I’ve spend part of the weekend at the last gaming convention of 2003, Dragonmeet. Since I’m not currently in any regular roleplaying group, I rely on cons for my gaming fix.
Dragonmeet is a one day convention held at Kensington Town Call in London, now in it’s fourth year in it’s current incarnation. I missed last years event, due to the date clashing with the Warley model railway exhibition; this year the two fell on consecutive weekends, so I could attend both. I did miss out on the office party, though. You can’t have everything, and Dragonmeet gives you less of a hangover.
It’s rather larger in terms of attendance than the two residential cons I’ve attended this year (Stabcon and Conjuration); the action was spread across four halls, though I didn’t venture into the CCG one. The trade hall showcased several British gaming companies, notably Mongoose Publishing with mountains of d20 stuff, Pelgrane Press, publishers of the Dying Earth, and Ragged Angel, publishers of Principia Malifex.
On a one day event you don’t get as much gaming as a full weekend con, so the game sessions tend to be shorter; two to three hours rather than the six hours plus at a longer con. I played two games that are both new to me, Diana: Warrior Princess, GMed by the game’s author, Marcus Rowland, and the modern day horror game Principia Malifex.
Diana is a very silly game indeed, designed for people that think White Wolf’s Adventure is far too po-faced and serious. Imagine a TV show in a future as far away from us as ancient Greece is in the past, with the same level of research and loving attention to historical authenticity as that TV series filmed in New Zealand. Get the idea? As well as Diana and her sidekick Fergie, PCs include Red Ken the barbarian hero, who has the ability to speak to amphibians and reptiles. Villains include the evil Queen Elizabeth, who is also secretly a gangster called The Queenmother, and her evil chancellor, the undead sorcerer Thatcher. The whole thing is played with cinematic game system played with buckets of d6. The adventure we played involved recovering the stolen Stone of Scone, a haggis farm, a gigantic flying dreadnaught chased by the PCs in a steam powered biplane, and a bunch of bagpipe playing druids led by a fellow called Rabbi Burns.
The Principia Malifex game was rather different. This game ran three times during the con, with a prize of a bottle of champagne to any party that managed to defeat the scenario. The premise was that the PCs had banded together to rid the world of an evil sorcerer, who lived in a walled house surrounded by woodland. Our plans went pear-shaped pretty rapidly, losing one PC (death by ladder) before we even got inside the house. I was the third casualty, wibbled out in the kitchen from seeing one Thing Man Was Not Meant To Know too many. The three survivors made it to the top of the stairs before being wiped out, which was further that the earlier group had done. I don’t know how the third group did, but the champagne survived to feature in the charity auction at the end of the convention!
Like most cons, I met up with some of the regulars on the con circuit, Harvey Thomas, Ian McDonald and Jennifer Waddington (with Nigel the mongoose), plus a few others who’s names escape me.
