Conception 2008 Report
It's been that time of year again!
Every year the journey itself becomes a story. When driving have in the past been able to regale you with stories of getting lost, by public transport with stories of delays, etc. This year although everything ran smoothly, was little exception. Every year that I've travelled by public transport on the way down I've often wondered if I would ever run into anyone I knew. This was it. Getting off the train at New Milton, lo and behold, alextiefling and friend_of_tofu also coming off the train. As a result of this I easily opted to catch a taxi with them instead of do as I had intended, which was walk the two miles to the venue. As we were, let's face it, fussing outside the taxi ranch a man waiting outside said to us: "Are you by any chance gamers?" Damn, says I, are we that obvious? "And I washed and put on deodorant and everything!" says friend_of_tofu. It turned he was a newcomer to Conception, having previously gone to Consequences (the LARP-orientated sister-con to Conception). He offered to share his taxi with us and then proceeded to pay for it in full, which was -- if you will pardon the anachronistic but appropriate turn of phrase -- jolly decent of the fellow. I'd intended to catch up with him and buy him a drink later at the con, but I only ran into him once more and not in a context that I was able to buy him that said pint.
Conception is possibly my favourite regular con of the year, not just because it has a generally appealing and friendly atmosphere, but also because that's when I traditionally get to hook up with juleske, atog_ and the other Dutch/Belgian crowd. Bar for a few absences (you were missed pluizebol and frostyjournal) things were good in that front. For the past couple of years I'd been somewhat lax in my preparations for the con and in writing scenarios to run. juleske & co. are not the only people who have, year after year, bugged me about the fact that I've not had anything to run for them. Although juleske & co. have been lucky in that I've usually managed to wing a Call of Cthulhu scenario for them to enjoy. This year I figured I'd be a bit different and, y'know, actually pre-write something. No sooner had I mentioned it back in the summer than my game was already fully booked before I'd even written it - which was, y'know, no pressure. The scenario, after playtesting, turned out to be a two-parter, and I'd already decided to run it twice so the other gamers I don't keep in touch with via IMs and LJ would also have a chance to play in my first prepared scenario for Conception in three years. Well, that's four slots of gaming covered!
However, no sooner had I walked through the door on the Wednesday evening than one of the con staff said to me: "Nimrod, you know that Star Wars scenario you wrote that we were going to run at Consequences. Well, it didn't run. Is it okay for us to run it at Conception?" This was the "Seas of Time" scenario that I'd written for GenConUK one year that had never run and, surprisingly, always slipped my mind when thinking I have no scenario for Conception.
"Sure, I said," and added without thinking, "I'll run it if you want."
"OK, there you go," he replied and promptly handed me the fully printed, ready-to-run Star Wars scenario I'd written but not read in five years (for the original WEG d6 system, of course).
"Unless you particularly wanted to run it," I said, suddenly realising what I'd gotten myself in to.
"That's quite all right," was the reply I got. Oh, well, that's five slots covered! Hmm, wasn't I supposed to be playing in some stuff, too? When will I demo!?
Last summer, Looney Labs suspended their Rabbit Reward program. This meant that I received nothing for GenConUK except for getting free entry and accommodation. I received nothing for Dragonmeet except for free entry. I wasn't getting anything (this year) at Conception and figured that I wanted to focus a bit more of my attention back to gaming. Since I'd been demoing for Looney Labs, I'd not been doing much active gaming at home. I was in no ongoing campaigns either as a player or GM, so I didn't mind the shift of focus to doing more board/card games. I enjoyed the change of pace. I still got to occasionally GM at a con and occasionally play in one of cartimandua's games which are always fun. I also got to play and GM occasionally at the RAWSOC All-Day Roleplay Days (a.k.a. ADRs). However, this time around I'd GMed a Paranoia campaign am now preparing to run a Delta Green campaign, I'm actively playing in regular a Deadlands campaign and have been playing a mostly regular Everway game. Therefore, my roleplay gaming attitude was back into gear. Due to the suspension of the Reward program, I'd told cartimandua that I intended to concentrate more on roleplaying this year but that I'd still help out demoing when I could. I still enjoy playing and demoing the Looney Labs game, but at times last year it felt like work. I wanted to do other things at times but would find myself stuck at the table with no cover. I didn't mind that, too much, because I knew I was getting Rabbit Points for doing it and therefore could redeem them for product discounts. However, I wasn't so prepared to demo a great deal this year without any rewards beyond just having some fun showing people some games. As it happened, I ended up either GMing or playing in every slot during which I could have otherwise done any Rabbiting duties. I felt a little guilty but a little less so when I'd offered to Rabbit on the slot that cartimandua was running her Sapphire & Steel scenario only to be told that she'd rather I played.
