Darran Sims

0 Conception X. Naish Holiday Village, Highcliffe, Christchurch, Dorset, UK.
Wednesday 28th January - Sunday 1st February 2009.
http://www.conceptionuk.org/

Conception is a fantastic convention. I go to it to run some games and relax with my family, something I can’t do at other conventions as I am more often than not far too busy.

This time I took my granddaughter Trinity along with my wife, Jenny and my brother, Russell.

We set off from Derby in the early hours on the train – a quick change at Birmingham and then a very pleasant three-hour train journey down to Brockenhurst for a nippy local train to New Milton. There was a thick fog and travelling through that landscape was a touch eerie. The fog did seem to flatten the view and hide much of what was out there.
At New Milton we saw several people that were obviously going to the con but several of them got in separate taxis instead of sharing them – weird?
Our Taxi driver remarked on our destination as “You going to that strange war-game event then? You are the sixth lot I taken there already.”


The lodges of the Hobourne holiday camp.

( Read more under the cut... )

There are more photographs on my Flickr site here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/darran/sets/72157613359568111/

What another great convention!
It seems so short but sweet.
For the first time in a few years I didn't run two games back to back only running a single game in the morning slot only.
I spent most of the afternoon attending the seminars or catching up too briefly with people.

It was an early start with catching the 05:00 AM train to London but I was able to get to Kensington Town Hall without getting swamped in the crowds. Most of the traders got to the venue early so it didn't take long to get them all loaded into the main hall. Pushing a few trollies in and out is one of my ways of giving back to the con. Also stuffing the Goodie Bags with the programme books and other goodies was a big help.


The Main Trade Hall

I then set up my table, located on the upper floor in a little sealed off area, ready for my game. The sign-up sheet was filled in very fast as soon as the doors opened!

I ran the latest episode in my Serenity: HeroQuest saga titled 'Rocks and Hard Places'
It was the first time I had ran this episode and I hadn't really finalised the plot. I was hoping that the players themselves would direct where and when the action would take place as I would follow their lead more.
I started the game in Deadwood, just as in the HBO series of the same name as I think it would fit in the 'verse no problem. Channelling Al Swearengen proved to be a problem, possibly due to the early morning, and the start of the game floundered a bit. Also I did expect there to be a shoot-out in deadwood but the players [with one notable exception] seemed to want to avoid any violence at any cost.
There was a lot of role-playing in character which over-ran a little so I had to rush the ending a little. The addition plot points and distractions worked well with the players getting paranoid over the conspiracies. All the players were very surprised by the big reveal and manufactured their own surprise ending involving the whole crew leaving Johner behind to have a shootout with all the Feds at his insistence.
I did record this game so expect it soon to be podcast on One Man and His Dice.com.

I spent the afternoon attending the seminars.
I walked into John Wick's Seminar halfway through so I was unable to record that one. Very interesting and it seems I share similar GM style and theories. I will have to look up his 'Houses of the Blooded' as only then was it explained to me what it was about despite asking on a few forums.


John Wick

I then spent the next half hour wandering about the whole complex taking photos of the gaming groups. There were some fantastic looking games. The Phoenix Games club had a great looking Dungeon game in action, the Shadow Warriors had a Great War biplane battle game that just simply gorgeous, there was a very detailed Camelot diorama, a BattleStar Galactica board game that looked cool, and many more excellent models and games.

I then went to the Robin Laws and Kenneth Hite seminar that I did manage to record. It didn't have an overall theme, just an open Question & Answer session and didn't suffer for it. Some excellent questions were answered and there was some great discussion that was very interesting.


Robin Laws and Kenneth Hite

That was followed by a Guest of Honour free-for-all seminar. At first there was only Robin Laws and John Wick but then Kenneth Hite and James Wallis each joined later.
A great seminar that by accident seemed to focus on the fantastic work of Greg Stafford.
We also learnt how each guest started off into this hobby of ours with some funny results.
Again I managed to record this and it will be podcast on One Man and His Dice.com.


