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ApriCon
Having finally finished my second Tutor-Marked Assignment (TMA) I thought I would get on with a belated Con write-up.
ApriCon
ApriCon happened in Norfolk and was a mini-campaign con with two mini-campaigns in action. I played in![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
smiorgan's Seasons of Merrow.
Seasons of Merrow
It's not often I play a kid in a roleplaying game (the last time waschrestomancy's Timelike Contingency) and, my character Bronwyn, along with the rest of the party (chrestomancy as Colt, triskellian as Morgan, two_nukes as Lyle and TheHattedOne as Ethwyn) played a ten-year-old who reached the impressive age of fifteen by the end of the adventure.
We began in the village by the pylons (interesting artifacts connected to the main plot) that we all grew up in, Merrow. The place quickly came under attack from the dryads - a non-human race who lived in the marshes - after two visitors arrived; my older, much-missed, brother Kwll and a scientist by the name of Professor Nye. We (still ten) were evacuated to a city many, many miles away and spent a few months in the care of a former opera singer until the city was also attacked after which we enrolled in the Academy and then becoming the special squad assigned to get to the bottom of the problems.
I don't wish to spoiler the game too much in casesmiorgan has other plans for the background, but the plot was great and it was very satisfying to unravel what was going on. I particularly liked the reasoning as to why we were at the forefront of everything. My favourite parts were the entire section inside the ziggurat, booting another mech (MECHS!) up the backside to ruin it's aim, watching Mole amend structural details to other Mechs (MECHS!), the meeting tree (conveniently placed to spy into meetings in the village hall), the entire opera singer stuff (if only the music shop owner had survived...) and the final train scene.
Character development was also great. We were given characters with magical abilities related to their sun and moon sign (sun signs matched player sun signs). Then we got to develop those characters further at different points in the game (about four, I think). So we got to change them in reaction to game events and our plans. Plus, did I mention we got mechs? (MECHS!) We had call signs (Ethwyn - Kali, Lyle - Mole, Colt - Plink, Morgan - Cassandra and Bronwyn - Lert) and got to choose from twelve mechs (4 categories - Stealth, Assault, Artillery and Engineer).
All in all - I really enjoyed it. (MECHS!)
Pilgrimage
The mini-campaign took four days, so there was space forquisalan to run a one-off on the Saturday. The time was 12th century (templars, crusades and border problems), the setting was a North England monastery and the theme was horror. The background music was courtesy of smiorgan after quisalan's iPod took a holiday of its own and resulted in my purchasing my own copy of the Donnie Darko soundtrack which suited the mood beautifully.
This time the party line-up waslanfykins as Edgytha a merchant's wife, TheHattedOne as Margaret the travelling player who was pregnant by a key NPC (no, not one of the monks but an unsavoury ex-crusader), ao_lai as Edward - Edgytha's bodyguard (aka the only fighter in the party), chrestomancy as Joseph a holy-man-to-be and myself as Ygraine a midwife/wise woman (no, I didn't know about TheHattedOne when I came up with a character concept).
We arrived, as a party of pilgrims in a monastery on our last stop before seeing Peter of the Lakes. Except, it started to look like our last stop, full stop (so to speak). A murder on the first night turned out to be death via a demon brought in through a summoning circle. And guess who had to fight the demon in a monastery? Well, mostlyao_lai although lanfykins and TheHattedOne managed some killer shots with a sling and some pebbles. Plus chrestomancy who faced it armed mostly with his own faith. It was fortunate that the saints of the place had decided to bless us, as the only people likely to manage against the huge black, winged demon.
It was great - and has fortunately promptedquisalan to consider running other stuff.
Venue
As is always the case, the venue had pluses and minuses. It wasn't exactly warm for April but the sky was clear often enough for morning walks before gaming. (Not that I ever go out much - I do Cons for the roleplaying, so I was happy!) The two huts were close together (the doors were about ten paces apart), so we were all in one place. I was in Hall Barn, along withbateleur (of course), ao_lai, lanfykins, quisalan, DI and LJ. Plus there was privacy for people who wanted to wander out the back (no-one else was on site all week).
Inside the kitchens were reasonably equipped, the dishwashers in particular were welcome, but there was the odd feature - such as the oven being next to the fridge-freezer and warming the side of the door every time it was switched on - that left you secure in the knowledge that this was a holiday home that no-one had given much thought to the layout of. Likewise one of the bathrooms had a fan that was a little too good at extracting the air in the pipe down to the sewers (until we figured out to put something over the shower plughole when it wasn't in use). And the bedrooms all had those cream-coloured curtains that look good but don't really keep the light out (although most people seemed to cope fine with the light). Then there was the pebble-covered floors in the main rooms which people mulled over all week, but I think they were eventually declared a fail on comfort grounds.
However, moving to the plus side, our hut had a bridge. It was effectively the corridor between the first floor rooms at the front and those at the back, but it was open so we had a bridge over the lounge. Also, both lounges had three huge sofas in them, making it the first time that everyone (except the GMs?) had lots of comfortable seating for roleplaying. Plus there were plenty of bathrooms (although possibly too many were en-suite, butlanfykins and quisalan kindly let me use their bath). And the whole place was rather beautiful (I prudently took a picture of the four-poster in our room before we started using it).
