Happy New Year!

Check Out The Platinum's Paladin!

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

The Paladin

WEGS on Facebook

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...

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...

... 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

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...

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

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

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...

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

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

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!

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...

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!

The second installment of the Badderlands series has arrived!

Minotaur Meat Has Arrived!

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...

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!

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 End of Cons

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!