The Wiz-War that Wazn't

I was once commissioned to redo the art in Wiz-War. So what happened to that edition?

Wiz-War is a classic "Ameri-trash" game designed by Tom Jolly. If you are familiar with it you know Magic the Gathering took many ideas from it. The core concept is great; you are a wizard trying to compete with other wizards to steal 2 treasures in a dungeon and get them back to your home base. You have spells that alter the dungeon, affect opponents, and do all kinds of other mayhem. Each spell is on a card (yeah Magic the Gathering, we know). 

The game passed from publisher to publisher and no real mass market version with high production values really hit retail until FFG (Fantasy Flight Games) got a hold of it and did their thing to it, which was basically to overcomplicate it and change everything good about the game. I like the components but I didn't love what they did to the design.

For a time before FFG the rights belonged to Chessex (yeah, the dice company). After I had successfully launched Dungeoneer in 2002, Donald Reents the owner of Chessex contacted me if I would do a similar treatment to Wiz-War. I was quite excited about the opportunity because Dungeoneer had much in common with Wiz-War. This is a true story: when I made Dungeoneer I didn't even know about Wiz-War, but everyone who played Dungeoneer told me it was a great homage to it. So I tracked down a copy, played it with my friends and fell in love with the game. That aside, what happened to this redux?

I worked hard on Wiz-War for at least a year, pouring over the game, making art, working on the layout. I got pretty deep into it. Then I started getting notes from Tom Jolly and the job transitioned from just making art into a revision including design changes. I didn't understand at the time about "scope" but I was in way over my head. It was too much for one person.

I went back to Donald and expressed the challenges I was facing, his solution was to offer me even more compensation to finish the job. Being a starving artist at the time I didn't turn it down, though I should have!

There was a deadline that could not be moved that was ticking away. Chessex only had the rights for a while and they were about to expire. So they HAD to get a version out before then. I doubled down on my efforts. Organized all the components, was cranking away on art, but to no avail. The deadline was too short and the date slipped by. FFG had zero interest in the work I'd done as they had "a different vision" for the game. I was trying to do Saturday Morning Cartoon, they wanted Magic the Gathering Lite.

The cartoonish art might seem out of place compared to my usual work, but it is a reflection of my fun side. There was a brief time I considered trying to work at an animation studio like Disney, but then I got sucked into games.

Donald apologized to me for the fiasco, and even lent me his apartment in Paris for a week when my wife and I visited there. That was very kind of him, I felt I owed him the apology! 

I still have most of the assets. Some have been lost to hard drive crashes over the years. Occasionally I'll use them as placeholder art when I'm brainstorming a game design. Currently I'm using them as avatars on the new Night Owl Workshop forum, which is what prompted me to tell this story.

I still think my version looks way more fun and reflects the spirit of the game better.