Kalikos - the Finnish Gloranthan Association took part in Ropecon with our own board. We gave our brochures to everyone who was interested in Kalikos and Glorantha in general. More than 50 brochures were distributed. We also sold our brand-new publication: the Finnish translation of A Rough Guide to Boldhome, translated by me, and produced with a license from Issaries, Inc. Of course, there was also a lot of discussion with people who wanted to know more about Glorantha or news concerning RuneQuest or HeroQuest.
On Friday, we had a lecture named "Glorantha - WTF?", which was an introduction lecture about the special features of Glorantha. One of us told the audience about the women's roles in the Heortling and Lunar societies, and finally the audience could ask us questions about Glorantha. There were a few dozen listeners who asked us and commented the subjects very well.
One of Guests of Honor in Ropecon was Robin D. Laws who had two lectures. I missed the first one as I was running games. The lecture I listened to was about good gamemastering: the audience asked, and Robin D. Laws answered. After the lecture, Robin kindly signed my Glorantha - The Second Age book, and the paper cover of King of Dragon Pass with nice dedications. Thank you, Robin, if you read this!
I run three RPG scenarios in Ropecon. On Friday, we played "The Getting of Wisdom" by MOB. It's a Maximum Game Fun scenario, and, well, very funny. :) In the final episode, one of PCs, a dark elf novice of Lhankor Mhy, was revealed to be a traitor, and he/she called out his/her fighting fungus. The fungus was, however, destroyed by a duck PC with his beak. :) Anyway, it was a really enjoyable game.
On Saturday, I run my new RuneQuest scenario "Murha Kotkanpesässä" ('Murder in Boldhome'), inspired by the Finnish translation of A Rough Guide to Boldhome. It was a classical murder mystery with five Lunar PCs. A high-ranking Lunar was murdered, and PCs had to find out who was the murder. Of course, it was very important to do this tactfully, and to pay attention to political consequences; that's why one of them was a political officer. I'm sure it wasn't too easy for players: the game took 6 1/2 hours. There was almost no fight, and Fast Talk was much more important than weapon skills.
My last game was run on Sunday, and it was "The Black Ziggurat" by Newt Newport. However, I had adapted this HeroQuest scenario to RuneQuest, and the setting was Melib Island during the Second Age. The island was ruled by the Middle Sea Empire, and the PCs were the members of the Middle Sea Empire or their allies. The scenario worked very well, even if I preferred to have lesser fighting, and to concentrate more on the relationships between PCs.
There is an interesting tradition in Ropecon called the Loot. This means that every GM who has gamemastered at least three games may pick up a thing from a board with a lot of RPG books, magazines, figures, etc. As I had gamemastered three scenarios, I got a book from the Loot Board. It was The RuneQuest-Con Compendium, which I already had but I got a spare copy. Not a bad reward for running three entertaining games. :)
Four new Finnish RPG books was published in Ropecon. The most important one for me was "Roolipelikirja" (literally 'the RPG book'), which describes 45 different RPGs from D&D to Dogs in the Vineyard, and even more very shortly. I wrote the descriptions of HeroQuest and RuneQuest with information about Glorantha, too. It wasn't an easy job, as there were only 2-3 pages for each game, but I'm quite satisfied with my articles. The book was published by BTJ Kustannus, a commercial Finnish publisher, which has close relations with Finnish libraries.
Other games published in Ropecon were "Zombeja! Ovella!" ('Zombies! On the Door!") by Eero Tuovinen, "Tähti" ('Star'; it's about a teen girl band, and it takes place in Finland in 2017) by Mike Pohjola, and the Finnish translation of "Primetime Adventures" by Matt Wilson.
Ropecon was again a really enjoyable event. I love to run games there to new players I have never met before, and to illuminate them with information about Glorantha. :)
Matti "Nysalor" Järvinen
RuneQuest and Glorantha Page: http://www.nysalor.net/runequest/indexeng.html
Powered by hypermail