In short - I had a great holiday.
ApriCon
ApriCon happened in Norfolk and was a mini-campaign con with two mini-campaigns in action. I played in
smiorgan's Seasons of Merrow.Seasons of Merrow
It's not often I play a kid in a roleplaying game (the last time was
chrestomancy's Timelike Contingency) and, my character Bronwyn, along with the rest of the party (chrestomancy as Colt, triskellian as Morgan, two_nukes as Lyle and TheHattedOne as Ethwyn) played a ten-year-old who reached the impressive age of fifteen by the end of the adventure.We began in the village by the pylons (interesting artifacts connected to the main plot) that we all grew up in, Merrow. The place quickly came under attack from the dryads - a non-human race who lived in the marshes - after two visitors arrived; my older, much-missed, brother Kwll and a scientist by the name of Professor Nye. We (still ten) were evacuated to a city many, many miles away and spent a few months in the care of a former opera singer until the city was also attacked after which we enrolled in the Academy and then becoming the special squad assigned to get to the bottom of the problems.
I don't wish to spoiler the game too much in case
smiorgan has other plans for the background, but the plot was great and it was very satisfying to unravel what was going on. I particularly liked the reasoning as to why we were at the forefront of everything. My favourite parts were the entire section inside the ziggurat, booting another mech (MECHS!) up the backside to ruin it's aim, watching Mole amend structural details to other Mechs (MECHS!), the meeting tree (conveniently placed to spy into meetings in the village hall), the entire opera singer stuff (if only the music shop owner had survived...) and the final train scene.Character development was also great. We were given characters with magical abilities related to their sun and moon sign (sun signs matched player sun signs). Then we got to develop those characters further at different points in the game (about four, I think). So we got to change them in reaction to game events and our plans. Plus, did I mention we got mechs? (MECHS!) We had call signs (Ethwyn - Kali, Lyle - Mole, Colt - Plink, Morgan - Cassandra and Bronwyn - Lert) and got to choose from twelve mechs (4 categories - Stealth, Assault, Artillery and Engineer).
All in all - I really enjoyed it. (MECHS!)
Pilgrimage
The mini-campaign took four days, so there was space for
quisalan to run a one-off on the Saturday. The time was 12th century (templars, crusades and border problems), the setting was a North England monastery and the theme was horror. The background music was courtesy of smiorgan after quisalan's iPod took a holiday of its own and resulted in my purchasing my own copy of the Donnie Darko soundtrack which suited the mood beautifully.This time the party line-up was
lanfykins as Edgytha a merchant's wife, TheHattedOne as Margaret the travelling player who was pregnant by a key NPC (no, not one of the monks but an unsavoury ex-crusader), ao_lai as Edward - Edgytha's bodyguard (aka the only fighter in the party), chrestomancy as Joseph a holy-man-to-be and myself as Ygraine a midwife/wise woman (no, I didn't know about TheHattedOne when I came up with a character concept).We arrived, as a party of pilgrims in a monastery on our last stop before seeing Peter of the Lakes. Except, it started to look like our last stop, full stop (so to speak). A murder on the first night turned out to be death via a demon brought in through a summoning circle. And guess who had to fight the demon in a monastery? Well, mostly
ao_lai although lanfykins and TheHattedOne managed some killer shots with a sling and some pebbles. Plus chrestomancy who faced it armed mostly with his own faith. It was fortunate that the saints of the place had decided to bless us, as the only people likely to manage against the huge black, winged demon.It was great - and has fortunately prompted
quisalan to consider running other stuff.Venue
As is always the case, the venue had pluses and minuses. It wasn't exactly warm for April but the sky was clear often enough for morning walks before gaming. (Not that I ever go out much - I do Cons for the roleplaying, so I was happy!) The two huts were close together (the doors were about ten paces apart), so we were all in one place. I was in Hall Barn, along with
bateleur (of course), ao_lai, lanfykins, quisalan, DI and LJ. Plus there was privacy for people who wanted to wander out the back (no-one else was on site all week).Inside the kitchens were reasonably equipped, the dishwashers in particular were welcome, but there was the odd feature - such as the oven being next to the fridge-freezer and warming the side of the door every time it was switched on - that left you secure in the knowledge that this was a holiday home that no-one had given much thought to the layout of. Likewise one of the bathrooms had a fan that was a little too good at extracting the air in the pipe down to the sewers (until we figured out to put something over the shower plughole when it wasn't in use). And the bedrooms all had those cream-coloured curtains that look good but don't really keep the light out (although most people seemed to cope fine with the light). Then there was the pebble-covered floors in the main rooms which people mulled over all week, but I think they were eventually declared a fail on comfort grounds.
However, moving to the plus side, our hut had a bridge. It was effectively the corridor between the first floor rooms at the front and those at the back, but it was open so we had a bridge over the lounge. Also, both lounges had three huge sofas in them, making it the first time that everyone (except the GMs?) had lots of comfortable seating for roleplaying. Plus there were plenty of bathrooms (although possibly too many were en-suite, but
lanfykins and quisalan kindly let me use their bath). And the whole place was rather beautiful (I prudently took a picture of the four-poster in our room before we started using it).In short - I had a great holiday.