64

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!

About That Long Winter's Nap...

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!

Paper Golem!

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'

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 Skinny On Dice Rule! (Part XII)

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!

The Skinny on Dice Rule! (Part 2)

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)

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!