Monday 3 December 2012

I'm going to begin my first proper post with what I did on Saturday. It was the 1st of December and time for the yearly roleplaying convention called Dragonmeet. Dragonmeet has been running since the 70's and I have been attending for about five years. Since I've been going it's been held in Kensington Town Hall in London, which is very accessible by bus and The London Underground. The event features a trade hall, participation games and seminars and is great fun. It's mainly a roleplaying con' but also featuring each year are board and card games and art displays.


I first had a wander around the trade hall and picked up an expansion to the dice game Quarriors.

Quarriors is a very simple yet fun game of dice combat where you aim to roll (out of the six dice you're allowed to draw from your bag each turn) enough of the in game currency (called Quiddity (yes that is a rather silly name but realy doesn't distract from the quality of the gameplay)) to promote creatures (that have already been rolled on drawn dice) up to your "ready area". Once there they can attempt to destroy other player's creatures to prevent that player from scoring glory (victory points) and may trigger other effects. Any Quiddity that's left over can be used to purchase other dice (more creatures, portals or spells) from "the wilds" which are then added to your dice pool. Of course, if you want to spend all of your Quiddity on a really nasty creature such as the Mighty Quake Dragon, you are not forced to summon any creature to your ready area at all.

But I have digressed. The expansion that I purchased is called Rise Of The Demons. I believe that it contains some nasty tricks that you can play on your opponents but I will find that out for sure when I play it tonight.


I also had pretty much decided to purchase a new set of roleplaying books from which to run a game for my Monday Night RPG group. But more on that later.

While waiting for my friend to turn up, I decided to go into a seminar in which Steve Jackson (the English one) and Ian Livingstone were to speak.
Here's a pic of them.
They spoke a little about the beginnings of Games Workshop and about their series of Fighting Fantasy books which have been re-released, some even as smartphone and tablet apps.


After the seminar, i found my friend playing a demo of a card game called Lords Of War. His conclusion was that it was good but not something that he would play very often. The people promoting the game though were incredibly nice and personable...and they gave me a lollypop!


While waiting for my friend to finish his game, I did indeed by a new load of roleplaying books. I had told myself that, this year, I would not be buying any as I didn't think that I would be in the right state of mind to run a game for my group in the upcoming months. What got me though was the artwork in the following picture.
Some of you might recognise it as the cover to Titan. It is the world sourcebook for the Fighting Fantasy roleplaying system. I also purchased the core rulebook, Out Of The Pit (the monster guide) and the players handbook. The above picture took me back to the end of the 80's when I was just discovering roleplaying. My school library had a copy of Titan and all the kids thought it was cool but really had no clue as to the wonderous hours of fun it could help to provide. It was really this picture that sold the game to me on Saturday. The system is probably the simplest I've ever come across in my years of roleplaying which is great as it won't tax my already befuddled mind too much. I hope to begin running a campaign for my group in the first quarter of next year. Last year at Dragomeet (again when I'd told myself that I wouldn't be buying or running any new games) I ended up purchasing Atomic Highway and it's companion book Irradiated Freaks, a post apocalyptic adventure, again with pretty simple rules and chocked full of mutants. I ran a five-month campaign of that. after which the story was carried on by the friend who, this year, had come with me to the convention.

After a brief lunch, my friend and I took part in a session of Albion. This RPG is set in a post-apocalyptic Britain after sea levels have risen and a mysterious and impenetrable wall of mist surrounds the islands. In Albion, magic has returned and technology (all of which has to be licensed by the ruling druidic councils) has all but disappeared, the height being the steam engine. It has a very elegant and intuitive system. The games creator even popped his head in to see how we were doing. Dragonmeet always attracts top creators from the RPG world.

Dragonmeet will be on again next year, I beleive in the same location. The date set for it is the 7th of December. If you like roleplaying and are fairly local, why not check it out.


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