Kenneth Hite, Robin Laws, John Wick and James Wallis

So a very good convention where I got to catch up with a few people though unfortunately far too briefly and run a good game. I do have a few recordings that I hope to get up over the next couple of weeks.

More photos at:
Dragonmeet 2008 photo set on my Flickr Site

Continuum 2008 report and appreciation.

Just a report on the convention for those that didn’t get a chance to go and an expression of gratitude for those that contributed and made it possible. It is a repeat of what was said at the closing ceremony as many people were still gaming or socialising during it and generally having fun.

On behalf of the Continuum 2008 committee [as well as my own personal gratitude] we would just like to thank you all for such an excellent event. With you all it would be nothing.
Just seeing friends, old and new, just having a great time has been fantastic!
Everyone made that extra effort to enjoy themselves and spread that delight with others. It was starting to get contagious!


First off we would like to thank those attendees that had issues with the accommodation, the venue itself or the services we provided for their patience in those matters.
We hope that we managed to sort them out to your satisfaction. If not all I can do is humbly apologise and endeavour to make our next Continuum a better experience for you all.
The room allocations were partly our fault as we relied on the University of Leicester Conference Management to do most of the work on that and unfortunately things were missed. Fortunately the on-site staff worked really hard to help sort the issues out for us and I hope that we were able to get you where you wanted to be.
Next time we’ll work on the room allocations ourselves and get those groups of you who want to be together into accommodation together.

The other thing is that all the room keys were handed in at the end of the convention; this is a first as at previous conventions several keys have been taken home by mistake. I even did it myself last time!

In all we had 226 pre-show bookings and an additional walk up of over thirty unique day tickets. Several of the walk ups had come in off the street without knowing the event was on before hand.
We also had quite a few people new to role playing as well, not just RPG conventions.
So we probably had our largest attendance of the Continuum conventions and getting close to the golden age of the Convulsion conventions as well.
We hope that all the attendees had fun at the convention and they will over-look our short-falls. Without you all there wouldn’t be a convention.

I would like to thank you all for spreading the word about Continuum as word of mouth is what gets people through the door. So to those of you that have helped promote Continuum by talking about it on on-line lists, forums or face-to-face pat yourselves on the back and continue to talk about your experiences at the convention to all you know.

We had seven freeform games running over the course of the weekend with one of them running twice. I saw some pretty excellent costumes and all the players took great efforts to get into character. The model this time was smaller number of players in more games avoiding the large epic 70+ player games that can draw many of the convention’s attendees away from the main site at once. The smaller games also give the opportunity of a more intense role-play experience.
At this point we would like to thank Graham Robinson for stepping in at the last minute to sort out on-line freeform signing-up forms and questionnaires. It was a god send and a very workable system. His work in casting Sandy’s Freeform games is also appreciated and his assistance throughout the event was exceptional.
We would also like to thank all the Freeform writers and GMs for all their hard work they have put into their games and our event. I hope they and their players had great fun and enjoyed themselves. My regret is that I didn’t get to take photographs of all the great costumes and the characters portrayed of every game.
So big thanks goes to all the Freeform GMs Sue Lee, Martin Jones, Tony Mitton, Graham Robinson, Claire Steyert, Guy Jobbins, Tim Ellis, Sandy Petersen, Jeff Richard, Claudia Loroff, and Eini Einsporn. Addtional help also came from Graham Arnold, Nickey Barnard, Alison Rider-Hill, Mik Reed, AJ Smith, and Mike Snowden.
Sterling work!

