The Real Thing...

Last weekend, I was on my way back to Jersey from Virginia, and stopped by one of those slot parlours in Delaware. Slots is not my casino game of choice, though I often make machine time for video poker. Machine time, keep that in mind. Lately, the slot parlours (don't call them casinos), have been adding video table games such as blackjack, poker and let it ride. These tables have a huge upright video screen on which the simulated dealer (sim) is projected. The players sit side-by-side before the screen and have individual video monitors on the console before them to place their bets, etc. Back to the sims. The sims have the creepy ability to make eye contact with the passerbys. The damn eyes follow you! Kinda like one of those haunted house portraits... The sim dealers are buff or buxom models, sometimes clad in bathing suits (if the background is an island casino, etc). The sim video loops between them looking at the passerbys (while they wait for the players to place bets), shuffling and dealing. Kinda clever, all in all. But it's not real.

I sat down at a $2 Let It Ride table. Can't find $2 tables out in Vegas, so this seemed like a good deal. All the components you would expect were there: Bonus Bet, Three Card Bonus, etc. It was the game as it should be. But it's not real. By the third deal, I was getting bad vibes. First off, I didn't have poker chips to play with. I had no tangible sense of the game. Sure I could look at the video and see my remaining balance, but that was too much like banking. Numbers on a computer screen is Excel to me. It's work. And, what's worse, it's reality. Poker chips have some type of charge to them. The weight. The softness. It just works psychological wonders.

The other thing that was missing was the cards. In the table game, three cards are dealt face down. You pick them up and look at them. You shuffle them as you want. You use them to scratch the table to indicate a bet should be taken down. The sound of a playing card scratching the table felt, it's almost religious. With the sim, all I had was a button to take down my bet. Lastly, the comradery of your fellow players and the dealer was gone. You can't replicate that. Generally, the dealers give you some consolation if the cards are against you. They react to the odds and the gods in the game. With the sims, you get nothing. No sympathy. No humor. No consolation. Just console.

After a few more hands I had to bolt. The sim was starting to make me realize how money-guzzling stupid the game is, especially when you strip away all the physical components: cards, poker chips, banter. Losing against a computer, any game, makes a person feel dumb. Add losing money to that equation and you feel like a flippin' moron.

Sometimes it is about the game pieces...

Of Mice & Minion Masters...

Before...
Right out of the 1954 movie, "Them!". I had high hopes for these two minions. Level 7 Giant Fire Ants with a nasty afterburn from their bites (i think it was D10 Wounds at the Spante for the next four innings). They marched confidently into battle, as ants often do...
After...

And they were quickly dispatched by the Arks, who showed them who rules the checkered mat!

Best laid plans...

Halfway May

Welp, May's half over, almost, and the content structure of Pirates Of Penzantium is done for the first pass. I pretty much know the chapters and have most of the text in place. The cover is done, once again by Kennon, and the roughs for all the art is in. June will be layout and design, and, proofing, proofing, proofing. It will be interesting to see how all the pieces fit together this time. Last year, Old Skool was a complete uphill learning experience. This year, with the page styles already established, a large chunk of the battle has already been fought. I don't want to say I'm more prepared, I'm just on the battlefield a little earlier and waiting for the enemy to rear its head. All this said, I'm hoping to be to print late-June. Aside from the POP work, I've been overhauling that chunky website o' mine and that fills in any extra time I didn't have to begin with! Halfway May. A new website, a new book and another birthday will finish off this month nicely. God willing!

Pirates and Copper...

I've been working like mad getting the content of the Pirates Of Penzantium completed. Right now, the full book is conceptually in place. I've got about twelve chapters (the same as Old Skool) and looking at about 60 pages. These are text doc pages, not layout. With art and formatting that will probably grow to about 75 pages. I am trying to keep this book slightly smaller than Old Skool, but it might end up being the same page count. Hard to say right now. One lesson learned from last year's publishing endeavors is to have the rough text proofed prior to layout. This allows much quicker editing and all the art doesn't get in the way of the proofer (it's easy to be distracted by all cool art and special formatting). It's just as critical to proof again once layout is complete as the manipulated text can easily get messed up. What I found last year was that there was a ton of errors, stupid errors, that I should have caught pre-formatting.

