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!

A Sunday Dingbitt's Demo

This past Sunday, we ran a demo at Time Warp Comic & Games in Cedar Grove, NJ. Had 5 players (Don, Nate, Nick, Todd, Joel). Three players were brand-spanking new to WEGS. Willy the 2 was Minion Master. I floated about as Kreator. Scenario was Dingbitt's Dunge O' Doom. The game was fluid and the new players took to it like fish to water. Arks were:

Dwarf Sage
Goblin Warrior
Elf Ranger
Gnobbit Trickster
Goblin Mage

This list also represented their batting order. They started and ended each inning with a spellcaster action (Sage/Mage). The group plunged down four levels, picking up speed with each passing encounter. All in all, they completed four encounters in three hours - which is great for this scenario. In the final encounter on Level 4, they faced one 88 Warrior Lord, one 66 Undead Sage and three 33 Zombies. The group perfectly divided themselves to fight this three-front battle. The Ranger took on the zombies. The Mage and Sage focused on the Undead Sage. The Warrior and Trickster engaged the Warrior Lord. The field was covered with mini-battles. Stuff that was great:

Top of the Inning was in effect. We normally don't push this rule, but the speed of play warranted it. The Arks were able to start at the bottom of the inning and hack their way to the top by eliminating the minions of higher stat percent.

Trickster Blitz (page 45, WEGS 101). We tend to leave this rule out at conventions as it's one of the extras. Two players had their rulebooks and called it into play. It allows the Trickster to move+attack. Being that the Trickster in this game had found a pair of magic boots that added +3 Move, he was able to fly around the field of combat. Great stuff!

More to follow!

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)

Ark Triumphant!

Historicon was a WEGS highpoint for so many reasons. One of which was a player named Robin who attended our first session and stayed right through until the final die roll on Sunday. There were many players who did the same, but Robin made it a point of pushing his Ark (character) to levels no other player heretofore has achieved. By the end of the con, Delvis (his Dwarven Warrior Elvis) had a Prowess that broke the 90 mark. This is the first time an Ark could command top of the inning no matter what Minion level was placed on the table. (Ok! Ok! This is all bordering on incomprehensible game lingo for those of you out there who have yet to dive into the system...) Delvis learned the hard way that with great power comes great responsibility. He became a Minion Magnet by the last game, where it became Will The 2nd's job to destroy the Ark Triumphant. It took FIVE* 88's to do it, but Delvis was sent Off To The Spheres by the end of the con. (Yeah, yeah, that's whole bunch of game lingo, too...)

We all joked how there was no way we could let that Ark leave the con alive. You just can't unleash that much power into the unsuspecting WEGS world. All in all, it was a great test of the Ark advancement rules and players got a taste of where WEGS is going. It's not a system about petty skills and experience points. It's about heroics, spoints and dice!

Thanks to all the players at Historicon who made this game rock!

* There's some confusion here. The number of 88s might have been as high as seven! Willy The 2nd was stacking all sorts of minion levels towards the end of the game!

Delvis has left the building... for now.

Ark Kard Version 530...

Ark! Ark! Ark!

The last four nights I've been finishing the layout of the new and exciting WEGS 101 Ark Kard. I'm happy to say that this is one of those few remaining design tasks for publication. This kard has been created, re-created, de-created and rehabilitated over its long journey from WEGS Copper to its resting place in WEGS 101.

It's one sweet looking character sheet... 14 chunky boxes for stats. Basic to behold, but, oh, the sheer gaming power it does possess... In a way it pays homage to the original 1980 D&D character sheet (sans the little character sketch area).

Sweetness indeed!

Should be posted as a pdf on the GameWick site later this month...

You may now return to your regularly scheduled game...