The Gen Con Cut Off!

Today, the first day of spring, is the cut off for event submission for Gen Con. In the past, I was always excited by getting the WEGS schedule submitted early. This year, I waited until the last possible moment. Priorities have changed since we now run a booth there, and we pour all our energy into our convention floor demos. Last year we ran 10 events and had a total of 63 players jump into the fray; we also ran two after-hours games for inner circle 'shogs and 'shogettes. This year, sad to say, I've submitted just 3 events (Weds, Thurs and Fri, 9pm - midnite) and left Saturday night open for another invite only event (probably WEGS Sucks!).



Here's the three events:

• The Tale of the Trojan Pig


• Keep on the Badderlands: Minotaur Meat!


• Dwarf Walks Into A Bar

It's with regret that I've pulled Dingbitt's Dunge O' Doom off the schedule; I could only run one repeat event given the abbreviated schedule, and just love running Dwarf Walks. Always have a blast with that one; never, never, never plays the same way twice!


And that's why Turdschmeer is featured in today's post!

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!

Dexcon Aftermath!

Dexcon was non-stop WEGS action from start to finish! We ran four back-to-back sessions of Dingbitt's Dunge O' Doom and each session was rocking. The first three sessions had the maximum number of players. The final session had four, with Willy the 2 and Spointer jumping in on the side of the players, leaving me to reign havoc down on the battlemat for our last session. The games were a mix of experienced WEGS players returning from prior cons and new players (one session was completely filled with new players). I'm finding that games that have experienced players sitting alongside new players accelerates the speed of the game. The game plays entirely different when filled only with new players, turning into more of a demo for us on the "house side". It's hard jumping from one style to the next! Our first two sessions were power-plays, the game had a great mix of returning players and new players. The speed of those games was incredible. The third session slowed down a bit as all six players were new to the system. The final game had four players, all experienced, and it being the last session, it was my task to go full throttle against them. It was a great way to end the con! All in all, about 18 folks played WEGS at DexCon, about half of that number were new players. And only one of them made it out of the dungeon alive....

Dexcon Dunge O' Doom

This weekend is Dexcon, a NJ gaming convention that has a strong indie game presence. Me and the Wegshogs will be there on Saturday only, running a non-stop session of Dingbitt's Dunge O' Doom, the WEGS dungeon free-for-all. We run Dingbitt's at almost every con we attend, and folks seem to love this one. It's one combat encounter after another, but the hook is that Arks progress rapidly during the game; Arks get a 6% Rank Bump for every completed encounter. Another hook is that there is a poker sub-game running; the players need a pair of Jacks or better to escape from the dungeon, and they can only do so when a magical door appears (another machination with the poker deck). The poker game adds another level of complexity to this particular scenario and I'm always a little concerned that players will think the poker element is a standard part of WEGS (which it really isn't). It makes Dingbitt's the Texas Hold 'Em of dungeon delving, though - and, so far, no players have been totally befuddled by the game within the game it creates. At Origins, we ran a six-hour session of Dingbitt's (it should have ended at midnite, but went until 3 am instead...). By the end of that session, no player had escaped the dungeon, but the few that survived were holding Jacks or better. They were just waiting for a way out to appear...

Gotta love Dingbitt's!

Our Icon Excursion...

Last weekend, me and Spointer headed to Icon, a sci-fi con at Stonybrook University on Long Island, New York. Icon is heavy on the "science" part of sci-fi, but has a gaming arm, too. There's lots of folks wandering around in costume. As it's on a huge college campus, there's the whole student body mixing in with the con-goers.

We ran three out the four games on our schedule. Friday night's Pirates of Penzantium game started off with a bang, as a returning player from last year arrived full of enthusiasm for WEGS. He brought a friend who he had run through a WEGS game a couple of nights prior, so both had experience under their belt. As noted in the post below, this greatly adds to the speed of play. Also, because they were so dang good at the game, I was able to layer in the pirate spills (Spante Skills). Unless players know what WEGS is about, these skills will slow down the play. Not so here, the skills added to the awesome. The game ended when the college kicked us out at 2 a.m. Nice! Thankfully, the Saturday a.m. game did not get off the ground, leaving us some down-time. By noon Spointer was running a demo for some folks, then we plunged into our 2 p.m session of Dingbitt's, where we created a new twist called Dingbitt's Roundhouse where the position of Minion Master rotates with each new encounter (i'll post details on that later). The con concluded with a full table of gamers for a traditional Dingbitt's.

Icon has been hit/miss for us in the past, but all in all, this was a great weekend - saw some friends, met some new ones, gamed like mad and had a blast. This upcoming weekend is MEPAcon, the Mid-Eastern Pennsylvania Con. First time going there. Details next week.

A Sunday Dingbitt's, Part 3

And the game just kept getting better. Last Sunday, we ran Dingbitt's again at the same locale. Of the 5 players from the previous week, 2 returned to do more dungeon diving: Don/Dwarf Sage and Nick/Elf Ranger. 4 new players joined them: Jason, Will, Martin and Kristen. The party was now 6 Arks strong.

Dwarf Sage
Elf Ranger
Elf Trickster
Elf Ranger
Goblin Mage
Goblin Warrior

The week prior, the party made it to Level 4. Last Sunday, we started the party back on Level 1 (so the noobs stood a chance). We added a new rule, too - you can only get a Level Bonus (6%) for levels you've never been on. So, the Dingbitt veterans from the prior week had to "assist" the noobs on the "lighter" levels. Actually, this rule has always been in play, we just never had a group of mixed Arks (noobs and vets). It made it very interesing play as the vets were forever hounding the noobs to go down deeper. The party quickly cleared Levels 1, 2 and 3. They then decided to skip Level 4 and plunge down to Level 5. Perhaps the cockiness in their ability to clear that level went to their heads, the party decided to go full throttle to Level 8 - and therein awaited their unraveling.

