Origins 2009 Aftermath!

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!

Meanwhile, at another college con...

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...)

Arks In Action!

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...

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!

What Happened In Vegas, Part 2

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!)

The Ides Of WEGS...

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...

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

(Wittcon 2008, J Benton, Photographer)

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

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...

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!