Sunday, November 30, 2008

 

DragonMeet 2008

The worst part of DragonMeet is that it is always over for another year so quickly. I know it's not practical for a one-day convention to start before 10am or end after 6pm but, still, it's not long enough. Thankfully, the franchise is being extended next year and will appear in Swindon (March) and maybe a couple of other places.

Today started well - I'd bought a ticket in advance and reached the hall at 9:30am. This year was well organised - they'd handed out "goody" bags and ripped our ticket stubs while we were in the queue, allowing us to speed through to the all-important game sign-up sheets.

The first game I put my name down for was Call of Cthulhu. "I know you", said the person signing their name below mine and Dominic de Bechi introduced himself. I hadn't heard from him since he was a subscriber to my Green Goblin fanzine back in the late 80s and early 90s. All I could remember was that he came from Wolverhampton - postal addresses are the sort of thing that stick in the mind when you write a fanzine. With him was Charles Hammond who I'm sure read a few of the issues too. Nice to see people that I've known from years ago are still active in the hobby.

The game itself was a moonbase rescue mission where communication had been lost and we needed to investigate what had happened, maybe rescuing the dozen miners in the process. Simple props, like photos of the base, no doubt taken from a film or computer gane, really helped atmosphere (of which there isn't too much on the moon - b-dum tish). Roleplaying had an added challenge when my character ended up as a paranoid brain-in-a-jar, a pleasant change from being eaten by creatures of another dimension. Great fun overall although we seemed to end earlier than expected. Maybe we ran away screaming (some of us carried) too efficiently.

With time on my hands (and all the sandwiches I prepared last night consumed), I went shopping but bought no dice, games or rulebooks. I did, though, take up David Griffith's offer of a £5 signed print at the long artist's table at the back of the trade hall. The unhallowed beholder lich looked a perfect inspiration for my Ascent D&D campaign. I just need little creature ideas like this every now and then to provide the root for a whole tree to grow from. At the moment I am nurturing copses of young trees - growing a forest takes such a lot of time and, more importantly, focus.

Here's a picture of the miniature figure that David drew for Wizards alongside a scan of the print:

After interrupting David's work on a large sketch long enough to buy a print, I moved on to Linda Pitman, an artist who'd had work appear in Mongoose-published products. I didn't buy anything - even the black dragon sketch - bit I did have a nice chat and a promise to check out her website at SheBlackDragon.com.



The rest of the table seemed to be taken up by the Horsley family (where I expect even the baby is a dab hand [I'm sure a joke is trying to get out there]) but Ralph was busy so I started another fruitless search round the trade hall for cheap 3rd ed D&D books I didn't already have. I expect that the traders have managed to dump a lot of their stock since 4th ed was announced in May. To be fair, there aren't many 3rd ed books I do need, which is an obvious problem for any business. There are a lot of D&D books on top of the beer fridge and the plastic crates containing them are now full. I'm slightly worried that more purchases will crush the fridge. Good thing the floor in that room is concrete.

I did pick up an Xmas present for someone - maybe they'll like it. Even if they don't, I'm sure I'll benefit from the purchase anyway, having tried it out.

Back to the game signup desk for the afternoon lists, I notice a full Paranoia game. This was a great disappointment to me as I look forward to playing this game. Not many conventions have people running it so DragonMeet is where I get my fix. Denied. The programme did have a mention in the table assignments - I should have been more thorough. Looking at the signup sheet, the 6 names all seemed in the same handwriting so it looked like a group of six friends had bagged the prize. Maybe this was the same sextet that had turned up for the morning Cthulhu game I was in - the organisers (or somebody, anyway) had put out two different sign-up sheets for the same game.

So, instead, I tried a Burning Wheel King Arthur session (run by Paul Drussel) where the main historical characters (Guinevere, Morgana, Mordred, Lancelot, Palamedes, Urien, and Sir Percival (the 8th player didn't turn up so Merlin was an NPC)) are competing with each other to bring the Holy Grail to the King (or not). The game started with everyone coming upon the location of the relic in an enchanted forest simultaneously. A game of tag then ensued as characters got in each others' way. My Morgana even used her witchery on Mordred to stop a fight between him and his step-father, Urien. Tactically a bad move although maybe in character. After a chase through the woods to Camelot and negotiating our way past Merlin, we all eventually reached the throneroom where the disgraced Lancelot handed over the Grail to the King. Sadly my attempts to poison the celebratory wine to allow me to take all the credit came to nought.

The game mechanics I found a little heavy on the dice - you do need a small bucket of six-siders to play this, depending on the character's attributes. I have a natural aversion to games that just use d6 as they remind me of tabletop army games, which is kind of funny. At least it doesn't make me feeling like I'm LARPing.

One aspect of the rules which was interesting was the attempt to tie storytelling and dice-rolling together. For a complex situation, such as getting past Merlin, a series of "attacks" would be chosen (such as 'rebuttal'), each with a short sentence explaining what the character was saying or doing. Eventually, the verbal contest would result in one side or the opther conceding. Apparantly this system is useful when roleplaying the encounter instead may drag on for way too long. I've seen enough of those in my time so maybe it's a good compromise.



To be continued...

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