forgot about it in the cooler, which I just cleaned out last night. Thankfully, peanut butter doesn't go bad too quick (nor does chocolate)! These peanut butter sandwiches are one of the highlights of going to Columbus for the con; you just can't beat the Krema Nut Company for one of the best peanut butter sandwiches around! The fact that I'm finally getting around to eating the sandwich is just a taste of how nuts (pun intended) things were at the first official GameWick Games booth. It was a blast, but non-stop work. As our work is having fun, there's no downside as far as I can tell. Except exhaustion... More details to follow on the con and the games and the great folks who are calling WEGS home. I'm probably taking my posts down to once a week as there's so much other stuff to get done for the remaining summer conventions and the upcoming Pirates of Penzantium rules release. Back to my week old sandwich...

111

2008-06-24T00:19:00.002-04:00

Wacky note... Pirates Of Penzantium is now officially 111 pages (pre-layout). 111 was also the age that Bilbo Baggins handed off the ring to Frodo... Maybe the whole thing is gonna go poof!

The First Con of the Summer...

2008-06-24T00:02:00.003-04:00

Welp, Origins 2008 has come upon us too fast!

Aside from being knee-deep in Pirates of Penzantium, the last two weeks have been nutzo getting everything prepared for the con and the GameWick Games booth. This is the first official booth we are running at a con, and we're pretty pumped! We're officially releasing the WEGS 101 Book-n-Card Combo at Origins, too. It's a funky old skool product design: book and card deck in a poly zip bag just like the rpg games of the 1970s. The by-line reads:

WEGS is so old skool it comes in a plastic bag.

We're also busy running morning and evening games, in addition to the in-booth demos. Plus there's a Friday Midnite Game that's pretty much got the WEGS Who's Who lined up to play (from the WittWeggers to the Shroomeaters). That game promises to be insane, especially as they main minion is a mummy named Klattabarraboo, not too mention a relic called Ogma's Orb of Obliteration!

Gonna be a busy weekend! Details to come!

The POP Arkipelago, Part 2

2008-06-19T08:34:00.003-04:00

The Pirates of Penzantium (POP) campaign setting is done, and it was a blast to write. The content flew onto the sheets pretty quick, but one idea led to another and to another and so on... I had to be careful not to go overboard, though, as I really want a slender rule book. The only thing left to do is the Bestiary, which is a listing of all the beasts you find in/around the arkipelago (and probably should avoid!). It's an abbreviated description of the minons, not a lot of detail or stats.

I treated the campaign setting as a tropical tour guide. It's written with a breezy and casual style, similar to the WEGS 101 rules, and reveals the must-see, must-do things on the island of Penzantium and the surrounding isles. It's basically telling the players, here is what you can look forward to during your visit. There are so many options for them as there is an area/isle that covers just about every type of adventure possible: if they're looking for an encounter with the undead, head the ship toward the Zombie Isles, that sort of thing.

I'm treating the campaign aspect the way I would the Dungeons Or Dragons Player's Choice games we run at conventions: the bulk of the adventure is left up to the players' imaginations. The big question is what is it that their Arks want to see and do (just like a vacation, really). The players can anticipate the adventure that is about to unfurl, but as the content is up to the Kreator, they don't know what to truly expect. A huge part of WEGS is keeping the players involved at every step of the way. Giving them a campaign setting in the guise of a vacation tour book keeps it fun and accessible. Pick a destination and let the adventure begin!

Lots more on this topic later!

The POP Arkipelago, Part 1

2008-06-12T07:38:00.005-04:00

Pirates morning, noon and night... That's what my life has become as I try to wrap up the text on the Pirates of Penzantium. The book keeps growing as I find myself on the shoals of the campaign setting. The chapter that was to include the game info on the island of Penzantium and the surrounding area has split into two chapters now: Penzantium and the Penzantium arkipelago. (Yeah, arkipelago... It had to be wegzified.) The POP campaign stuff could probably fill a full book, and that's something I dread in most other games: world settings. There have been soooo many world settings created and everybody has their favorite flavor. It's hard to introduce something new into this sundae that folks haven't tasted before. I've always told folks that WEGS is plug-n-play. Just keep using your favorite world setting and get the game started. Penzantium, though, screams for it. The Arks need to have a place in the world, just as much as they have a place on their ship. They need a place to start and end the adventure. Penzantium is that place.

