My plane flight home - 30 hours wedged into a tiny seat next to broad-shouldered strangers and fed stuff that could only be described as food because it came with a knife, fork and condiments - was nevertheless worth it, because Convulsion 96 was a blast! I had enormously good fun, drank way too much cider (again), caught up with lots of people from last time and made new friends too. While the traditional English breakfasts lacked Convulsion 94's black pud and fried bread (which I discovered to my digust was actually bread that had been fried), the con location in Liecester was great, with a friendly bar, an omnipresent pizza man and lots of lawn space to sit and drink into the night on.
Here's a few of my personal highlights:
HeroQuest Party
Literally 20 minutes before it's due to kick off, David Hall tells Sandy
Greg and I that we are each to orchestrate a HeroQuest performance piece
in 6 parts with audience participation! No wonder my group decided to end
ours with the ritual castration of David Hall! Amazingly perhaps, this
event was a hit, with three different Quests - Greg's Orlanthi, full of
mythic resonance; Sandy's Praxians, a rollicking action adventure; and my
Sun Domers, low-brow farce ("Carry-On up the Cradle", it was subtitled)
with the Curse of Rampant Tranvestitism once again rearing its ugly head in
Sun County.
This was capped off by the Convulsion Committee's own HQ, an insidious piece of Lunar propaganda involving a spray-painted Red Baby and a Lunarised rendition of 'Away in a Manger' that won converts from all parties. In all, three hours of Lunacy, and a great laugh. God knows what the serious-minded Christian Contemplators at their convention next door thought of it all though...
Sing-a-long-a-Nick
Taking us through renditions from his forthcoming album 'How I Achieved
Illumination and Lost My Talent', this sing-along managed to mangle my vocal
chords as we sang through Nick's song-book, including such favorites as "The
Wyrm Tangled Banner", the "Imperiale", "Over the Hills and Far Away" (my
fave) and the single-most pervertedly evil piece of Lunar proganda ever
written, "And the Band Played Waltz of the Goddess". A highlight of this
event was to see a thoroughly plastered Oliver Dickinson leading us in a solo
rendition of the 'Griselda Song'.
Eat at Geos
As a judge of this event, I was amazed to find much of what was on offer
surprisingly eatable. Fortunately Rick "iron guts" Meints was the
official taster and he tried everything first. When he failed to pass out,
vomit or suffer hallucinations, Oliver and I dug in. First prize went to
some extraordinarly realistic-looking severed fingers and the Dara Happan
cocktail. This was actually a delightfully refreshing beer-softdrink
combination that the Germans who brought it gave to me afterwards. I will
be subjecting unsuspecting friends to it in the near future for sure.
Home of the Bold
HotB's fourth and probably final performance ended with a bang, in a full
scale Battle Royale on the college lawn, with two great battle lines
screaming war cries, issuing challenges and yelling bloodcurdling taunts
like in Braveheart... before hacking into each other with vicious Rock
Paper Scissors.
I was again a GM for Home of the Bold, and spent some time watching Mike Cule's bravura performance as the perpetually-harassed governor Gordius (I know how you must have felt Mike, having played an extraordinarily inept Gordius myself at RQ Con I). It was a pleasure to watch him inhabit the role: only once did the characterisation threaten to crack, when, so far in debt was the Lunar cause that he was selling his own house to pay for mercenaries, his spendthrift daughter Juliana bought herself *10* horses using *his* cheque book. After about 10 minutes of masterful roleplaying - patient, fatherly advice about how she only needed one riding horse on his side; foot-stamping petulance on hers - did Juliana (played with admirable relish by Suzanne Courteau) ambush him with her "Stamp Foot" card, which forces Daddy to give in to his little treasure's demands. Mike just buried his face in his hands, said "Oh fuck" quietly to himself, breathed deeply, and soldiered on...
I really thought the Lunars were going to win this time, at last, but when nearly 1000 crack troops raided Geos Pub when it only had three people in it and actually stopped outside because the lone barman wouldn't let them in, I guess the Lunars deserved everything they got. And just like last time, both sides hired the *same* mercenaries, who fought a long, hard battle outside the city gate in which casualties were incredibly light...
Costumes were great, with honours going to one merchant wearing what looked like a velvet-covered tractor tyre on his head. Many people took the emblematic approach (eg. rather than dress like an authentic Gloranthan, if you're a cavalry officer, come dressed like 'Sharp'; if you're a city constable, wear a bobby's hat and a baton - the idea is to instantly get across the diea of who you are).
Lunar Tunes
While this seminar was surprisingly uninformative, it was lots of laughs.
Nick and I dragged Chris Gidlow up with us, and he gave us the run-down on
the Lunar water forces - the Blue Navy, the Red Navy and the Black Navy - and
their respective spirits of reprisal: Rum, Sodomy and the Lash! We finished
with a resounding rendition of 'Men of Lolin', now relocated to Furthest.
