Crackin' Open Copper...

This past week I've been crazy with emails from folks looking for WEGS advice. Seems that there were at least three games running this weekend. These were the first official WEGS 101 games that have taken place without me... Cool stuff!

I also cracked open WEGS Copper Players Notebook this week to assess how much work that book needs. Copper is the version of WEGS I had wanted to release at GenCon last year (as all 12 of you who read this blog religiously might recall...). Luckily that did not happen, allowing me to circle back and kreate WEGS 101 as the first official WEGS offering instead. Lots of detail on this tale can be found blogged out below...

Copper was put on ice in its near-completed state about a year ago and is sitting pretty at 210 pages right now. It needs a solid re-write and, just maybe, a little content. It's jammed with art. Copper is the next level for players, allowing them to custom-build the Ark of their desires. Whereas WEGS 101 really limits folks to stay within their Arketype (not really allowing much in the way of player options), Copper tears that wall down completely and folks can mix/match the hero of their dreams.

It also gives folks a little taste of the things to come...

Garbage Chair...

About this time last year, I was feverishly editing WEGS Copper which (as all 13 of you who read this blog know...) was going to be released at GenCon 2006. It had been slimmed down to 200 pages by this point.

I pretty much did all my editing in my backyard, sitting in an old stuffed chair that my wife and I had taken out of a neighbor's garbage. One man's trash, another's treasure, right? We thought the chair had character and had the best of intentions to have it refurbished - honestly. Until then, we kept it in the garage. Occasionally, we'd use it for stage dressing for a local theatre we were involved with. The chair was once prominently featured in The Mousetrap, it's ragged arms hidden under some fabric pieces... Ah, stage magic!

Anyhow, I found myself drawn to editing in the AM (before work) and then in the PM (after work). I would pull garbage chair out of the garage, plunk it in the sun somewhere on my driveway, edit for an hour or two, and then squirrel it away in the garage between sessions.

A few weeks into this routine, I had realized that the chair was never really cleaned. We took it right from someone's garbage and threw it into our garage. It was clean enough (if you looked past the brownish discolorations), but there was no denying that it kinda let off a smell when the weather was right...

Since the chair was becoming a part of my daily ritual, I thought it was high time to give the chair a thorough cleaning/beating and got out my wet/dry vac. No ordinary vaccuum would do. I jammed that hose in every possible nook and cranny. The stuff I found below the seat cushion was repulsive - cigarette butts, balls of hair, a spoon, coupons that expired back during the Nixon presidency and around 63 cents.

Someday that chair is gonna be put mounted on a dais in the WEGS museum (located at the back of my garage...).

Or maybe we'll just refinish it as per the original plan...

A 250 Page Problem, Part II...

So there it was - WEGS Copper.

An introductory game book with "I'm Way Too Big" written all over it.

There was only one thing to do: get out the word-weed wacker and have at it. I figured I still had time to go through the book and trim out all the extras that I had added. As I recall, it was just January 2006. If I spent a month editing, I was certain I could get it ready for a May 2006 publishing deadline.

And that's what I did. I managed to trim the book down to a slim 200 pages. Instead of being half of 500 pages, it was now only a third of 600 - right?

So what happened to all the cut content? That got shelved away as content for WEGS Silver, naturally! There was no lost time really, I was simply taking one book and making it two. One of the bits to go were the Two-Handed Weapon rules. Really cool stuff - but not critical for initial WEGS play.

At this same time, I continued demo-ing WEGS as much as possible. On St. Patrick's Day, I was fortunate to be invited to Wittenberg University's gaming con, WittCon. It was a guest lecturer / game designer gig where I spoke a little about game design and then played session of WEGS non-stop until midnite. A nice and relaxed non-commercial college con. Good folk.

WittCon 2006 was my first "get there via plane" con. This meant that I needed to be smart about what I packed. I couldn't bring all my game stuff with me (unlike home cons where I could load everything into my car). I needed to travel light. This necessity brought another realization to my design process.

Inadvertantly, WEGS Copper was about to learn a little lesson from airline luggage restrictions.

To be continued...

A 250 Page Problem...

Back in 2006, WEGS Copper had a problem.

It was weighing in at 250+ pages, pre art.

I discussed this with my wife who summed up the issue thusly:

"No one wants to read a 200 page book in order to play a game!"

Well, she was wrong...

There are folks who love this stuff. They're called gamers!

But she was 100% correct that those folks weren't the kind I had designed this game for. WEGS was about getting people together on short notice and whipping up a quick adventure game. It wasn't about cracking open a massive rule book. Folks should be able to walk up to a game table, grab some dice and play - especially folks who wouldn't normally play this type of game.

The problem with Copper was that I had gone overboard with the details. I had included extra rules and special skills that weren't really needed in an intro book.

Essentially, I had written Part 2 and forgot to pen Part 1, the introduction.

And so, the cracks began to form on my GenCon 2006 release plan...

Continued tomorrow...