It's been a while since I've done a serial piece. To be continued...

Piratical Ponderings...

2008-06-04T07:44:00.003-04:00

The last two weeks have been nutzo as I hunkered down to get the Pirates Of Penzantium content complete. The book is at cruising speed now, and I think we're settled in at thirteen chapters. Every day begins with proofing three chapters, then revising those chapters and adding more content. Yes... the book is still growing. I was hoping for a slender rulebook with eighty pages or so. Looks like it's gonna be a hundred. So, POP may end up the same size as Old Skool; the advantage to this is that the book will have a printable spine. Folks and stores just love titles on spines!

The section that has really taken off are the pirate-to-pirate mechanics; what some would call the "role playing" part of "role playing game". POP is doing something unique with the way it's handling player-to-player interaction. Each pirate has a station. There are plenty of lower stations, but only a few upper deck ones. The upper stations get bonuses and abilities that truly make them the top dawg commanders. The lower stations rely on the upper stations for their advancement to the next station. So, players are forced to deal with one another on a social level. There can only be one top pirate position, the one who gets all the glory. This, of course, also puts him/her in position for a mutiny. The effect of all this isn't going to happen over the course of a three hour game. POP takes its time in the character reveal. Just as on board a pirate ship, there's going to be dissent brewing on the lower deck.

And, heck yeah, there's brutal rules for mutiny!

The Real Thing...

2008-05-23T08:24:00.004-04:00

Last weekend, I was on my way back to Jersey from Virginia, and stopped by one of those slot parlours in Delaware. Slots is not my casino game of choice, though I often make machine time for video poker. Machine time, keep that in mind. Lately, the slot parlours (don't call them casinos), have been adding video table games such as blackjack, poker and let it ride. These tables have a huge upright video screen on which the simulated dealer (sim) is projected. The players sit side-by-side before the screen and have individual video monitors on the console before them to place their bets, etc. Back to the sims. The sims have the creepy ability to make eye contact with the passerbys. The damn eyes follow you! Kinda like one of those haunted house portraits... The sim dealers are buff or buxom models, sometimes clad in bathing suits (if the background is an island casino, etc). The sim video loops between them looking at the passerbys (while they wait for the players to place bets), shuffling and dealing. Kinda clever, all in all. But it's not real.

I sat down at a $2 Let It Ride table. Can't find $2 tables out in Vegas, so this seemed like a good deal. All the components you would expect were there: Bonus Bet, Three Card Bonus, etc. It was the game as it should be. But it's not real. By the third deal, I was getting bad vibes. First off, I didn't have poker chips to play with. I had no tangible sense of the game. Sure I could look at the video and see my remaining balance, but that was too much like banking. Numbers on a computer screen is Excel to me. It's work. And, what's worse, it's reality. Poker chips have some type of charge to them. The weight. The softness. It just works psychological wonders.

The other thing that was missing was the cards. In the table game, three cards are dealt face down. You pick them up and look at them. You shuffle them as you want. You use them to scratch the table to indicate a bet should be taken down. The sound of a playing card scratching the table felt, it's almost religious. With the sim, all I had was a button to take down my bet. Lastly, the comradery of your fellow players and the dealer was gone. You can't replicate that. Generally, the dealers give you some consolation if the cards are against you. They react to the odds and the gods in the game. With the sims, you get nothing. No sympathy. No humor. No consolation. Just console.

After a few more hands I had to bolt. The sim was starting to make me realize how money-guzzling stupid the game is, especially when you strip away all the physical components: cards, poker chips, banter. Losing against a computer, any game, makes a person feel dumb. Add losing money to that equation and you feel like a flippin' moron.

Sometimes it is about the game pieces...

Of Mice & Minion Masters...

2008-05-15T07:10:00.017-04:00

Before...
Right out of the 1954 movie, "Them!". I had high hopes for these two minions. Level 7 Giant Fire Ants with a nasty afterburn from their bites (i think it was D10 Wounds at the Spante for the next four innings). They marched confidently into battle, as ants often do...
After...