Trollball
Uz drew with Dem, which of course led on to the Last-Troll-Standing-Takes-All
Demolition Derby to get a result. Germanic innovations included dozens of
waterbombs! As I was the Ginat Referee, many of these were lobbed in my
direction, though like Tony Curtis in the pie-fight scene of 'The Great Race'
I got through surprisingly unscathed. We also had a beautiful six-breasted
Xiola Umbar healer who doused her patients with flour, a two-headed chaos
troll that nutted itself and the biggest weapon I have come across, a 14ft
long inflatable crocodile. Loadsafun!
Storytelling
Mike Cule's story absolutely blew the audience away, not only for his
magnificent delivery, but the content (the origin of the species, no less)
and a stunning twist at the end.
A small group beforehand also got to hear *all 8* of Chris Gidlow's Seleric Verses - he was going to do just one, but so captivating they are, we eventually got Nick and himself to tell the lot. Look out for them serialised in Tales soon.
(With ferverish haste over pizza during the dinner dreak I also knocked out a sequel to "Moonson Awakens", with the appropriate working title "Moonson's Number Two". Unlike the first one, where Moonson was taking his morning leak, this one has him on the potty. High praise from Nick after its first public airing: "MOB, your story truly was shit!" Once I can figure out how to transcibe the sound effects properly, I'll post it to the Digest. Like the first one, I hope this story gives a valuable insight into the *true nature* of Moonson: I certainly got my two quid's worth at the Lore Auction researching this).
Overall, I had a sensational trip to Old Blighty, and look forward to coming back soon. Thanks to everyone who made Su and I welcome and looked after us along the way. And a hearty round of applause for the brilliant job Dave and Kev have done now that they have hung up their Convulsion spurs. Here's hoping others will rise to meet the challenge and the con will rise again in a couple of years time!
To Paul Edson, the Delurking Jonathon, and any other nascent Gloranthaphiles out there:
Yep, Glorantha can be daunting, but only because it is such a rich, interesting, *authentic*-feeling gameworld; the best there is, in my opinion.
Please don't get put off by those who (despite whinging about cliques) themselves seem to want to keep Glorantha as an exclusive little club of their own by telling you it's too damn hard to get involved.
Please also don't get put off by the pedantic, academic esoterica that occasionally flares up to dominate the Digest. Note that despite my abiding interest in things Gloranthan, at least 50% of the stuff posted here leaves me cold, and a deal more is of only passing interest.
Nick Brooke has already suggested 'Sun County' as an ideal jumping-off point for a Gloranthan campaign (V3 #71), so I won't have to blow my own trumpet.
'River of Cradles' and 'Shadows on the Borderlands' follow on nicely; 'River of Cradles' in particular is also chock full of information from 'Pavis' and 'Big Rubble', two boxed sets that are long out of print. Ifyou want to stay in the same area there's 'Strangers in Prax' - long before you finish playing through all these, the lozenge should be yours for the taking!
Please continue to ask questions - no matter how basic or dumb you might think they sound - and know that there are lots of us here on the Digest that are happy to help!
To Messers Phipp and Boatright:
I could crap on about how maybe because I'm a primary teacher, I believe that the best way to motivate a keen new learner is to encourage them rather than throw obstacles in their path, but I suspect there'd be dry-retching at a thousand computer terminals across the planet.
Anyway, as Simon explains, his post was just badly placed sarcasm. In fact, his ideas to help newcomers suggest that he's just as keen as many of us to welcome them into the fold, even though he will spend many years in prison for copyright theft if he goes ahead. (Your Megacorp 'clique pique' is off-beam though.)
D. Boatright in V3 #71:
>BTW Joerg you are still the one of the sadest people out there. Imagine
>knowing the names of the mermen types of both species. Of course Peter
>Metcalfe could probably give us a multi page discussion on the mythic
>nature of teh scales on a mermans butt. Now that is sad.
Dacid (sic), I sometimes wonder what you are doing subscribing to this list, given that your contributions lately seem to be limited to calling established contributors wankers and sad gits, telling keen newbies they might as well fuck off, and pushing the English language to the very bounds of coherence.
Mr Phipp claims that we can attribute such outbursts and your spelling (which has an almost poetic grandeur) to "overimbibing"; all I can say is, Down Here our drink-driving campaign has the slogan "If you Drink and Drive, You're a Bloody Idiot". Think about this next time you sit down at the console.*
*Please note that the most deranged of my posts during the Onslaught Saga was concocted in such an alcoholic fugg, so I know at my peril what I'm on about.
Cheers
MOB
End of Glorantha Digest V3 #74
WWW material at http://hops.wharton.upenn.edu/~loren/rolegame.html
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