The final battle was brutal: five Level 88's Ogres awaited them there (one of each Arketype: Warrior, Ranger, Trickster, Mage, Sage), plus a trio of fiercely ravenous zombies! The battle was a non-stop wegsified last stand, rife with spoint madness, phew popping, wicked failures. One Ark bit the bullet (the Mage), two fled from combat (sacrificing their exit card). The battle actually ended with a draw - neither side won. If the game had gone on longer, a few more Arks would've been added to Dingbitt's heap! Oh well, next time...

A Sunday Dingbitt's, Part 2...

You know a game is good when you have a lingering feeling for it to continue, and you find yourself thinking about the game play a full week later; the "afterglow", as it were. There were a couple of reasons why this demo rocked: (1) three brand new players; (2) two players with books; (3) one player who just happened to be in the store and decided to jump into the game on a whim; (4) two Wegshogs in attendance: Spointer Don and Willy the 2 (Minion Master); (5) I was free to loom above the table helping the players with questions and running lesser level minions; (6) two spectators who sat in on the game and pumped energy into the players with their questions and comments. All in all, a good, solid demo that ran like a full-fledged game. It didn't feel like a demo at all. It was us power-playing WEGS.

At about 3:30 pm, we were wrapping up the fourth encounter. Arks had already sprung a few leaks: Phew! were being blown, spoints were being conserved, the Warrior had a Wicked Invulnerability Failure). It was up in the air if all the Arks would make it out of the encounter alive. There was one Minion left on the battlemat: the 66% Undead Sage who had only five Wound Chips and one Blood Chip. For those of you who don't speak WEGS, that meant the enemy had anywhere between 60 and 150 Wounds. The Blood Chip strength isn't revealed until it is tapped. (I'm sure that explanation was even less helpful for the Unwegs.) Anyway, the Undead Sage (who was holding the bottom of the inning) successfully cast a spell. He would be blasting it the next inning.

Top of the inning. Players go!

With the breath of the Undead Sage's spell breathing down their necks, the players needed to take him out fast; hopefully before the spell went off. The Warrior charged up to him and took a whack. He reduced the Undead Sage to 1 Wound Chip and 1 Blood Chip. The Gnobbit Trickster ran up and jumped into the Undead Sage's square. This would cause the Sage to suffer an Invulnerability penalty the next inning. No other Ark's were close enough to help (or none wanted to get within the Undead Sage's spell range...).

Bottom of the inning. Minions go!

The Undead Sage launched Clash of the Spheres. This instantly paralyzed the Warrior, who was now a sitting duck. Unfortunately, this did NOT paralyze the Gnobbit who was in the same square as the Undead Sage. The spell has a ground-zero benefit. The safest place to be when this spell goes off is exactly where the Gnobbit was! This was the first time we ever saw this maneuver - ever. Moments like this solidify the afterglow.

Next inning. Top. Players go!

I'll cut to the chase here - the Gnobbit Trickster has one shot to kill the Undead Sage, and so he takes it. He only does 40-something points. He destroys the Undead Sage's last Wound Chip and so everything hinged on the Blood Chip total... Willy rolls and scores...

1

The worst possible roll for him... The Undead Sage perishes! The Minion Master groaned. The Arks cheered. The game ended on a high note - kinda. After all, the players were still trapped in Dingbitt's Dunge O' Doom!

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!

The Dexcon Dunge O' Doom...

Well, Dexcon has come and gone. Not too sure what to make of it as we only ran 2 of the 8 games we had on the con schedule. Players were few and far between, but we were lucky enough to get a full compliment of excellent players for our Friday midnite special - Dingbitt's Dunge O' Doom! The arks/players were:

Gnobbit Warrior - Will
Elf Ranger - Ken
Goblin Warrior - Jeff
Dwarf Sage - Bill
Humnz Mage - Dave
Humnz Mage - Mel

I ran the game solo, letting Will jump into the game (despite the protests of the players who thought he would be more of a handicap!). Gameplay was fast and furious. After testing the waters on Level 1 where the group of adventurers encountered a demented Dwarf witch and her guards, the group jumped down to Level 5 where they received quite a beating from a Hobgoblin battalion. Taking a moment to heal the wounded and rethink their downward venturing, they decided to retreat up to Level 4 where they handily dispatched a three-headed tentacled horror. For their final encounter, they plunged down to Level 6 where they found the Chamber of the Golden Cow. It was here that all hell broke loose in one final fantastic frenzy.

Without giving too much away for those of you who might encounter such a chamber in your ventures, the game ended with the 2 Warriors and the Ranger pitted against the 2 Mages and the Sage. Yes - the game ended in a grand player-vs-player showdown. Fighters versus Spellcasters! Spoints were flying and Phew points were popping! When things turned really bad for the spellslingers, Dave the Humnz Mage used the spell Jumpin' Jazzophat to jump off the game board, leaving the two other spellcasters scurrying toward the edge. Unfortunately, the edge of the board was too far for Bill's Sage (who was plum out of spell points and Phew!) - the Sage was the first to bite the dust. Mel's Mage made a valiant dash for the exit, but was cut down just two squares away from escape!

There was great character play from beginning to end and it was tremendous fun to see the party unravel so quickly in the final encounter... The game wrapped up around 3:30 a.m. This was the high point for WEGS at the con - from there it was all downhill unfortunately... Players seemed few and far between at this con. I guess most decided to skip this con to stay home and read Harry Potter...

Ya live, ya learn...