And they were quickly dispatched by the Arks, who showed them who rules the checkered mat!

Best laid plans...

Halfway May

2008-05-15T06:47:00.003-04:00

Welp, May's half over, almost, and the content structure of Pirates Of Penzantium is done for the first pass. I pretty much know the chapters and have most of the text in place. The cover is done, once again by Kennon, and the roughs for all the art is in. June will be layout and design, and, proofing, proofing, proofing. It will be interesting to see how all the pieces fit together this time. Last year, Old Skool was a complete uphill learning experience. This year, with the page styles already established, a large chunk of the battle has already been fought. I don't want to say I'm more prepared, I'm just on the battlefield a little earlier and waiting for the enemy to rear its head. All this said, I'm hoping to be to print late-June. Aside from the POP work, I've been overhauling that chunky website o' mine and that fills in any extra time I didn't have to begin with! Halfway May. A new website, a new book and another birthday will finish off this month nicely. God willing!

Pirates and Copper...

2008-05-13T09:00:00.003-04:00

I've been working like mad getting the content of the Pirates Of Penzantium completed. Right now, the full book is conceptually in place. I've got about twelve chapters (the same as Old Skool) and looking at about 60 pages. These are text doc pages, not layout. With art and formatting that will probably grow to about 75 pages. I am trying to keep this book slightly smaller than Old Skool, but it might end up being the same page count. Hard to say right now. One lesson learned from last year's publishing endeavors is to have the rough text proofed prior to layout. This allows much quicker editing and all the art doesn't get in the way of the proofer (it's easy to be distracted by all cool art and special formatting). It's just as critical to proof again once layout is complete as the manipulated text can easily get messed up. What I found last year was that there was a ton of errors, stupid errors, that I should have caught pre-formatting.

The second bit of news is that WEGS Copper has been shelved until Pirates is complete. Pirates is the priority right now. As all 12 of you who read this blog should know, Copper is the advanced version of Old Skool. While Old Skool has a small and loyal band of followers (the aforementioned 12), I just don't think it's critical to release; from a timing standpoint it has no urgency - yet. Pirates allows me to open another channel into the system while at the same time expanding the WEGS 101 rule set. Pirates has the potential to hook a new type of player and provide existing Old Skoolers a whole new way of playing, whereas Copper is really focused on the experienced Wegshog. The big bonus to Pirates is that I will have two introductory books to sell at conventions, not just one. Setting up at a booth with a single product for sale is very lame. Just ask me, I've been doing it for month's now. Embarrassing, man! My hope is that folks passing the table will now say:

Two products... Wow, that's a game company!

Death and Coffee...

2008-05-04T10:42:00.003-04:00

From one of the seminars I attended last week at the GAMA Trade Show in Vegas... There was a discussion of sales cycles... It was pointed out that from a consumer standpoint coffee is something that you can market for daily consumption. Coffee is something that most folks will buy once a day (assuming they're coffee drinkers and your target audience). All that the coffee companies have to do is set up a store and be there waiting. Opposite that is funeral homes where it is estimated that there's a sale once per seven years. Seven years is a long wait. Maybe that's why morticians have that strange, patient, lurking look... And why those coffee counter folks are so damn happy!

Point is that hobby store customers wander in every now and then to the store - and it ain't daily. When they do wander in, you want your product to jump off the shelves and into their hands. The only way to do that is by making sure your product is eye-catching and sells them the moment they see it. This means front cover, back cover, spine, all slanted to sell. It's important too that when they casually flip the pages of the book, that sells them too.

I'm hoping WEGS sales teeter more toward coffee than death.

Right now it's sure hard to tell!

Last Week... This Month...

2008-05-01T09:32:00.004-04:00

Last week...

Las Vegas.