We had approximately 85 tabletop games ran over the course of the weekend with several more delegate organised games being ran in any available space at any one time.
What was good to see was more delegate organised games, card games, board games, miniature or wargames being played in the main dining hall or around the venue.
So we would like to thank all the GMs that ran any kind of game at the convention.
It is surprising that we had just as many games as at previous cons but the demand this time was higher.
This is one area we’ll be seeking to improve for 2010. Quite simply we need to encourage more GMs to run more games at our convention. We do have some ideas how to work on that and some of the constructive feedback we’re getting is also going to help.
So without further ado I would like to thank the following GMs [not this is NOT a complete list, many more GMs ran games on the day and are worthy of more praise!]:
Newt Newport for running his D101 games all weekend, Evilgaz for his games plus his stint running a panel discussion [shy thing having to talk to all those people!], Steff Worthington, John Ossoway, Alex Helm, Keary Birch, Paul Fricker, Tim Bancroft, Marcus Rowland, Nathan Baron, Scott Dorwood, Neil Ford, Dom Mooney, Matt Harrison, Steve Dempsey, Malco Jones, Bazz Stevens, Declan Feeney, Simon Phipp, Alan Bligh, Ian Cooper, Graham Robinson, Sacha Ratcliffe, Elaine McCourt, Murgh Bpurn, SexyLemur, and all the committee members, gophers and Guests of Honour that ran games also. No doubt there are many more people I have missed off this list.

We also had a very good programme of seminars and panels this year and most were very well attended. As most panels were ran by the Guests of Honour or Committee members thanks for them appears later. A special thanks goes to Stuart Mousir-Harrison AKA Dr Moose for continuing his Role-playing and Religion seminar that had great applause at Continuum 2006. Evilgaz and Mike Mason ran a very informative seminar on ‘How to be a Good Convention Role Player’ that was very well received by an interested audience. Also to Graham Robinson for such a fine Pub Quiz ran in difficult situations in a very noisy bar! I would also like to thank David Scott for introducing many of the panels and being along side to assist.
Many of the panels worked very well as the audience members asked very interesting and challenging questions of the panellists. This evoked some fine responses from the panellists and made for a better seminar in all.

We would also like to thank Jon Hodgson, a very talented artist, for his very fine donation of his artwork for the cover of the Continuum 2008 Programme Book. A fantastic piece of art work that added greatly to the programme book and the convention as a whole. Snippets of the picture were also used on the name badges as well on the gopher and mentor badges.
Jon Hodgson is also doing the cover of the new HeroQuest edition and the same main character in the programme book cover appears in that picture as well, giving us a very strong link to that.

We also had some excellent contributors for the Continuum 2008 Programme Book, so many in fact that I had to increase the page count to a hundred pages!
With such a great choice and high standard it was a real personal pleasure to lay out and get produced.
So we would like to thank the following people who sent me some great articles and artwork for inclusion in the Programme Book:
Evilgaz for allowing me to use his role-playing article and to do some of my wacky cartoons to accompany it, Mike Mason for his tremendous Tarot game, Jonny Gray for his outstanding artwork, Stuart Mousir-Harrison for his HeroQuest setting, Mike Grace for his scenario and article, Mark Galeotti, with able assistance from Simon Phipp, for his first-rate Mythic Russia piece, Mokkurkalf for his inspiring artwork and Yog-Sothoth cartoons, Andrew Peregrine for his wonderful Qin cameo and the work on the Victoriana wands with Adrian Bott, Gavin Newton for his artwork for the Victoriana article, Jane Williams for her admirable stories, Len Simpson for sharing his excellent D&D setting, Grégory Privat for his insight into the Lunar Army, Graham Robinson for his superb stories and for sending me plenty to give me a choice, Claire Steyert for her beautiful story, C.S. Barnhart for his impressive scenario with stunning artwork from Robert Schoolcraft, Matt Coote for his divine Earthdawn write-up, and to all the GMs, traders and Guests of Honour who contributed all the extra information that helped make the Programme Book such a useful item.