My Call of Cthulhu two-part scenario, "Table 14" was run on Thursday morning and afternoon for juleske, conlaen, atog_, halfling_, wan3an and Dries (who I don't think is on LJ), and again on Saturday morning and afternoon for anyone else. The first run was my most "controlled" game, in that I ran it in their chalet (everyone in the chalet was playing) so I could have them all sitting at the table when they were at breakfast, dinner or lunch and on the settees for any other time. I think it also helped to keep everyone awake, including myself. The scenario was set around the maiden voyage of a four-stack steamer in 1923 heading to New York. All the passengers were First Class, some of whom were gentry. It was a great opportunity to for everyone to cut loose with all the negative qualities of being middle-to-upper class. I'd charged myself with the duty of playing four NPCs, two of which are nearly always with the PCs and I think the brutish paragon of the bastardy nobility Sir Elliott was enjoyed by all, as was the wonderful shock at the revelation that conlaen's character was cheating on wan3an's character with halfling_'s husband. Some wonderful moments included "firing" the waiter, complaining about having the same meal twice (Jules: "We can't possibly eat the same meal twice! Darling, do something!"), to amusing mispronunciations (Dries: "I agree. Waiter, I want to speak to the cock [cook]."), getting a disagreeable NPC moved, arranging clay-pigeon shooting as some amusement (ahh, shotguns in CoC!), although some memorable moments include a delusional Lady Simmons (Jules) shotgun blasting a monster with the line: "I'm sorry, you're not invited to my party!" and American Modernist writer (Linus) vaporising himself with an alien weapon that was not only damaged but pointing the wrong way. I also had the luxury of playing musical cues on my PDA for key moments. For instance, chamber music (specifically Schubert, Reicha and Danzi) whenever they were in the ballroom, the 35 minute creepy atmospheric single-track album Faust by Current 93 during the last horrifying hours, and my own special game loops including a seamless 15 minutes loop of Palladino Montage from the film The Insider during moments of tension and an extended 21 minute loop of the finale music (You Have The Power) from Dark City. On the Saturday I only really used the chamber music and a little of Faust due to the fact that we were playing right next to the bar and it was a lot noisier. Unlike the playtest, however, I had nice flavour hand-outs such as the breakfast, lunch and dinner menus and a wine list (all the actual First Class menus from the Titanic). It had no real importance other than as (no pun intended) flavour, but I think it helped set the atmosphere. I remember Jules reading her character and declaring: "This is a LARP character!" I wouldn't know, since I don't really do LARP, but the fact that part one is almost a sit-down LARP did cross my mind when writing it.
The Saturday run was a little crazier not only because of the action that took place but mostly because of several cock-ups with the players. I'd turned up just after the mustering and as a result my player had gone off to find table 14 not realising that it was the name of the scenario, not the table where we would be playing. Then I found out that three of the players didn't realise it was a two-parter and had signed up for other things. One stayed and the other two dropped out. This left me in a bit of a predicament because I'd inadvertently written the characters in such a way that it was almost impossible to run it without those characters and I was already running so many NPCs that I didn't want to be charged with more. I found another player and Rik said he was fine (as joey_vercetti in the playtest) to play two characters when we finally found another player. Just before the game started we acquired a sixth player, Ragnar from Sweden. However, shortly after start of play it transpired that our first fill-in player was still not made aware that it was a two-part game and on top of that dropped out during the first part because he was too tired and falling asleep (fortunately just before a crucial moment of Plot). This left me in a predicament because he was not playing a character I could easily give back to Rik to play. Ragnar stepped up and did what I would not have expected any other gamer to do: he gave up the character he was playing (one of the two I'd originally given to Rik) and took over the abandoned character. The only final Dr Who-style regeneration we had in the game was when in the second-half Rik took over babysitting duties and Debbie took his characters. This was fine since I've GMed for both of them before and know that they'd easily handle this.