A whirlwind of gaming activity and business stuff and some gambling, too! The Game Manufacturers Association (GAMA) held their GTS (Gama Trade Show) at Bally's in Las Vegas. WEGS 101 was featured for the evening gaming as part of the Play With The Creator series. It was a great time. There were lots of great seminars and workshops, the best of which was a focus group session where 6 industry folks sat down with me and WEGS 101. Without allowing me to speak, they took the book and deck and assessed it on face value. It was a great reality check. After assessing it, they started asking questions as to what the game actually was - questions generated from their cold reading of the front/back cover and paging through the interior a bit. They basically gave it the "once over" that any customer walking into a store would. Then they hit me with all the questions that a shopper would have about the product - the stuff I didn't include on the covers. I had great feedback on the pros and cons. This seminar alone was the value of the $125 registration fee. There's lots more to discuss on the GTS - but that'll have to wait...

This month...

May!

I'm going to do short blitzes on the blog. My energies are pouring over the summer Pirates of Penzantium release at this point. So, luckily for all 9 of you who check this blog, the blogging will be shorter and to the point. Random thoughts... Strange short rants... Production updates and worries... The odd pic or two... Quick hits!

Minion Of The Month-Column Golum

2008-04-20T09:51:00.004-04:00

All fear the column golem!!! It's been a while since I've posted a minion of the month, but we threw down a new minion last month that caused quite a stir: the column golem. This is a bizarre rubber toy that is composed of roman columns!?! Figured you'd find this guy protecting a temple - so he appeared for the From Dusk Til Dead scenario at Wittcon. As an 88, this hulking minion of stone reduced all Damage Die by 2 points. He was limited to walking in straight lines and would take a full action just to pivot in square. He would automatically pivot any time he entered the same "line" as a target, then he would march toward them and crush them with two attacks per inning. His fists would do 12xD6 Enchanted Wounds (so an Ark had to rely on their Stealth score alone for protection)! The wizard you see behind him was armed with the fabled "chainsword". She kept hitting him with wicked failures and so spent a lot of time behind him in Lost Action Phase. So, the dice were on his side (but that's what you would expect when you are attacking stone!). Gotta love the WEGS dice when they behave like gods!!!

A Wow Moment...

2008-04-15T09:08:00.002-04:00

At Mepa, our first game went off a 9 pm and we had a table of six players. This was our Dungeons Or Dragons scenario where the players get an introduction to the system and then get to choose what type of adventure they want us to create. Big part of this game is to show folks how easy it is to make up the minions on the fly. So, players get to see both sides of the system. At the end of this game, one guy bought a book and two decks and said he would be running WEGS the next night at the con - and, damned if he didn't!!! He went online and printed off all the Ark Kards from our website and then ran Dwarf Walks, the intro adventure in the book. Not only did he run the adventure as written, he included the full cast of characters right down to Borkfu's Cousin's Twin's Wife and Gurt the Body Snatcher (with zombies)! Cool, cool, cool!

Our Mepacon Excursion...

2008-04-15T08:43:00.003-04:00

Last weekend, me and Spointer headed over the river Delaware and across the mountains to Mid-Eastern PA (MEPA). The drive was much less harrowing than our prior weekend's trip under the river Hudson. In both cases, Friday night traffic sucked. The joke about Jersey being the parking lot for NY, CT and PA... painfully true.

It was our first time hitting Mepacon, so had no idea what to expect. We weren't there but five minutes and we knew we were going to have a rocking time. I think it was the hotel, a Holiday Inn, perched on the mountain overlooking endless mountains (not that we would actually have time to enjoy the view). The other cool thing was that, like the Luxor in Vegas, all the hotel rooms opened up into the center atrium, inverted pyramid style. And the final cool bit was that a prominent feature of the hotel was the indoor pool and jacuzzis at one side of the atrium (so they whole interior lobby smelt of chlorine - and this would be a big plus to counter some of the gamer funk that would be building after three straight days of gaming!). If we knew this place had a cool pool we would've brought our bathing suits. Heck, we could've run games poolside. Dice float, don't they?

Most of the WEGS games went off with full tables. When games didn't run, we could retreat quickly to the hotel room and relax. Having a room just a short elevator ride from the game table is great. I'm beginning to really appreciate the "self-contained" convention where you don't have to pack stuff up between games, load your car and then drive to another place to sleep...

Yeah, that's the old man in me talking...

And he's talking louder and louder these days!

From NY to PA...

2008-04-11T09:50:00.003-04:00

Last weekend it was Icon, this weekend it's MEPAcon. First time going to this con, but word up is that it's a good rpg con. Details to follow next week!