Speaking of books, it seems that Continuum is turning into a publishing house as well. We had not one but three special products on sale as fund risers for the convention.
First we had ‘Liber Newtus’, a collection of HeroQuest and Glorantha scenarios kindly donated by Newt Newtport. The layout was done by Tim Vincent and Mike Mason with artwork by Simon Bray.
The second book was the ‘Shreds Of Light And Reason’ or SOLAR Book that had donated articles by Greg Stafford, Jeff Richard and Lawrence Whitaker, artwork by Mike O’Conner and Simon Bray and the layout by Simon Bray.
We also had the boardgame ‘Trollball: This is Not a Fair Game’ on sale as well. By Grégory Privat with some excellent illustrations by Rolland Barthelemy this game is based on Trollball as appeared in the RuneQuest Supplement Trollpack. We even had two extra teams done especially for Continuum, one of the committee and one of the Guests of Honour.

We had a large Continuum Stall this time around, not only filled with the Continuum fund riser books and Continuum polo shirts but a wide variety of stock from Chaosium, Moon Designs, Greg Stafford’s Pendragon, Unspoken Word and the Bring & Buy stall as well. The Bring & Buy went very well with very little unsold stock left – many people bagged themselves a bargain! So thanks to all that brought items to sell and made it a success it was.
It was very busy with plenty of people purchasing some of the fantastic items we had on sale. The stall was staffed by the committee, gophers [Russell Sims and Dave Williams doing fine work!], and a few of the Guests of Honour.

We had a ‘proper’ trade hall this time that looked very impressive. We had Reaper’s Revenge – Dice and game seller extraordinaire, Pagan Angel – custom jewellery stall, Mongoose Publishing selling their own first-rate products, and Sceaptune Games selling their marvellous merchandise.
It is unfortunate that Leisure Games were unable to attend as advertised as they had spread themselves too thin with other commitments and had to drop out at the last minute.
Also we missed the presence of Tradetalk, the suppliers of Gloranthan books and fanzines. Unfortunately real life got in the way to prevent Ingo and Andre attending. They were missed but hopefully they will be back in 2010!

Thanks goes to all those of you that attended, bid and sold items in the auction. A special thank you to all that donated special items to sell that raised money for the convention.
We would like to thank the auctioneers Rick Meints and Mike Mason, ably assisted by young Harry Whitaker, for such a good show and to Eini Einsporn for keeping such excellent records and accounts for us!

There are a few special touches that some of our attendees do to make the event more distinctive and personal to us.
First off we would like to thank Maddie Eid and Jane Williams for all their hard work preparing and displaying the gastronomic and culinary delights of the ‘Eat At Geos’ buffet as part of the Hearts in Glorantha launch party. Assisted by Paul King and Dave Williams they all managed to excel themselves with such a fine display.
We would also like to thank Nick, Gemma and Brisen Davidson for including us all in Brisen’s third birthday celebrations. It was a delight to see Brisen running around [though tiring just watching –where does she get all that energy?], enjoying herself and having fun.
We would also like to show our appreciation for Claudia Loroff and Jeff Richard for including us in their Honeymoon celebrations and for bringing along such a wonderful free game for us to play. Such a fantastic turn out with costumes and some excellent characters. I would also like to thank them personally for being such great house guests and allowing me and my wife to show them a little bit of Derby and sharing a relaxing evening before the convention. Thanks!

While a lot of games are often just books, bits of paper and our imaginations Grégory Privat brought such a wonderful visual display and game called ‘Race Around the Block’. With such excellent craftsmanship and lovingly put together, we couldn’t think of a better centre piece than that game. We hope you can share with us your next game that you are planning to build - the secret plans we have sneaked at look at make it look extraordinary.

Important to us during the lead up to the actual convention is the main website. Darren Driver did a fantastic job in getting us a working website. As an added bonus it just looked so stunning and spectacular with the different ages of buildings across the bottom and the glowing red eye of the Continuum Dragon. Genius!
He even managed to get the pictures of the committee looking good – a heroic feat in itself!