My Star Wars scenario (an unintended convention premiere) went down well, especially for the four guys who've played in almost as many of my games as juleske & co. and have year after year complained that I haven't had anything to run for them. This absolutely hit the mark with being a nice, light game they could sink their teeth into and cut loose. They're a fantastic bunch of gamers and I always have a riot with them.
I also got to play in a few games. As mentioned above, I played in cartimandua's Sapphire & Steel scenario. I was a little wary about playing this since I honestly didn't remember anything about the series except that a) it existed and b) I might have seen an episode or two during my passively absorbing TV phase in my early life. However, despite it taking place almosts immediately after the last cliffhanger episode, once I just treated the game as any other setting I might not be familiar with and quickly grasped the character concept I was away and we all had a lot of fun. The dice were definitely against us for the vast majority of the game, but I think it was unanimous that we all wanted to play Story 8 next year. Another of cartimandua's games I played in was her Call of Cthulhu game (one of a half-dozen scenarios for which she'd asked me to do the boring work of rolling up characters for her). My character's death in this game earned me the Bronze Prize in the Golden Badger Awards, something of a Conception tradition for the most stupid and/or amusing character deaths of the convention.
Having been convinced that technology was evil, Petya took a hatchet to Alexia's laptop. Alexia then cried out (concerning our somewhat neurotic historian played by conlaen): "Get him, Petya! He's got a PDA!" Petya then proceeded to chase the historian around still holding a hatchet shouting: "Come back! I only want your PDA!" The fleeing anthropological party then went on to not only run over my character once but twice with his own precious hunk-o'-junk truck.
The other game I played in was an absolutely crackin' scenario run Max by of Shadow Warriors. Set in Germany this game really was a lot of fun about a bunch of film-makers on what would very soon be the film-shoot from Hell. Some of my favourite moments were when my character, a historian with an interest in cults, suddenly realised that everything that was happening was straight out of the pages of his German edition of the popular roleplaying game Call of Cthulhu. He then asked the 1400 year-old PC (again played by conlaen) "What are we up against?" opening the book and pointing at the monster section: "This?" pointing again "This?" etc. And finally during the big showdown whilst the avatar of Bast and the incarnation of Bast were busy fighting a Hunting Horror and just moments before the arrival of Nyarlathotep he suddenly realised: "Wait! I have a spell for this! Here, on page 103, Dispell Magic. Right, we all need to spend Magic Points!" to which the response was (from anyone who was still able to do so) "What the hell are magic points?" Clearly it had never happened before, by Max's reaction of "You bastards!", we actually stopped Nyarlathotep and won the day! To which the entire table gave a cheer the likes of which a table of Call of Cthulhu players so rarely gets to do. Everything really did come down to the dice rolls and we genuinely felt as though it could have gone either way both in whether conlaen's character would become an avatar for Bast (good-guys) or Nyarlathotep (bad-guy) and whether the spell would actually work.
The final RPG of the con for me was Cat run, again, by cartimandua. This was fantastically fun and silly but only in the same way that Bunnies & Burrows might be. In the game you play cats who fight the supernatural to protect mankind. The game started with quite literally a cat fight after a literal pissing contest challenged two toms. It was left with a silent acceptance of equal status, but then another cat-fight also involving my cat resulted in Linus' character getting totally p0wn3d, albeit with my cat coming out with more scars, but secured him the position of top cat in the group. Playing a cat seemed to come frighteningly easy to Jules and we had a lot of fun with naming our cats. Each cat has three names: the name monkeys call you, the name cats call you and your secret name. My cat was known to others as "Has Many Homes", his secret name was "Emperor Tenthlife XIII" while the name humans call him was "Ickle Kitty". Possibly my favourite scene was when we were trying to figure out how to get into a house and realised (as players) that the way cats normally get inside is for humans to open doors for them. There was a child who had been following us around whilst we were trying to get the evil shadow cat.
