With Sandy Petersen as one of our guests of honour, the convention
featured strongly on Cthuhlhu and things man is not meant to know, and
this seems to have had some backlashes:
The convention - and several participants - suffered badly from the
traffic jams (and even more curious travel sabotage). Travel times
increased by two to four hours for those unlucky to get in a jam, like
the Reaching Moon Megacorp van or the referees for "Lady in Grey".
Even in face of these difficulties, Fabian and his crew of organizers ran a smooth job getting things organized.
Glorantha the Game or Hero Wars was presented in its current playtest
form (i.e. like on the LA convention). The system I was shown was very
rules light (character creation: write up to 100 words to describe your
character, and then derive your abilities using templates). The ability
resolution procedure with action points and abilities probably needs
some thinking, basically it is roll D20 at least as high as your ability
score to determine success. (Which makes an unpleasant change from RQ's
"low is good" mechanic...) In case of opposed rolls, each participant
gets a number of action points (25 minus ability score) which he can
gamble on the outcome of a roll. Once an opponent's action points are
used up the outcome of the situation is determined in favour of one or
the other participants. What confused me was that one could gamble more
action points than one had...
One thing I liked, which was presented by Nick as part of his Cultural Exchange (following the discussion of who dictates Lunar policy, and how that dictate looks like) was the "ten questions to determine the nature of your clan" system which provides background information on your clan which helps to integrate your PCs. The fun thing is that the clan background is based on group decisions.
Freeforms:
I'm only qualified to tell about Heroes of Wisdom (which I co-refereed).
The re-run of Heroes of Wisdom had a quite different outcome than the
first run in Berlin, 1995. This time the leader of the delegation was a
lot more aggressive in the pursuit of his (enhanced) goals, and then
took the quick way out. Scores: Orlanthi 1, Spoken Word 1, Lunar
occupation forces 0.2 (thanks to personal effort of the commander, else
0). One of the most impressing situations was when the Lunar commander
told the (leaderless) Char-Un to stop pillaging the city, and they
obeyed.
"Send in more Char-un, the ones I got are split." (The Lunar commander
after the greater part of the Char-Un militia had been impaled in good
DHan fashion.)
Panels:
We learned about Glorantha's most interesting animals (the nautiloids)
and Gloranthan geology, more dark facts from the recent history of Sun
County, a few secrets of Glorantha, publishing schedules, the new game
system (see above), computer games, etc.
New publications:
Only a week after Gloranthacon in LA, we managed to get out only one new publication: "Ye Booke of Tentacle", 112 pages of seminar transcripts and new material, featuring among others Sandy's sorcery rules in print (31 pages), a description of a salt mine in Sun Dome Prax by MOB, The City of Wonders by Simon Bray, Orlanthi myths by Greg Stafford, and a couple of Cthulhu- and Nephilim-articles. The seminar transcripts have lore auctions with miscellaneous stuff, a presentation of the Lismelder campaign (might be a sneak review of Tales 18), and Nick Brookes cultural exchange on Malkionism.
Reaching Moon Megacorp offered a collection of photocopies of Tales 1-4 and 6 in one ring binder. (They also promised to let the best material of Tales 1-9 run into a "Best of Tales" booklet.)
Tradetalk 4 has not yet been printed, but I had a chance to look at the masters. Watch out for dazzling artwork and lots of Holy Country material, e.g. Simon Bray's take on the Rightarm Islands to compliment Tales 17.
For those of you who understand German: A new issue of Schattenklinge is out. It has a description of the Ralian country of Uron along with it's own Malkioni heresy - the Church of the Right Hand and Left Hand of the Invisible God (by Andre Jarosch), descriptions of the Serpent People and the Yithians for Cthulhu (by Shannon Appel), a scenario for Elric! (by Simon Lee) plus a NPC (By 'Jerry' Kraemer), and part 3 of the Strange Broo (by Jim Chapin). While most of the contents have been published in English before, 12 pages of Uron is well worth a look - visit while it still stands!
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