Dragonmeet 2012

Spent Saturday at the town hall in Kensington, London, attending Dragonmeet 2012. Under the Arion Games banner, ran a demo game of Maelstrom Classic Fantasy Tool-Kit with three players – which was unfortunately three short of what I’d hoped. With a full squad of adventurers, the game would have been shorter and less traumatic. I didn’t want to mess with the creature-character balance of the encounters at such short notice, but I can assure you that three characters can only just get through the adventure as written, with a little GM fiat in their favour.

After that, I attended a seminar on the upcoming 7th Edition of Call of Cthulhu. As I own 2nd, 3rd and 5th Edition already, I really wanted to get a view on whether 7th Edition warranted my consideration and cash. Paul Fricker and Mike Mason’s seminar failed to answer that question for me. Partially it came down to the presentation feeling a little light and unorganised. We got about 15 minutes of broken overview, touching on the key changes, followed by 3/4 hour of questions from the gathered audience. I came away feeling like I could get a better Cthulhu game from either (a) gold book Basic Role Playing options pasted into existing Cthulhu, or (b) using an alternative like Trail or Dark.

For the rest of the afternoon, I hung around the Arion stand or circled the floor working out what to spend some pennies on. I ended up opting for The Laundry and the associated Agent’s Handbook. While on the stand, I met Graham Walmsley on his round of the floor – the first time we’d met in person – and also someone, whose name I didn’t catch, who knew me from my days running and reviewing play-by-mail games (some 20 years ago now). He purchased a hard copy of ‘Stench of the Sea‘ – and I also managed to sell several bookmarks – or Weighted Reading Companions – my wife makes in her spare time (see www.mok.me.uk for more stuff my wife makes).

The day was bookended by uneventful train journeys where I finished reading ‘Catching Fire‘ (down to London) and started reading the Agent’s Handbook (up from London), while chatting with my wife. A good day, less busy than last year and equally satisfying overall.