Shroedinger's Cold Roll...

2008-04-11T09:45:00.003-04:00

So does the cat live or die (or simply implode)?

Find out here

Meanwhile, at another college con...

2008-04-09T08:15:00.003-04:00

Some of the rockin' Witthogs took WEGS over to Wright State for Glory Con!

Platinum Warlock's Post-con Wrapper Upper

An adventure where you eat the remains of your minions?

Sweeeeeet!

(And check out Shroedinger's Cold Roll...)

Our Icon Excursion...

2008-04-09T07:29:00.003-04:00

Last weekend, me and Spointer headed to Icon, a sci-fi con at Stonybrook University on Long Island, New York. Icon is heavy on the "science" part of sci-fi, but has a gaming arm, too. There's lots of folks wandering around in costume. As it's on a huge college campus, there's the whole student body mixing in with the con-goers.

We ran three out the four games on our schedule. Friday night's Pirates of Penzantium game started off with a bang, as a returning player from last year arrived full of enthusiasm for WEGS. He brought a friend who he had run through a WEGS game a couple of nights prior, so both had experience under their belt. As noted in the post below, this greatly adds to the speed of play. Also, because they were so dang good at the game, I was able to layer in the pirate spills (Spante Skills). Unless players know what WEGS is about, these skills will slow down the play. Not so here, the skills added to the awesome. The game ended when the college kicked us out at 2 a.m. Nice! Thankfully, the Saturday a.m. game did not get off the ground, leaving us some down-time. By noon Spointer was running a demo for some folks, then we plunged into our 2 p.m session of Dingbitt's, where we created a new twist called Dingbitt's Roundhouse where the position of Minion Master rotates with each new encounter (i'll post details on that later). The con concluded with a full table of gamers for a traditional Dingbitt's.

Icon has been hit/miss for us in the past, but all in all, this was a great weekend - saw some friends, met some new ones, gamed like mad and had a blast. This upcoming weekend is MEPAcon, the Mid-Eastern Pennsylvania Con. First time going there. Details next week.

Arks In Action!

2008-04-04T09:30:00.011-04:00

Another scene from WittCon

From Dusk 'Til Dead

(j. benton, photographer)

"What we have here is a sit-cheee-ay-tion, laddies!"

Foreground-Ethercreepers (Level 5 as per the five purple chips under each) closing in on a group of Arks who seem to be surrounding their Sage.

Center: The Arks! Sage (pink chip) who has a spell ready to blast (pink pawn); Mage with two red chips under (second red chip is a spell marker); Ranger (green chip) who has Sure Shot on (green marker); Trickster (yellow chip); Warrior (orange chip).

Background: Three 88 Enchanted Warriors (each with 8 orange chips). The two yellow chips represented some special move I think... Way in the back, sitting on a mighty stack of pink is the Level 88 Sage who was leading the warriors to the attack.

That's WEGS in multi-color, folks!

Speed Of Play...

2008-04-03T08:27:00.002-04:00

As noted earlier, one of the amazing things during our Krystal Keep / WittCon games was the speed of play. These games, jammed with 12 players each, did not suffer from much mechanic-lag. A big part of this was that about a quarter of the players all did some WEGS-ing with us before, and these folks were coaching their friends and other players. A lot of the rules explanations were being handled by them, instead of us. It was great to watch somebody else explain the rules to a new player. It allowed me and Willy the 2 to focus more on our side of the table. Good stuff.

This also had a big impact on the "split table counter-rotational" minion mastering that we were attempting (see notes below). It drew a line in the sand between the players and us (the house). They weren't relying on us for the help with the rules, they were relying on the senior players. It galvanized the players as a team, which was great to see. Another great thing, which we're seeing more and more of, is players coaching each other on skill use. As folks become more familiar with the rules, the level of strategy is rising. It might just be me, but Level 88s ain't so tough any more...

Time to break out the Double 88s!