We would like to thank Tom Zunder for hosting our Continuum forum on the Gaming Tavern [http://www.gamingtavern.eu], this is invaluable to us for keeping in touch with the membership of Continuum before and after the event.
Also we would like to thank Dave McAlister of UK Role Players forum [http://www.ukroleplayers.com/]for allowing us to have a Continuum section on his site as well.
We would also thank all the forum and list owners and moderators for allowing us to ‘spam’ their sites with news and details about Continuum and for their patience with us in this matter.
A special thank you goes to Paul McClean and his team of moderators on Yog Sothoth [http://yog-sothoth.com/] as we did seem to take over the convention section there.

I would like to pass on all our gratitude to all the University of Leicester staff including the reception and admin site staff, technicians, porters, cleaners, catering staff, bar staff and the Conference management.

Our biggest thanks must go out to all the gophers who worked so hard setting up before the event and over the whole weekend. Without them we just wouldn’t have been able to operate at all.
So our eternal gratitude goes to Pete Nash, Dave Williams, Dave Ives, Eini Einsporn and Russell Sims. Russell also printed all the Con Books and the Trollball game for us, working late into the night. We just hope that you all have recovered by now!

We have had quite a few new members at this year’s Continuum and it is very important to include them to our fold. To those that have done such wonderful work in welcoming the new members to the convention and showing them the ropes we salute you all; especially Tressy Arts, David Scott, Lewis Jardine and Nick Brooke.

One of the big draws of Continuum are the Guests of Honour and all have done such sterling work over the whole weekend. All were approachable and amiable to the Continuum membership. They worked hard running games, attending seminars, doing special events, running stalls, and adding that star quality to the whole convention. Their generosity, not only of their time, expertise and effort but also for their gifts as fund-raisers to the convention is very much appreciated.
On a personal note they made the whole convention a far better experience for me and the rest of the committee. Such excellent companions during the set-up and during the event run. Key to us is that all the Guests of Honour had fun as well and enjoyed their time here with us.
Angus Abranson of Cubicle 7 Entertainment Ltd
Charlie Krank of Chaosium
Greg Stafford the Creator of Glorantha
Jeff Richards Guild of Calamitous Intent
Mark Galeotti of Firebird Publications
Matt Sprange of Mongoose Publication
Rick Meints of Moon Design Publications
Sandy Petersen the Creator of Call of Cthulhu

I would also like to thank the rest of the committee for putting up with me and my momentary lapses of concentration. I am happy to call you all dear friends.
Lawrence Whitaker for being such a force of nature yet an impartial Chairman. Without you this event would never be the success it is.
Graham Spearing for you total devotion to games, games and more games – you are definitely one of the gang!
Mike Mason for your utter commitment to the hobby and for keeping me on a level kneel. Your sense of humour and your wiliness to get down into the thick of it is astounding.
Colin Driver your work on the programme has been exemplary.
Simon Bray your continued support and your boundless energy have helped us all through the roughest of patches. You have shown extreme self control in the most trying of times and it is appreciated.


So finally to the past committee members of Continuum and Convulsions past we salute you all. We are standing on the shoulders of giants.

Here’s to Continuum 2010 – the 10th RPG Convention at Leicester!

Tentacles Untapped 2007 Con Report.

0 Tentacles Untapped. Castle Stahleck, Bacharach, Germany.

Friday 25th - Monday 28th May 2007.
http://www.tentacles-convention.de/

Well I had a complete blast!

What a fantastic con. And the usual problems that have plagued this con in the past [things not under the control of the convention organisers] have been resolved.

All the guests were approachable and very talkative, the freeforms just looked amazing with almost every player being in costume, and all the games I ran had international players of very high standard.

The Friday went well and did seem to start earlier with the Opening Ceremony going well. The Moon Design Seminar was good, Rick Meints and Simon Bray explained about the new products and about the completed manuscripts they have lined up. Authors Greg Stafford and Jeff Richards also added further insight.