Me: You! Monkey-kitten! I command you to open this door. *points at door*
Translates as: Meow! *paws at door*
Child: Aw, poor little kitty, are you locked out? *strokes kitty*
Me: Yes, monkey, dote upon your king.
Translates as: Purrrr...
During Cat halfling_ gave me the surprise gift of the Call of Cthulhu glow-in-the-dark dice which are incredibly appreciated since I know they're not cheap! (Thank you again!) With cartimandua, Chris, alextiefling and friend_of_tofu all gone home by Sunday night I had the chalet to myself where we (Jules et al) pooled our remaining foods and played Zendo (so I got to play some Looney Labs in the end!). They did bug me to run Star Wars but by then I was tired and a few drinks too far in to the end of con wind-down to do so (sorry, guys, would have loved to have done so had I not been knackered and the request come so late in the evening).
Probably the coolest thing I took away from the convention was an offer by Mongoose Publishing, fine purveyors of such games as Paranoia, Babylon 5 RPG and Elric of Melniboné RPG. I've been chatting to these guys for years at their stall at Dragonmeet, GenConUK and now here, usually whilst toying with buying their books and sometimes whilst actually buying stuff from them (pretty-much exclusively Paranoia-related). On Thursday night whilst I was chilling by myself the guys stopped and sat down to chat. Along with Mel from Pagan Angel, who is at almost every major con, amongst others, we just had a good ol' chat and laugh. On Saturday, Nick (Senior Editor and one of the guys I speak to most often) approached me and invited me to try my hand at writing for them (both Mongoose directly and their free monthly e-magazine Signs & Portents) in addition to possibly officially demoing stuff for them and, when I got home, he also asked if I'd be interested in playtesting their product. Of course, I've still got to "prove" myself to them as a writer, but as an extra incentive Nick gave me a courtesy copy of Elric of Melniboné which I'd been eyeing up and asking him about earlier in the con. Time to actually start, y'know, some official writing, then!
Every year the journey itself becomes a story. When driving have in the past been able to regale you with stories of getting lost, by public transport with stories of delays, etc. This year although everything ran smoothly, was little exception. Every year that I've travelled by public transport on the way down I've often wondered if I would ever run into anyone I knew. This was it. Getting off the train at New Milton, lo and behold, alextiefling and friend_of_tofu also coming off the train. As a result of this I easily opted to catch a taxi with them instead of do as I had intended, which was walk the two miles to the venue. As we were, let's face it, fussing outside the taxi ranch a man waiting outside said to us: "Are you by any chance gamers?" Damn, says I, are we that obvious? "And I washed and put on deodorant and everything!" says friend_of_tofu. It turned he was a newcomer to Conception, having previously gone to Consequences (the LARP-orientated sister-con to Conception). He offered to share his taxi with us and then proceeded to pay for it in full, which was -- if you will pardon the anachronistic but appropriate turn of phrase -- jolly decent of the fellow. I'd intended to catch up with him and buy him a drink later at the con, but I only ran into him once more and not in a context that I was able to buy him that said pint.
Conception is possibly my favourite regular con of the year, not just because it has a generally appealing and friendly atmosphere, but also because that's when I traditionally get to hook up with juleske, atog_ and the other Dutch/Belgian crowd. Bar for a few absences (you were missed pluizebol and frostyjournal) things were good in that front. For the past couple of years I'd been somewhat lax in my preparations for the con and in writing scenarios to run. juleske & co. are not the only people who have, year after year, bugged me about the fact that I've not had anything to run for them. Although juleske & co. have been lucky in that I've usually managed to wing a Call of Cthulhu scenario for them to enjoy. This year I figured I'd be a bit different and, y'know, actually pre-write something. No sooner had I mentioned it back in the summer than my game was already fully booked before I'd even written it - which was, y'know, no pressure. The scenario, after playtesting, turned out to be a two-parter, and I'd already decided to run it twice so the other gamers I don't keep in touch with via IMs and LJ would also have a chance to play in my first prepared scenario for Conception in three years. Well, that's four slots of gaming covered!