The second bit of news is that WEGS Copper has been shelved until Pirates is complete. Pirates is the priority right now. As all 12 of you who read this blog should know, Copper is the advanced version of Old Skool. While Old Skool has a small and loyal band of followers (the aforementioned 12), I just don't think it's critical to release; from a timing standpoint it has no urgency - yet. Pirates allows me to open another channel into the system while at the same time expanding the WEGS 101 rule set. Pirates has the potential to hook a new type of player and provide existing Old Skoolers a whole new way of playing, whereas Copper is really focused on the experienced Wegshog. The big bonus to Pirates is that I will have two introductory books to sell at conventions, not just one. Setting up at a booth with a single product for sale is very lame. Just ask me, I've been doing it for month's now. Embarrassing, man! My hope is that folks passing the table will now say:

Two products... Wow, that's a game company!

Death and Coffee...

From one of the seminars I attended last week at the GAMA Trade Show in Vegas... There was a discussion of sales cycles... It was pointed out that from a consumer standpoint coffee is something that you can market for daily consumption. Coffee is something that most folks will buy once a day (assuming they're coffee drinkers and your target audience). All that the coffee companies have to do is set up a store and be there waiting. Opposite that is funeral homes where it is estimated that there's a sale once per seven years. Seven years is a long wait. Maybe that's why morticians have that strange, patient, lurking look... And why those coffee counter folks are so damn happy!

Point is that hobby store customers wander in every now and then to the store - and it ain't daily. When they do wander in, you want your product to jump off the shelves and into their hands. The only way to do that is by making sure your product is eye-catching and sells them the moment they see it. This means front cover, back cover, spine, all slanted to sell. It's important too that when they casually flip the pages of the book, that sells them too.

I'm hoping WEGS sales teeter more toward coffee than death.

Right now it's sure hard to tell!

Last Week... This Month...

Last week...

Las Vegas.

A whirlwind of gaming activity and business stuff and some gambling, too! The Game Manufacturers Association (GAMA) held their GTS (Gama Trade Show) at Bally's in Las Vegas. WEGS 101 was featured for the evening gaming as part of the Play With The Creator series. It was a great time. There were lots of great seminars and workshops, the best of which was a focus group session where 6 industry folks sat down with me and WEGS 101. Without allowing me to speak, they took the book and deck and assessed it on face value. It was a great reality check. After assessing it, they started asking questions as to what the game actually was - questions generated from their cold reading of the front/back cover and paging through the interior a bit. They basically gave it the "once over" that any customer walking into a store would. Then they hit me with all the questions that a shopper would have about the product - the stuff I didn't include on the covers. I had great feedback on the pros and cons. This seminar alone was the value of the $125 registration fee. There's lots more to discuss on the GTS - but that'll have to wait...

This month...

May!

I'm going to do short blitzes on the blog. My energies are pouring over the summer Pirates of Penzantium release at this point. So, luckily for all 9 of you who check this blog, the blogging will be shorter and to the point. Random thoughts... Strange short rants... Production updates and worries... The odd pic or two... Quick hits!

Minion Of The Month-Column Golum

All fear the column golem!!! It's been a while since I've posted a minion of the month, but we threw down a new minion last month that caused quite a stir: the column golem. This is a bizarre rubber toy that is composed of roman columns!?! Figured you'd find this guy protecting a temple - so he appeared for the From Dusk Til Dead scenario at Wittcon. As an 88, this hulking minion of stone reduced all Damage Die by 2 points. He was limited to walking in straight lines and would take a full action just to pivot in square. He would automatically pivot any time he entered the same "line" as a target, then he would march toward them and crush them with two attacks per inning. His fists would do 12xD6 Enchanted Wounds (so an Ark had to rely on their Stealth score alone for protection)! The wizard you see behind him was armed with the fabled "chainsword". She kept hitting him with wicked failures and so spent a lot of time behind him in Lost Action Phase. So, the dice were on his side (but that's what you would expect when you are attacking stone!). Gotta love the WEGS dice when they behave like gods!!!

A Wow Moment...