There was plenty of new product released at Tentacles, ‘Blood over Gold’ the 154 page trader princes campaign book, ‘Champions of the Reaching Moon’ the Lunar Hero/Hero Band book and ‘History of the Heortling Peoples’ one of the Stafford Library unfinished works. All look fantastic and it is good to know that Rick will stick to doing the larger page counts rather than splitting books down that has been done in the past.
Interesting to hear that they have a number more books in the pipeline, an Elf Book, a Prax pack, two books about the West, the Great Argrath Campaign by Greg Stafford, and of course the new setting-less HeroQuest core rule book.Though there are plenty of works ready to come out there was a call for more.
Any idea will be considered though there will be a contract issued with deadlines and a project leader will be required – any interest contact Mark Galeotti.

The rest of the evening was more of a social gathering, drinking beer and chatting with friends new and old. Also had a good talk with the 'Smart Party', a group of players from Nottingham who were Tentacles Virgins though regular convention goers. We even played the pub quiz as one of the teams and didn't do too badly considering the other teams had the creators and writers of the games we were being asked questions on!



All day Saturday I ran my Serenity:HeroQuest games for 12 hours and had a good time. The first game was with the Smart Party and a couple of others joined in as well. A very good game though I did have problems putting on the blue rubber glove under the table, which spoiled the surprise some what. The players managed to get me in a fit of giggles at one point. I was annoyed with myself that I didn’t take a photograph of the group though.
The second game was also a hoot with the players really got into the characters and hammed it up a little even though some did not know the setting that well. All the players were surprised by the big reveal at the end.



The last game ended up being a player verses player as the player of Johner accepted the bride and turned on the rest of the team. All the players were up for this, all played like they weren't expecting the double cross and we did run with it; putting us all on the spot as I had to make it up as we went along.



One thing I do love about running games at Tentacles are the international players. I had English, German, Dutch, French and American players in my games and was a nice mix to have. I am just sorry they had to struggle with my Derby mumble.

On the Sunday there was a little mix up with where the group photo would be taken due to the rain. The tried to fit everyone into the main hall but due to sheer numbers they wouldn’t all fit in! Luckily the rain had stopped in time for us all to file out and get into position. I wore my silly Jayne hat that is bright orange so that I would be stopped easily. The mess about with the group photo delayed the set up for the freeform so that ended up starting a little later than hoped.

The Serenity/Firefly freeform 'You Can't Take the Sky from Me!' that I helped to write and run went very well. I was very nervous as this was the first freeform/Larp I had run and GMed and I wasn't sure if it would go well. Once we started the game none of the GMs were need for about the first hour; all the players just carried on playing and staying in character, getting twisted deeper and deeper into their plots. So good to see.
I think part of the reason it went well was the support of Simon, Colin Driver and Bazz Hoftijzer as the GMs and the quality of the players.
I think I will do another again now that I have caught the bug!







Sunday ended with sitting in the auction and the closing ceremony where I had won a prize [and a cool tentacles badge] for running games. It is good to have a convention that rewards the GMs.
I did witness the ‘Daughters of Darkness’ book burning that I am always in two minds about though it was funny to see Daniel Fahey spill a drop of his drink on the burning ashes to see them explodes in a great gout of flame! 



 

So the highlights were winning a set of duck miniatures on the tombola, being declared having the loudest snore, getting excellent players in all my games, laughing so much over the whole weekend and meeting old friends and making new ones. The lowlights were being declared having the loudest snore, going up and down the stairs of the castle and the fact that the weekend is over.

So special thanks to Fabian and all his team for organising such a fantastic convention. I do appreciate all the hard work that goes into running a convention from my experience with Continuum and Furnace but I do not think that I could do it each year!





Cheers and here’s to Tentacles 2008, Friday 9th to Monday 12th May 2008.

To see photos of this year’s Tentacles go to my Flickr Photos:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/darran/

Tentacles Untapped photos:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/darran/sets/72157600285540891/

Nick's Tentacles Untapped Photos:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/23016277@N00/