WRT Saturday afternoon to Monday morning being too short: Nick did not
mention (or know) the fact that there was a "reception" in a pub in
Berlin the night before. Also, usually a number of our participants
will be happy to have guests before and after the con, just to prolong
the interaction.
Next year the con probably will start Saturday morning, with informal
gaming and talking the night before on the location (a castle in the
Rhine valley just north of Frankfurt).
Beer _is_ considered basic foodstuff in Germany, and may be bought by 16-year-olds. I've been to youth hostels where the hosts sold it themselves...
I was the co-author of the freeform game, and terribly behind my schedule. We did not re-invent the wheel and asked Reaching Moon Megacorp nicely for the well-tested rules stuff they had written for Home of the Bold and HtWW1, which we used nearly unchanged. Thanks again!
Apart from being way too late (I spent half the con doing the characters' skills etc, largely because the main author, Ingo Tschinke, was the one familiar with the setting and the characters' interactions, and I wasn't), we made some other organisational blunders. Most can be excused by our lac of experience, I hope. We will see - next year we're going to do a freeform set in Ralios. The castle serving as con location will be magically transported into Glorantha, I suppose.
The game being bilingual, we had a German and an English verson of the
background material. Since the orignal had been written in German
(being excerpts from Ingo's Jonstown RQ project) all characters had
German nicknames, partly translated from existing sources, mostly new
ones. For the English version of the accompanying background booklet I
used the English names, though - with the result that the characters
were called now Ranulf Grimblade (in all English language
descriptions), now Ranulf Schreckensklinge. However, I had no choice,
since the booklet is intended to be sold also to non-partcipants (yes,
this is a blatant plug). I'll annouce it when it has gone out to our
contacts in your respective countries - continental Europe will be
handled by Ingo and myself.
I just have to convince my desk-printer to produce decent masters, and then the booklet will be available in a couple of weeks. It contains a street map and an overview over Lunar occupied Jonstown, a detailed description of the Royal Sartarite National Library and Temple to Lhankor Mhy, and a history of the tribes around Jonstown. Oh, and the portraits of some of the important personages - you might recognize a few. Ingo has been in contact with Greg Stafford about his Jonstown stuff for a while, and most of the contents are if not official then at least not contrary to published material. (Some might have been published in "Best of RQA #1" which hasn't made it over the pond yet, because the original issues still are in stock.)
Back to bilingual gaming (sorry if you denizens of purely
English-speaking countries get bored): IMO this is the way to go for
organizers of RQ (or other gaming) events in continental Europe
(Sweden, Netherlands, France, Finland, anyone?) who want to invite and
integrate guests from foreign countries. Taking the existing language
barreers and involving these in the plot isn't hard at all - most
decent settings do have cultures with different languages, and maybe a
common one (Tradetalk, oops, English). If anyone is interested in
running this or a similar game on a convention within reach, let's
talk...
(What Nick said about the secret consultations right within his hearing
_can_ backfire. One of our guests from the Netherlands was a most
successful spy with his hidden proficiency in German...)
We will continue to do this kind of games, but we will need more English language events besides (the panel I know about was...).
Having scanned the digest online (which is why I don't quote:), I don't remember whether Nick mentioned the archery demonstration/participation organized by Claudia. Have you ever shot a Rubble Runner or a Krarshtkid? Quite a lot tried, and a few even hit it...
Oh, and: now the freeform is done, I'm ba-ack! <g>
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