WEGS- Yes, Your GM is Out to Get You

Article By: FuzzyKitty

I cannot say I have that much experience dealing with casinos. My interest in mathematics has taught me to stay away from gambling or the lottery unless you can completely rig the system. I’ve also found that similar conclusions can be made when playing role-playing games with particular GM’s. You know or at least have heard of the type, a sadistic monster trying to push the party a bit too far. It’s a bit of a stretch, but it’s really the only comparison I can draw between Las Vegas and role-playing games.

I make weak comparisons because WEGS (Wickedly Errant Gaming System) is a role-playing game with Vegas-style craps elements. We sat down to run a demo game of WEGS 101: Old Skool (a simplified version) run by the game’s creator, Larry Wickman.

Character creation revolved solely around 2 6-sided dice and 2 10-sided dice. We all had to choose a race (Dwarf, Elf, Goblin, Gnobbit, or Humnz) and class (Warrior, Ranger, Trickster, Mage or Sage) which appeared to be standard role-playing fare. The 6 stats (Prowess, Ruggedness, Stealth, Ingenuity, Grace, and Sanity) were determined by rolling the 4 dice and assigning their total to the INI of the stats. Then, we all had to assign a skill “Rank.” We had 1 30, 2 20’s, and 3 10’s to bolster up each of our stats in order to mold our character to our chosen class. The sum of INI and Rank determine the final stats.

Our strengths were then gathered by taking the corresponding stats and dividing by 10. For example, my Gnobbit Trickster’s Prowess of 40 allows for 4 Warrior Strength, and 67 stealth allows for 6 movement spaces per turn. The rest of the stats are figured just through your base 6 stats. For my Trickster, I had “Wounds” equal to the Rank of my Prowess and Ruggedness (a mere 30, ouch) while Peranon’s Warrior had “Wounds” equal to his total Prowess and Ruggedness (somewhere around 100).

The most important stat is the “Spoint” stat, or your effective mana. These were found through the magic stats, similarly to hit points, and were your betting chips for the game. Spoints could be spent to enhance attacks, move farther, or pretty much anything the GM allows. However, each character has only a limited amount of Spoints, and becomes rather weak if they run out. This stat really seemed to be the heart of the game, so I tried to rig my trickster into having as many chips as possible. This Spoint-hoarding could also be the result of my general contempt for my GM whenever I play any role-playing game.

Each character has a handful of skill cards based on their given class. Most skill cards always involve some sort of roll. For example, some stealthy attacks have a success percent of your stealth stat plus 20%. The more powerful skills require a “cold roll” in which the player rolls his 2 6-siders and uses the higher number for his success percent. Rolling a 4 and a 2 would allow for a 42% success rate on a skill. These can all be boosted by using Spoints at a 10% increase per Spoint.

This is where the player-GM interaction shines. The GM plays the game like the house in Vegas. That is to say, it is the GM’s job to snag all the Spoints chips of the players in order for the players to lose. Numerous times I was asked if I wanted to boost my 81% success chances or if I wanted to move 1 or 2 extra squares on my movement. At one point, Larry asked our wizard if she wanted to spend 10 Spoints for an option to reroll a damage die on her spell. I really must compliment our GM for his efforts to make us spend all our chips; it really added to our experience with the game.

Combat was rather simple. Players could only perform 1 action per turn. These actions included moving, aiming (a requirement for bows), firing a bow, attacking with melee weapons, casting a spell, and some other minor actions. Attacking requires a roll on the 2 10-siders that is less than the character’s Prowess stat. Then the defender gets a chance to deflect the attack by trying to roll underneath their Invulnerability stat. Finally, if a blow is dealt, damage would be a 6-sider roll multiplied by your corresponding strength.

Decent strategies involved lowering a monster’s Invulnerability while increasing your own chance to hit through actions like back attacks and special skills. These tactics were essential because the monsters Larry threw at us were not easy. It is not every day you run into something that hits for more than your maximum Wounds and has an 88% chance to negate any attack. This makes sense though, since the Spoints are supposed to last an entire adventure and we were just running a demo encounter, giving us a distinct advantage. Since this was the case, I could spend my Spoints haphazardly and not think twice about it. If this were a full adventure, Spoint use would require much more thought. However, if this were a full adventure, I would also have stabbed someone in the back when they wouldn’t let me take my choice of treasure.

This simplified version of WEGS made for some enjoyable and challenging fights. (We’ll never know how Larry could roll so well.) WEGS makes an enjoyable combat system for groups with a cutthroat GM, or at least one who can play the role well. If you’re looking for a role-playing system with an in-depth non-combat system however, you may want to look elsewhere. There may be a lot more non-combat elements, but from what we had demoed, we did not see any.

You can check out WEGS at http://gamewick.com/wegs/