At Mepa, our first game went off a 9 pm and we had a table of six players. This was our Dungeons Or Dragons scenario where the players get an introduction to the system and then get to choose what type of adventure they want us to create. Big part of this game is to show folks how easy it is to make up the minions on the fly. So, players get to see both sides of the system. At the end of this game, one guy bought a book and two decks and said he would be running WEGS the next night at the con - and, damned if he didn't!!! He went online and printed off all the Ark Kards from our website and then ran Dwarf Walks, the intro adventure in the book. Not only did he run the adventure as written, he included the full cast of characters right down to Borkfu's Cousin's Twin's Wife and Gurt the Body Snatcher (with zombies)! Cool, cool, cool!

Our Mepacon Excursion...

Last weekend, me and Spointer headed over the river Delaware and across the mountains to Mid-Eastern PA (MEPA). The drive was much less harrowing than our prior weekend's trip under the river Hudson. In both cases, Friday night traffic sucked. The joke about Jersey being the parking lot for NY, CT and PA... painfully true.

It was our first time hitting Mepacon, so had no idea what to expect. We weren't there but five minutes and we knew we were going to have a rocking time. I think it was the hotel, a Holiday Inn, perched on the mountain overlooking endless mountains (not that we would actually have time to enjoy the view). The other cool thing was that, like the Luxor in Vegas, all the hotel rooms opened up into the center atrium, inverted pyramid style. And the final cool bit was that a prominent feature of the hotel was the indoor pool and jacuzzis at one side of the atrium (so they whole interior lobby smelt of chlorine - and this would be a big plus to counter some of the gamer funk that would be building after three straight days of gaming!). If we knew this place had a cool pool we would've brought our bathing suits. Heck, we could've run games poolside. Dice float, don't they?

Most of the WEGS games went off with full tables. When games didn't run, we could retreat quickly to the hotel room and relax. Having a room just a short elevator ride from the game table is great. I'm beginning to really appreciate the "self-contained" convention where you don't have to pack stuff up between games, load your car and then drive to another place to sleep...

Yeah, that's the old man in me talking...

And he's talking louder and louder these days!

From NY to PA...

Last weekend it was Icon, this weekend it's MEPAcon. First time going to this con, but word up is that it's a good rpg con. Details to follow next week!

Shroedinger's Cold Roll...

So does the cat live or die (or simply implode)?

Find out here

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...)

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.

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!

WEGS @ WittCon '08
From Dusk 'Til Dead
(photo by j. benton)

Lots o' rats, zombies, ether creepers, spoint frogs (on copper pot).
A Level 88 Dark Mage can be seen on that mighty stack of red chips.
Lower right is a Goblin Mage with Sense Magic up (red marker).
Level 88 Dark Mage is also about to blast a spell...

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!)

An Early Depiction of WEGS in Rome?

Suffering the price for bad Minion Mastering...

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!

Well... She floats!

WEGS was the freak show at last weekend's Cold Wars. All the other games had ornately painted armies, WEGS had spray-painted minis (copper and gold). All the other games had fantastically-detailed terrain, WEGS had a black/gray battle-mat with a wooden boat on it. All other games were sold out in advance, WEGS had tickets to spare!

But, did we have a great time?

Hell yeah!

The games that did run were just amazing. AMAZING. These were the first full play-tests of our Pirates Of Penzantium rules with folks who never played WEGS before (that's a bit of a lie, we had fans return from last year's Historicon). I was worried at first that folks wouldn't get it because they were not familiar with the 101 rules. Instead, I was amazed at the level of play and the absolutely wicked use of the new skills. The new rules were tested so thoroughly that I have copius notes on what to fix. Some skills were over-powered and some were too weak. We tweaked the skills as we went along - so it was a great test for the system. With skills like Harpoon O' Doom, Chum Chopper, Yawlbatross and Phibe's Phish Phry, how can a game go wrong - right? Plus, Borkfu and friends made a guest appearance in one of the scenarios (and got their butts kicked heartily, mates)!

More details to come...

The S.S. Borkfu

Cold Wars is this weekend and we have a special prop to fit right in with their pirates theme: the S.S. Borkfu. We will be running Pirates of Penzantium events non-stop at the con, and we're going to try to use this prop in every one (if possible). We have a new version of Dwarf Walks Into A Bar (or Barge for that matter) and four brand new pirate scenarios. The Sunday Yawl is Escape From Yawlcatraz. The Wegshogs were even going to go as far as to wear pirate costumes, but didn't want to scare off potential players (plus, our fan base of 12 would lose all respect for us...). See you later, mateys!