2008-03-26T09:00:00.004-04:00

WEGS @ WittCon '08
From Dusk 'Til Dead
(photo by j. benton)

Lots o' rats, zombies, ether creepers, spoint frogs (on copper pot).
A Level 88 Dark Mage can be seen on that mighty stack of red chips.
Lower right is a Goblin Mage with Sense Magic up (red marker).
Level 88 Dark Mage is also about to blast a spell...

What Happened In Vegas, Part 2

2008-03-25T08:02:00.004-04:00

In May 2007, I blogged about how the concept of WEGS was born early one morning after a late-night stint at a craps table in Vegas. Many times that feeling I set to recreate with WEGS reverberates down the dice. When WEGS is at its hottest, it's like a huge craps game with folks shouting, feverishly throwing down spoints and bringing the game to life. Another key part is walking away cheerfully exhausted right down to your wallet (god, that's true on so many levels in the game publishing business!). This feeling happened twice at our recent Wittcon weekend: the first at Krystal Keep and the second at WittCon. Both of these games ran about four hours - and could've gone a little longer if both places hadn't closed at midnite! In both instances I had Vegas flashbacks. And it was good.

A few blogs back I mentioned that there was a down-side to running the larger games (8 players+). It's not the same game from a player's standpoint. This was apparent at Cold Wars when we first stumbled upon the "split table counter-rotational" method of dual Minion Masters. (this method warrants its own post!), but basically two minion masters split the table into two mini-games, running clockwise/counter clockwise around the players. The Minion Masters work in concert with each other well, but from a player's perspective the right side often doesn't know what the left side is doing.

This works incredibly well for mass-combat scenarios and our Yawl games and actually increases the crazed/frenetic spirit of those games. For games with story elements, it's not the best. Wegs Wife I (WW1) was playing in the first game where this occured and she complained afterward that she didn't have a clue what the other side of the table was doing. I voiced my concerns with Willy The 2 that it was our fault for not keeping the game together. There was more to it, though - the noise in the room was ungodly. Our game was in the middle of a huge ballroom surrounded by table after table of shouting war-gamers. We were on the event horizon, as it were, about to be sucked into nothingness. Thus, it was our survival instinct that lead us down the path of the "split table counter-rotational" method. The simple fact was one central Minion Master could not hear everyone at the table. So, we split the table into audible areas and, thus, we stumbled upon a new method for running bigger games.

Who's the muther of invention?
(More details to follow on this thread. Far too long at this point!)

An Early Depiction of WEGS in Rome?

2008-03-20T08:49:00.005-04:00

Suffering the price for bad Minion Mastering...

The Ides Of WEGS...

2008-03-20T08:21:00.003-04:00

As it fell during the Ides of March, the Wittcon theme this year was "Alea Iacta Est", or "The Die Is Cast". Caeser's famous line about dice and life. Little did we know how much this would apply to the weekend WEGS games we had scheduled. Ya see, the ides are the 13th or the 15th depending on what month you're in. By some strange machinations of the gaming gods, we ended up with between 13 and 15 people surrounding the WEGS games for two of our games. We have never run games of this size or intensity before - but as luck would have it, we were ready for such an undertaking.

The week prior, at Cold Wars, we had a game with 8 players. When a game gets over 7 players, the job of the Minion Master gets strained, so the Kreator usually pivots in/out for player interaction. At this game, Willy the 2 and I decided to split the players into two groups (left side and right side). He would handle the players clockwise starting at the first player to his left. I handled the players to my right counterclockwise. We would meet invariably at the middle player in the 12 o' clock seat. This style of game-mastering gave WEGS an amazing craps game feel with folks throwing spoints into the center of the table from all sides. There's a price to be paid for this, though (details in later post).

When folks kept showing up to play WEGS at our first store demo this weekend, we just kept saying "Sure! Jump in!". Before we knew it we had nine players. Then some more showed up! Wt2 and I debated over splitting the game in two sessions - but I just didn't want to. It would be too much work to split the poker chips and the cards to two tables. Plus we only had one WEGS mat. So, we hunkered down on our side of the table. The game went from 8pm until midnite. And it was non-stop, over-the-top WEGS goodness.

Little did we know that we were about to repeat this method in a matter of hours...

Professer Wick Explains...

2008-03-19T08:46:00.003-04:00

...the difference between a Chainsword and a Boomstick!