However, no sooner had I walked through the door on the Wednesday evening than one of the con staff said to me: "Nimrod, you know that Star Wars scenario you wrote that we were going to run at Consequences. Well, it didn't run. Is it okay for us to run it at Conception?" This was the "Seas of Time" scenario that I'd written for GenConUK one year that had never run and, surprisingly, always slipped my mind when thinking I have no scenario for Conception.
"Sure, I said," and added without thinking, "I'll run it if you want."
"OK, there you go," he replied and promptly handed me the fully printed, ready-to-run Star Wars scenario I'd written but not read in five years (for the original WEG d6 system, of course).
"Unless you particularly wanted to run it," I said, suddenly realising what I'd gotten myself in to.
"That's quite all right," was the reply I got. Oh, well, that's five slots covered! Hmm, wasn't I supposed to be playing in some stuff, too? When will I demo!?
Last summer, Looney Labs suspended their Rabbit Reward program. This meant that I received nothing for GenConUK except for getting free entry and accommodation. I received nothing for Dragonmeet except for free entry. I wasn't getting anything (this year) at Conception and figured that I wanted to focus a bit more of my attention back to gaming. Since I'd been demoing for Looney Labs, I'd not been doing much active gaming at home. I was in no ongoing campaigns either as a player or GM, so I didn't mind the shift of focus to doing more board/card games. I enjoyed the change of pace. I still got to occasionally GM at a con and occasionally play in one of cartimandua's games which are always fun. I also got to play and GM occasionally at the RAWSOC All-Day Roleplay Days (a.k.a. ADRs). However, this time around I'd GMed a Paranoia campaign am now preparing to run a Delta Green campaign, I'm actively playing in regular a Deadlands campaign and have been playing a mostly regular Everway game. Therefore, my roleplay gaming attitude was back into gear. Due to the suspension of the Reward program, I'd told cartimandua that I intended to concentrate more on roleplaying this year but that I'd still help out demoing when I could. I still enjoy playing and demoing the Looney Labs game, but at times last year it felt like work. I wanted to do other things at times but would find myself stuck at the table with no cover. I didn't mind that, too much, because I knew I was getting Rabbit Points for doing it and therefore could redeem them for product discounts. However, I wasn't so prepared to demo a great deal this year without any rewards beyond just having some fun showing people some games. As it happened, I ended up either GMing or playing in every slot during which I could have otherwise done any Rabbiting duties. I felt a little guilty but a little less so when I'd offered to Rabbit on the slot that cartimandua was running her Sapphire & Steel scenario only to be told that she'd rather I played.
My Call of Cthulhu two-part scenario, "Table 14" was run on Thursday morning and afternoon for juleske, conlaen, atog_, halfling_, wan3an and Dries (who I don't think is on LJ), and again on Saturday morning and afternoon for anyone else. The first run was my most "controlled" game, in that I ran it in their chalet (everyone in the chalet was playing) so I could have them all sitting at the table when they were at breakfast, dinner or lunch and on the settees for any other time. I think it also helped to keep everyone awake, including myself. The scenario was set around the maiden voyage of a four-stack steamer in 1923 heading to New York. All the passengers were First Class, some of whom were gentry. It was a great opportunity to for everyone to cut loose with all the negative qualities of being middle-to-upper class. I'd charged myself with the duty of playing four NPCs, two of which are nearly always with the PCs and I think the brutish paragon of the bastardy nobility Sir Elliott was enjoyed by all, as was the wonderful shock at the revelation that conlaen's character was cheating on wan3an's character with halfling_'s husband. Some wonderful moments included "firing" the waiter, complaining about having the same meal twice (Jules: "We can't possibly eat the same meal twice! Darling, do something!"), to amusing mispronunciations (Dries: "I agree. Waiter, I want to speak to the cock [cook]."), getting a disagreeable NPC moved, arranging clay-pigeon shooting as some amusement (ahh, shotguns in CoC!), although some memorable moments include a delusional Lady Simmons (Jules) shotgun blasting a monster with the line: "I'm sorry, you're not invited to my party!" and American Modernist writer (Linus) vaporising himself with an alien weapon that was not only damaged but pointing the wrong way. I also had the luxury of playing musical cues on my PDA for key moments. For instance, chamber music (specifically Schubert, Reicha and Danzi) whenever they were in the ballroom, the 35 minute creepy atmospheric single-track album Faust by Current 93 during the last horrifying hours, and my own special game loops including a seamless 15 minutes loop of Palladino Montage from the film The Insider during moments of tension and an extended 21 minute loop of the finale music (You Have The Power) from Dark City. On the Saturday I only really used the chamber music and a little of Faust due to the fact that we were playing right next to the bar and it was a lot noisier. Unlike the playtest, however, I had nice flavour hand-outs such as the breakfast, lunch and dinner menus and a wine list (all the actual First Class menus from the Titanic). It had no real importance other than as (no pun intended) flavour, but I think it helped set the atmosphere. I remember Jules reading her character and declaring: "This is a LARP character!" I wouldn't know, since I don't really do LARP, but the fact that part one is almost a sit-down LARP did cross my mind when writing it.
