[WW] The Wild Card System

[PEGShane@aol.com]

The current Weird War Two schedule takes us through at least August of this 
year.

After that, the Weird War Two *D20* line may continue on its own, depending 
on sales.

Around late summer of this year, the new and absolutely free Wild Card System 
will appear on our website. It is *planned* that printed free rules--with 4 
different scenarios in 4 different genres--will be sent to stores, bagged in 
magazines, etc. This depends on how sales go this summer, of course, as this 
is quite expensive.

Around March of 2003, the Wild Card Advanced Rules will be released along 
with the first new Weird Wars setting--The Crusades--written by yours truly. 
After that, about every three months or so, comes: Blood Feuds (Civil War, by 
Chris McGlothlin), then "The 'Nam," by Teller. A book on American colonial 
wars by Matt DeForrest and the Boxer Rebellion by Frank Frey are planned 
after that.

July of 2003 sees a whole new line called "Blood Moon," which I'm not ready 
to talk about yet. It uses the Wild Card System, and should be quite 
revolutionary in *many* ways. ;)

So What the Hell is the Wild Card System?

It is *NOT* the Deadlands system. It is loosely *based* on the Rail Wars 
system, which allows you to have dozens of characters/NPCs/bad guys/monsters 
out on the table at once and resolve *huge* combats in less than 20 minutes.

Best of all, the Wild Card basic rules will be *free.* An Advanced Rule Book 
is how we'll make money on it, but you *will* be able to play *any genre* 
with the four-page basic rules.

These will be distributed everywhere, and should get us around the most 
common complaint about new games: "My group just doesn't want to try anything 
new." If the rules are simple enough, they will. Wild Cards has an incredibly 
simple "spine" system. You can then add on as many cool things to it as you 
want without changing the basic simple system at its core.

I hinted recently about a big decision I had made on my midwestern trip. This 
is it. I didn't start the trip with this purpose in mind, but I had 
considered using it to figure some things out. After playing a certain new, 
non-Pinnacle game at my first stop (Mark Metzner's house) that was--fatiguing 
at best--despite Mark's excellent gamemastering, I decided to try this on 
them. We started at 11PM, made characters, and played the entire adventure 
from Dead From Above, including 3 large fights, by 2AM. And Mark's group 
*loved* it.

Two more stops along the way, two more long conversations with die-hard 
gamers, and the decision was made.

Back home, we've used the Wild Card System to play: Weird French and Indian 
War, the Witchfire Trilogy (D20), Vietnam, and have been playing in a Legend 
of the Five Rings campaign (6 sessions now). Our playtest groups have played 
Weird Boxer Rebellion, Warhammer Fantasy, and Pulp Adventure. In every case, 
the GM has been able to get set up and going in 5 minutes.

Wild Cards is designed to be a GM's dream. There's no keeping track of 
wounds, hit points, or any of that stuff for NPCs/ bad guys. The tagline is 
Fast/Furious/Fun.

Best of all, in games like Weird Wars where you often have lots of friendly 
NPCs around, the *players* control them. They share basic statistics but get 
assigned random personalities to help you get to know them. And believe 
me--you will. In our Vietnam game, I played a Lt. Some of the other players 
were privates, some were NCOs, whatever. And we had about 8 other NPCs--one 
of which was the crusty old Sgt. We assigned random personalities to them and 
I was able to look at my simple little list and say "Okay. I'm sending the 
gung ho guy to the rear of our ambush site. If things go south, I want him to 
charge through, firing up the bad guys as much as he can, and rally with us." 
I was also able to say. "Hmm. These two guys are slackers. I'll split them up 
during night watch."

Here's some more tidbits. In the French and Indian War game I ran, Zeke was a 
Ranger captain and had 20 Rangers under him! Jason was the British officer 
assigned to lead them. They split the NPCs up during combat (even though 
they're all still under Jason's *character*) and whooped up on some Couriers 
De Bois who tried to ambush them. We had 33 combatants and finished the fight 
in about 15 minutes.

In our L5R game, Jason led a group of daidoji (spelling?)--kinda commando 
types in Rokugan. We tangled with a Phoenix "platoon" of about 20 grunts, 
three samurai, and a shugenja. All told, there were 57 figure on the board. 
We finished the battle in 30 minutes--and it was epic!

Some might be saying, if it's that simple, how much depth can there be! All I 
can say is "trust me." You'll be able to look it over for yourself *for 
free.* Heroes (and champion types) suffer detailed wounds. Everyone else is 
either up, down, or off the table. It's that simple.

SOOOOO. . . .

In short, I'm the guy who has to write, edit, pay for, and literally *live* 
this stuff. So I need to do it my way. I want a system that is:

A) SUPER easy for the GM.
B) Allows players to make use of friendly NPCs.
C) Isn't a chore to write and edit (those of you who recently complained 
about how hard it was to write the D20 stat blocks for the Weird Wars D20 
Gurus contest know what I mean!)
D) Allows for great character advancement. D20 does this well--and we've 
taken some of the best ideas and worked them into our system.

I'll be putting up a "Making of" article on the website soon--much as we did 
with Weird Wars.

For those of you who are absolutely in love with D20, more power to you. And 
we're still doing some D20 products, including Deadlands and Hell on Earth 
dual-stat books, Hostile Climes, and of course the rest of the Weird War Two 
line (and no, there isn't a Wild Card WW2 book anywhere on the schedule 
anytime soon). There are also conversion rules in Wild Card should you decide 
to play one of the new genres with D20.

I'll post a more succinct version of these two messages on Tuesday's web 
update.

Love ya all. Dissenters and supporters alike. ;)

Shane