(Wittcon 2008, J Benton, Photographer)

Eat! Drink! Play! Sleep! Rinse! Repeat!

2008-03-19T08:18:00.005-04:00

March madness! From Cold Wars to Wittcon, the last couple a weeks have been non-stop. Wittcon, hands-down our favorite college con, is only a one day con with three sessions. We sandwich-ed our appearance at the con between in-store demos, turning last weekend into a whirlwind WEGS experience. Add to the fact that we played the largest games ever (12 and 13 gamers in a session) and you get a sense of the game scope. Eat. Sleep. Game. Rinse. Repeat.

Friday began with demos at an amazing store called Krystal Keep in Kettering, Ohio. This is a gamer's nirvana - the size of the store is unbelievable (compared to the standards we have here in NJ). It seems designed so you could use a shopping cart, and its luxuriously roomy. The amount of merchandise is amazing and it's all neatly arranged. It's obvious that the owners care about their business. But that's only the beginning... There's a second half to the store that is equal in size to the front. This is the gaming arena and is equipped with about 14 gaming tables and some of the most comfortable cushioned stools in ample supply. The walls have a racking system with a ton of gaming supplies (mostly terrain) - again all organized in categories, neatly arranged. I've never seen anything like this! And, oh yeah, there are private gaming rooms off of the arena. There are restaurant booths up front placed in a row in the front of the store for painting minis or small game sessions. There's concession machines in the back. This place is unbelievable. It was no shock that the store was full of gamers the whole time we were there.

As two Jersey boys, me and Willy the Two were in awe. And it was here that we ran one of the biggest WEGS game ever... Details on that will follow later this week...

Con Crazy...

2008-03-14T09:20:00.005-04:00

The last couple of weeks have been con crazy! I'm not talking of actually attending conventions, but of attending to all the details associated with each individual one (the event schedules, the hotel details, the airfare/transport, booth research). All this is amplified by the number of cons we're considering. Some cons only have a month or two lead time (like the local cons), others want info 6 months in advance. What ends up happening is that March is madness, as the local April/May cons want your info and the June, July, August cons want it, too - pretty much all at the same time! Business suff, man... Anyhow, we're off to WittCon this weekend and doing some WEGS store demos, too - then we have a wee break until April where we have one con every weekend. The wegsite will be updated with all this info in a couple of weeks. 'Til then!

Well... She floats!

2008-03-12T10:00:00.003-04:00

WEGS was the freak show at last weekend's Cold Wars. All the other games had ornately painted armies, WEGS had spray-painted minis (copper and gold). All the other games had fantastically-detailed terrain, WEGS had a black/gray battle-mat with a wooden boat on it. All other games were sold out in advance, WEGS had tickets to spare!

But, did we have a great time?

Hell yeah!

The games that did run were just amazing. AMAZING. These were the first full play-tests of our Pirates Of Penzantium rules with folks who never played WEGS before (that's a bit of a lie, we had fans return from last year's Historicon). I was worried at first that folks wouldn't get it because they were not familiar with the 101 rules. Instead, I was amazed at the level of play and the absolutely wicked use of the new skills. The new rules were tested so thoroughly that I have copius notes on what to fix. Some skills were over-powered and some were too weak. We tweaked the skills as we went along - so it was a great test for the system. With skills like Harpoon O' Doom, Chum Chopper, Yawlbatross and Phibe's Phish Phry, how can a game go wrong - right? Plus, Borkfu and friends made a guest appearance in one of the scenarios (and got their butts kicked heartily, mates)!

More details to come...

The S.S. Borkfu

2008-03-06T23:49:00.010-05:00

Cold Wars is this weekend and we have a special prop to fit right in with their pirates theme: the S.S. Borkfu. We will be running Pirates of Penzantium events non-stop at the con, and we're going to try to use this prop in every one (if possible). We have a new version of Dwarf Walks Into A Bar (or Barge for that matter) and four brand new pirate scenarios. The Sunday Yawl is Escape From Yawlcatraz. The Wegshogs were even going to go as far as to wear pirate costumes, but didn't want to scare off potential players (plus, our fan base of 12 would lose all respect for us...). See you later, mateys!