Needless to Say...

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!

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 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!

Dice Rule!

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!

Hobgobble Cover Art!

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

And the cover is just amazing!

The Hobgobble Update

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

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

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

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

Time To Start Rolling!

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

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

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

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

The POP Arkipelago, Part 2

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

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...

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!

Halfway May

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...

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...

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!

Crackin' Copper, Part 2

Spent some time this week trying to organize WEGS Copper. I have two versions: (1) the actual text document in MSWord, and (2) the layout in InDesign. Trying to wrap my mind around the differences in the two docs and get them back in sync. As all 12 of you who read this blog know from prior posts, Copper was near-ready for print. At that point in the publishing process, I cut the strings that bind the two versions together and finish all the loose ends in the InDesign layout. The docs generally don't get too far out of sync. This weekend my plan is to get both versions to jive, then begin edits once more. I also have a Pirates of Penzantium playtest with the home Hogs and an in-store demo at a local store. A WEGS-ish weekend all-in-all.

Crackin' Copper

As I sit here typing, WEGS Copper is spitting furiously out of my printer... This is the first time I've printed Copper in over 10 months! This copy is just for proofing purposes, so I set my printing options to "Draft Quality", then pushed print. When the printer is set to this mode, it rapidly spits the pages out, off the tray, and into a unsorted pile on the desk... I sit here with one eye on the chaotic, anti-paginated pile that is mounting. One page just got caught up in the feed, almost a jam, but luckily averted by my Eli Manning-esque printer-jam diversion play. Just ran out of paper at page 23 (Chapter 3, On Arks & The Ark Kard). Resume printing. Crazy gear-grinding noise. Pages a-spitting again. {INSERT ART - DUNDWELL} note on page 2... Done! Now I just have to sort the pages in their proper order... 209 pages in all. My weekend plans are to compare this document to the pdf master version that was completed in April 2007. It was at that time that I pulled the plug on Copper and put all my attention on getting WEGS 101 Old Skool to print. Gonna be a fun weekend.

On a different note, I just got a shipment of plastic card cases today that fit the WEGS 101 Skill Deck perfectly. The Skill Deck just went on sale on the website this week (though I did sell a couple of decks at Dreamation). These decks have already brought a whole new perspective to WEGS 101 game play. Players can use these decks to build multi-class Arks and take the game to a new level. The thrust of Copper is similar in that it strips away the regimented Ark skill list (i.e. only Mages get Mage spells). The skill deck allows players to explore multi-classing on their own, before cracking Copper.

(There's an FAQ on the website that briefly details this concept)

Business Suff-Jan 2008

This year is off to a busy start. Lots o' projects lining up on the runway, in addition to many business-based responsibilities (like taxes, 1099s, distribution, summer con planning). Projects include: the official WEGS 101 Skill Card deck, Pirates of Penzantium deck + game book, Big Bang Mudang game book. And, oh yeah, a little book called WEGS Copper (that's three years late...). I'm hoping to release one new product per month until May (but that will be tough).

For me, the winter months are the best time to be productive. I just wish the weather would start behaving like winter to keep me indoors more. Nothing like having no option but to stay inside and focus on getting things done. January is also my time to plan out the rest of the year for convention-hopping. The summer is a killer with one big con after another - and you have to plan NOW for it. Aside from coming up with the game schedules for each con and hitting those deadlines, there's the logistics of getting there (and getting your product there, too). This is the first year we'll be selling at cons, so there's a whole learning curve with that, not to mention the added expense of the table!

Looking back at last year, I've come to realize the stress of getting a single product to market. There's so much work associated with printing/distributing a single book. Most of the stress hit pre-publication (just getting the book done and off to the printer). Once you're through it once though, you learn. You're not as nervous about the process. I'm looking forward to each of my upcoming projects for this reason. It's not nearly as daunting. I've been through the cycle once. It's stressful, yeah - but a heck of a lot of fun, too.

And yeah... "suff"...

As in "suffering"...

The game part is fun. The business side I could do without...