Pour, Oh Pour, The Pirate Sherry...

The first official play of Pirates of Penzantium (202) happened on Sunday, and it was a rollicking good time, halted often by rule disputes. It has been so long since we've been in playtest mode that we forgot the frustration of not being able to play full throttle (especially after two consecutive sessions of pedal to metal Dingbitt's). Plus, we were up against a time factor: we were trying to run two 2-hour scenarios in four hours (with a new product). To make things fully pressurized, I jumped in as a player, so Will the 2 was stuck all by his lonesome running the game. At the time we thought this wouldn't be an issue as nothing on the Minion side had changed. As we got into the game, Will's head was spinning with all the new skills/spells being thrown at him. As usual, he rose to the occasion, giving me "I'll kill you when it's over" looks every now and then. We had five players:

Dwarf Sage / Don
Elf Mage / Jason
Gobling Warrior / L. Willy
Elf Ranger / Martin
Gnobbit Trickster / Chris

As you see, the Arks haven't changed. All the system stuff is the same. It's the skills and spells that are all new. Plus we have Spante Skills and Pirate Stations, both of which add new elements to the game.

Each Ark has a specific Spante Skill (aka "spill")that can be played on the Spante. These skills heighten a stat associated with the specific Ark, and benefits all those surrounding them; however these spills are expensive. Spills cost 8 spoints to use. This prevents any one Ark from using them solo, so players "buy-in" for the group benefit. Only those who buy-in get the benefit.

Pirate Station is the Ark's pecking order in the pirate crew (eight levels from Deck Skum to Dread Pirate). Stations establish the pirate's Notoriety level and grant bonuses at the higher levels (the Dread Pirate can "borrow" skills from lower crewmen). Pirates can only advance stations when those above them perish, or if the Dread Pirate promotes 'em.

These two mechanics definitely add a level of vibrance to the game. While it plays exactly the same as 101, the extra layers add a distinct learning curve for noobs. That's why we're calling the Pirates version "202". 101 is about getting into a dungeon asap and having a blast hacking. POP 202 is about establishing a group of cut-throats who rely on each other, while keeping an eye out in hopes of advancement. The new mechanics are all about getting the crew established and ready for adventure on the high seas of sorcery!

More on the playtest coming soon!

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!

Crackin' Copper, Part 2

Spent some time this week trying to organize WEGS Copper. I have two versions: (1) the actual text document in MSWord, and (2) the layout in InDesign. Trying to wrap my mind around the differences in the two docs and get them back in sync. As all 12 of you who read this blog know from prior posts, Copper was near-ready for print. At that point in the publishing process, I cut the strings that bind the two versions together and finish all the loose ends in the InDesign layout. The docs generally don't get too far out of sync. This weekend my plan is to get both versions to jive, then begin edits once more. I also have a Pirates of Penzantium playtest with the home Hogs and an in-store demo at a local store. A WEGS-ish weekend all-in-all.

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)

WEGS at Dreamation 2008

Well, the first con of 2008 has come and gone, and it was good. Of the 5 WEGS games we had scheduled, 4 of them ran: Dungeons Or Dragons, Dingbitt's Dunge O' Doom, Reservoir Dwoirves and Sunday session of Dingbitt's. We canceled our "midnite quicky" session of Dusk Til Dead ('cause we were bordering on being undead by that point). We ended up not running our pirate rule set (more details on that later this week).

This was the first con that we had an official WEGS booth at, and although this was a small con, it was a critical step for us to figure out "booth-ing". Up to this point, we've just run games at cons, and haven't had the responsibility of a booth. It will be a very real responsibility at the cons this summer. This con was a baby step in that direction and we learned a lot from this test run. We know that we need a box with booth supplies, and were partially prepared there. What I wasn't prepared for was the in-booth demos that Will and Don began to run. I hadn't thought of game supplies at the table (like Ark Kards and dice and minis). At the next con, we'll have a mini-game set for this.

All in all, we learned a lot and had a blast. It was a balance between business and pleasure. We had two outright amazing game sessions (the first and last) - so, we began and ended the con on a high note. A good con.