Report on Ropecon 2010

From: Matti Järvinen <matti.jarvinen_at_eNDSGMx3DrRE92aJfCXxTEYbpeAOa_XPQ5L0VSn6cMfgxbXyEGyX2o1tUQtTv>
Date: Mon, 2 Aug 2010 19:13:53 +0300


Ropecon 2010 (http://www.ropecon.fi/english/) was held on 23rd-25th of July in Espoo, Finland. It's the biggest RGP convention on Finland and probably in Europe, too, with about 3 200 visitors this year. This is my report on Ropecon if you like to read what happened in Finland. :)

I arrived Ropecon after the event started, and I set up an association table for Kalikos - the Finnish Gloranthan Association (http://www.kalikos.org/index.php?lang=en). At the table, there were all the issues of The Zin Letters, the Glorantha Magazine of Kalikos, and Glorantha books, including HeroQuest Core Rules and the Sartar Book. We also had a free lottery with three Glorantha prizes, and 57 visitors took part in it. Some copies of our magazines were sold, and about 20 Kalikos brochures were given to those who were interested in Kalikos and Glorantha.

On Friday at 7.00 PM, I started my first game named Jrusteliaadi (in English, "Jrusteliad"), set in the Second Age Glorantha. The rule system was Maximum Game Fun. There were five God-Learners sailing around Glorantha and performing seven difficult tasks given by the leaders of the Middle Sea Empire. They were quite funny characters: a researcher with body parts from duck, centaur and wolf; a scholastic who thought everything must be tried after you can know it; a half-mechanical astrologer; a racist magician who had very impressive hurricane magic; and, the last but not the least, the Dean of the Faculty of Love who tried to get all women he met as research material! :) The game took more than eight hours to play, but it was really worth of it.

On Saturday, I run my murder mystery game: Murha Kotkanpesässä ("Murder in Boldhome") with the RuneQuest 3 rules. There were four Lunar solders who were ordered to investigate a mysterious death in Boldhome. A high-ranking Lunar ambassador was murdered, but his family was very quiet about what was happened. They even claimed it wasn't murder at all but heart attack. The characters had to investigate a lot of clues after they could solve the case. They even made me to inspire unexpected things, for example an interesting company named Uuden kuun rakentajat ("New Moon Builders"). The game took about seven hours.

On Sunday, I would have had a HeroQuest 2 game named Wyvernin sisaret ("Sisters of Wyvern"), but there were no players entering the game, so I had to cancel it. However, two friends of mine asked me to run it as a short version, and I agreed. The game was set in Dara Happa during the Second Age, and the characters were noblewomen who had founded a secret society: they raised miniature wyverns and wanted to keep it secret as they husbands were a kind of Dara Happan purists. Then someone was killed, and the characters had to solve the situation...

After my last game, it was time for the Loot, a traditional event in Ropecon where every GM run games in Ropecon may choose an item from the table loaded of RPG books, miniatures, packs of cards, T-shirts etc. There were some Glorantha stuff: "Blood of Orlanth", which I chose, "The Zin Letters" #1,
"River of Cradles", and "Gathering Thunder". The other book I got was
"Lamentations of The Flame Princess", an adventure module by James Edward
Raggi, who is a very old-school RGP man: even RuneQuest is too new-school game for him.

There were a lot of lections at Ropecon, but I didn't have time to listen to them. Running games took much time (more than 17 hours!), and I spent the rest of my time at Kalikos' table. Anyway, it was great to participate in Ropecon once again. For me, this was 8th Ropecon; I have missed none since 2003. And I'm sure I will be there next year again with new Glorantha scenarios!

By the way, if you ever visit Finland (especially Helsinki) and would like to meet Finnish Gloranthaphiles, let me know, and we can certainly have a kind of Glorantha meeting with talking and maybe Finnish sauna...

Matti "Nysalor" Järvinen
RuneQuest and Glorantha Page: http://www.nysalor.net/runequest/indexeng.html            

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