Hi folks,
As you know Darran, Newt, and I have spent Easter at Gencon Uk,
demoing Heroquest.
Four days of drink, sleep deprevation, drink, eating, drink, bargain
hunting, drink,
oh and a bit demoing as well. It was excellent, and i particularly
want to thank
Newt and Eurolog for organising everything so all Darran and I had to
do was turn up,
Darran for continuing to ply me with alcohol when my meagre cash ran
out. I'd thank
one of the players too, who supplied me with tinnies one evening when
i was not playing
in any games, unfortunately he supplied so many i've forgot his name.
The hotel was good, nice large rooms, colour TV, en suite bathroom,
breakfast in bed.
A bit of a change from the student digs at Leicester. Its only
drawback was Darran's
snoring, I never realised he'd swallowed a bullroarer. It was a twenty
minute walk from
the hotel to get to Olympia, fortunately it didn't rain too much so
wasnt a problem.
The event venue was Olympia 2. This is a large conference hall
somewhere in London (not
exactly sure where, but it was easy to get to on the underground). It
consisted of flour
floors, the basement and ground levels being taken up by CCG
competitions and networked
computer gamimg. The 2nd floor held the trade stands, and the 3rd
floor held the role
playing events.
I spent most of my time on this floor (or in the pub), but we did go
on a scouting
mission around the trade stands to see what Hero Wars and RQ goodies
we could pick up.
We saw quite a few of the old boxed sets, but their prices were
extortionate,
Borderlands was £80, Gateway Bestiary and Foes were £25 each. The one
true bargain
was the Thieves World boxed set and Companion which was initially £25,
but on the last
day Darran got it half price, a mere £12 for a very good city
supplement.
As to the gaming, each of us were scheduled to run 8 sessions,
unfortunately a
mix up by the Gen Con organisers meant that a few of the games didn't
take place
(because they didnt give out any tickets for the sessions in
question). so half the
events didn't happen.
Its a pity because those that did take place were pretty well
attended. Each game had
at least 5 players (where the numbers were small Darran and I filled
in the spaces to
make a full group). The players were mostly made up of people of had
bought Hero Wars
but not got their heads around the rules, old RQ2/3 players who had
heard of Hero
Wars and wanted to try it out, or those who were completely new to the
system and
the game world. We had no active Hero Wars players, but these were
never our intended
target anyway
I ran 'A Hanging and Hunting' and 'Destors Fort', episodes from our
campaign.
I've been gamemastering/narrating in glorantha for twenty years plus,
but this is the
first time i've tried demoing gloranthan games to strangers. So i was
a bit nervous as
to what style of game to play and how Gloranthan to make the games.
To get the gloranthan feel I placed the micro myths on each hero
sheet, for the players
to use or ignore as they wished. These included cut down versions of
those in the yahoo
group files section. I didnt tell them they were important, in fact i
didnt even mention them
i just gave them plenty of time to read the sheet before we began
play. Then as they
went through the story the events occurred similar to the myths, they
could use
them as hints. It was incredible that when they got to part of the
story where their
myth or ritual was useful they all got it. There eyes shone and they
were 'illuminated', more
was going on than i was actually saying and they then used the myth or
ritual to develop the
story themselves. They even found places to use the myths I hadn't
thought of, which
to my mind was brilliant.
AFAIK everyone enjoyed themselves, I certainly did. Importantly, We
all made the
players comfortable. They laughed, fought, and looked on in horror at
the appropriate
moments. It was interesting to see how the story changed with
different players. In one
session of Destors Fort Filbar criticalled his feeling in crack roll
and pulled out
Palashee's Longaxe instead of Jaram's Staff. They then opened the fort
and returned
to the village where Hendrakos the king said "That's my father's
staff, It can only
be wielded by the king, give it to me". Filbar replied "Hold on i'm
weilding it, that means
I'm the king" and promptly started to regale the onlookers with why
they should choose him.
The feedback i got was totally positive. I thought the magic system
might be difficult
to get across, but after I described what happened when a player cast
the first magic spell,
they were off and running, each making up effects from those listed
for their character.
I've got to say it was a buzz to see the eyes of players unfamiliar
with the system, suddenly
light up when they realised how simple and how powerful the system is.
It made my day and i think it made their day too, to paraphrase one of
the players.
"Wow. I've been trying to understand the rules for months, and you've
made them
understandable in two minutes". This was a bit of an ego trip and
bodes well for the release
of Heroquest, where the rules are far clearer.
We even had one ardent RQ2er, who regaled the group with the sad story
of Glorantha's
fall from grace via RQ3 and Hero Wars, and how crap these later games
were. It looked
like he was going to be a thorn in the side of a decent game, but by
the end of the
game he was the most enthusiactic among them. He even came back to
join in a second session
All those that spoke to me afterwards said that they like the system
and were
going buy Heroquest in June. Good news me thinks. Thus my overall
feeling is that
the hero wars sessions were a great success. Would I do it again? You
bet!
Hopefully, by the time of the next major con, and if Newt's plans come
together we'll have
more narrators and more sessions to inspire even more newbies to the
ways of Glorantha and
Hero Quest.
Cheers,
Mick
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