The Saturday run was a little crazier not only because of the action that took place but mostly because of several cock-ups with the players. I'd turned up just after the mustering and as a result my player had gone off to find table 14 not realising that it was the name of the scenario, not the table where we would be playing. Then I found out that three of the players didn't realise it was a two-parter and had signed up for other things. One stayed and the other two dropped out. This left me in a bit of a predicament because I'd inadvertently written the characters in such a way that it was almost impossible to run it without those characters and I was already running so many NPCs that I didn't want to be charged with more. I found another player and Rik said he was fine (as joey_vercetti in the playtest) to play two characters when we finally found another player. Just before the game started we acquired a sixth player, Ragnar from Sweden. However, shortly after start of play it transpired that our first fill-in player was still not made aware that it was a two-part game and on top of that dropped out during the first part because he was too tired and falling asleep (fortunately just before a crucial moment of Plot). This left me in a predicament because he was not playing a character I could easily give back to Rik to play. Ragnar stepped up and did what I would not have expected any other gamer to do: he gave up the character he was playing (one of the two I'd originally given to Rik) and took over the abandoned character. The only final Dr Who-style regeneration we had in the game was when in the second-half Rik took over babysitting duties and Debbie took his characters. This was fine since I've GMed for both of them before and know that they'd easily handle this.
My Star Wars scenario (an unintended convention premiere) went down well, especially for the four guys who've played in almost as many of my games as juleske & co. and have year after year complained that I haven't had anything to run for them. This absolutely hit the mark with being a nice, light game they could sink their teeth into and cut loose. They're a fantastic bunch of gamers and I always have a riot with them.
I also got to play in a few games. As mentioned above, I played in cartimandua's Sapphire & Steel scenario. I was a little wary about playing this since I honestly didn't remember anything about the series except that a) it existed and b) I might have seen an episode or two during my passively absorbing TV phase in my early life. However, despite it taking place almosts immediately after the last cliffhanger episode, once I just treated the game as any other setting I might not be familiar with and quickly grasped the character concept I was away and we all had a lot of fun. The dice were definitely against us for the vast majority of the game, but I think it was unanimous that we all wanted to play Story 8 next year. Another of cartimandua's games I played in was her Call of Cthulhu game (one of a half-dozen scenarios for which she'd asked me to do the boring work of rolling up characters for her). My character's death in this game earned me the Bronze Prize in the Golden Badger Awards, something of a Conception tradition for the most stupid and/or amusing character deaths of the convention.
Having been convinced that technology was evil, Petya took a hatchet to Alexia's laptop. Alexia then cried out (concerning our somewhat neurotic historian played by conlaen): "Get him, Petya! He's got a PDA!" Petya then proceeded to chase the historian around still holding a hatchet shouting: "Come back! I only want your PDA!" The fleeing anthropological party then went on to not only run over my character once but twice with his own precious hunk-o'-junk truck.
The other game I played in was an absolutely crackin' scenario run Max by of Shadow Warriors. Set in Germany this game really was a lot of fun about a bunch of film-makers on what would very soon be the film-shoot from Hell. Some of my favourite moments were when my character, a historian with an interest in cults, suddenly realised that everything that was happening was straight out of the pages of his German edition of the popular roleplaying game Call of Cthulhu. He then asked the 1400 year-old PC (again played by conlaen) "What are we up against?" opening the book and pointing at the monster section: "This?" pointing again "This?" etc. And finally during the big showdown whilst the avatar of Bast and the incarnation of Bast were busy fighting a Hunting Horror and just moments before the arrival of Nyarlathotep he suddenly realised: "Wait! I have a spell for this! Here, on page 103, Dispell Magic. Right, we all need to spend Magic Points!" to which the response was (from anyone who was still able to do so) "What the hell are magic points?" Clearly it had never happened before, by Max's reaction of "You bastards!", we actually stopped Nyarlathotep and won the day! To which the entire table gave a cheer the likes of which a table of Call of Cthulhu players so rarely gets to do. Everything really did come down to the dice rolls and we genuinely felt as though it could have gone either way both in whether conlaen's character would become an avatar for Bast (good-guys) or Nyarlathotep (bad-guy) and whether the spell would actually work.
The final RPG of the con for me was Cat run, again, by cartimandua. This was fantastically fun and silly but only in the same way that Bunnies & Burrows might be. In the game you play cats who fight the supernatural to protect mankind. The game started with quite literally a cat fight after a literal pissing contest challenged two toms. It was left with a silent acceptance of equal status, but then another cat-fight also involving my cat resulted in Linus' character getting totally p0wn3d, albeit with my cat coming out with more scars, but secured him the position of top cat in the group. Playing a cat seemed to come frighteningly easy to Jules and we had a lot of fun with naming our cats. Each cat has three names: the name monkeys call you, the name cats call you and your secret name. My cat was known to others as "Has Many Homes", his secret name was "Emperor Tenthlife XIII" while the name humans call him was "Ickle Kitty". Possibly my favourite scene was when we were trying to figure out how to get into a house and realised (as players) that the way cats normally get inside is for humans to open doors for them. There was a child who had been following us around whilst we were trying to get the evil shadow cat.
Me: You! Monkey-kitten! I command you to open this door. *points at door*
Translates as: Meow! *paws at door*
Child: Aw, poor little kitty, are you locked out? *strokes kitty*
Me: Yes, monkey, dote upon your king.
Translates as: Purrrr...
During Cat halfling_ gave me the surprise gift of the Call of Cthulhu glow-in-the-dark dice which are incredibly appreciated since I know they're not cheap! (Thank you again!) With cartimandua, Chris, alextiefling and friend_of_tofu all gone home by Sunday night I had the chalet to myself where we (Jules et al) pooled our remaining foods and played Zendo (so I got to play some Looney Labs in the end!). They did bug me to run Star Wars but by then I was tired and a few drinks too far in to the end of con wind-down to do so (sorry, guys, would have loved to have done so had I not been knackered and the request come so late in the evening).
Probably the coolest thing I took away from the convention was an offer by Mongoose Publishing, fine purveyors of such games as Paranoia, Babylon 5 RPG and Elric of Melniboné RPG. I've been chatting to these guys for years at their stall at Dragonmeet, GenConUK and now here, usually whilst toying with buying their books and sometimes whilst actually buying stuff from them (pretty-much exclusively Paranoia-related). On Thursday night whilst I was chilling by myself the guys stopped and sat down to chat. Along with Mel from Pagan Angel, who is at almost every major con, amongst others, we just had a good ol' chat and laugh. On Saturday, Nick (Senior Editor and one of the guys I speak to most often) approached me and invited me to try my hand at writing for them (both Mongoose directly and their free monthly e-magazine Signs & Portents) in addition to possibly officially demoing stuff for them and, when I got home, he also asked if I'd be interested in playtesting their product. Of course, I've still got to "prove" myself to them as a writer, but as an extra incentive Nick gave me a courtesy copy of Elric of Melniboné which I'd been eyeing up and asking him about earlier in the con. Time to actually start, y'know, some official writing, then!