DragonDaze 2017

DragonDaze, Saturday 30th September 201 7

This was my fourth year at DragonDaze in Newport, South Wales. DragonDaze is a general (non-computer) gaming convention ("and mini-ComiCon"). I've always thought of it as UK Games Expo "lite".

My experiences at DragonDaze in the past have been well documented and mixed at best. The first year the RPGs were buried in a massive function room miles away from the main hall which few people found. There were far more games on offer than players to play them. I seem to remember running a Code of the Spacelanes game, but there was a lot of waiting around and a lot of disappointed would be referees.

The following year I took a trade stand intending to run demos of my games in the main hall and, maybe, sell a few books. That bombed dismally. I discovered today that, allegedly, only two games ran in the RPG room on that occasion.

My third visit, last year, I rejoined the RPG room. This was moved to a smaller room nearer the main hall. I took my "Choose Your Adventure" demo games se- up rather than expecting to run standard four hour games. We still had more games than available players and most referees came prepared for the standard four convention game slots. But things seemed to be better. More games ran, certainly. And I got to be "father of the room" greeting people at the door, directing them to appropriate games and running shorter ones myself if they were short of time.

But there was still a feeling of disappointment of an opportunity missed. A mismatch between the expectations of referees, number of games offered and the number of people looking for RPGs.

So, when I found out that the organiser had accepted offers from ten referees to run RPGs at this event, most of which were being offered in the traditional long convention "slots", I had my concerns. Only myself and the 5th ed. referee seemed prepared to offer fIexible games. I expected most of the games not to run.

They were promoted via Facebook events with people able to list themselves as "interested" or "going". But this wasn't a formal presign system. And, looking at Facebook prior to the convention, most games didn't seem to be garnering much interest. 5th Ed and Dresden Files seemed popular but that was it.

To make room for all the games, the organiser moved the RPGs out of the small room onto the landing overlooking the main hall. This is a great location which had been dominated by Wargames in previous conventions. When I saw the proposed table arrangement, however, I was concerned that the tables would be a bit close to each other - if all the games ran. But as I fully expected they wouldn't, then I told myself to stop worrying.

Birmingham to Newport on the train is a fairly easy journey and with the hours of the convention being 10:00-5:00 I can get there and back in a single day without having to get up at stupid o'clock. Early but not stupid.

Getting the taxi from the station to the Leisure Centre where the convention is held, I checked with the taxi driver. As usual, he knew nothing about the event. This isn't unique to DragonDaze. Taxi drivers never seem to know about big gaming events or science fiction conventions in their town.

Getting into the convention to set up was easy. When I got up to our landing overlooking the main hall, I was pleased to find it bigger than I remembered with tables quite well spread out. All the tables had a printed sheet on them clearly saying the name of the referee and the game. A helper came around handing out demonstrator badges. Good organisation.

There were a couple of tables without game sheets on them, one right at the front of the balcony where punters would be walking past. And my table was set back a bit. I negotiated a swap with the Star Trek referee, to allow me to put my display on a table at the front of the balcony.  I also convinced the Cthulhu Referee to occupy the unused table at the front, leaving his table unused towards to back wall, out of sight.

The convention started and  I began pouncing on punters as they went past, offering them RPGs and directing them to appropriate tables. Initial interest was for 5th Ed D&D and we soon had a table going. Unfortunately, some people turned up who felt they'd booked into the game via Facebook. They were disappointed to see the table full. Fortunately, the "Mythic Britain for Runequest" referee did a great job of selling them on his game. Result! (It seemed).

I was grabbing passerby and pointing them at games, honest! But a group turned up who wanted a short, easy introduction to "Dungeons and Dragons" so I got to run Matt Colville's "Delian Tomb" - again! Shortly after starting we were joined by another player who just happened to be passing by. So I had a full table of five players. I looked up and there were eight tables of RPGs running, all of which seemed - to me - to have a full complement of players. Result! I shouldn't have worried. RPGs at DragonDaze seemed to have arrived at last.

I ran the game using The Black Hack rules, as I usually do, and not 5th edition D&D, as I had the previous weekend. Under 5th edition, this dungeon had proved deadly. It was more of a fun romp again using The Black Hack. But it wasn't all plain sailing. The party started extremely well, but when they slaughtered the goblins in the - apparently - final room, the Bugbear boss and the last goblin did the only sensible thing and grabbed to kidnapped children to use as human shields.

Pah! The halfling thief called their bluff and fired an arrow at the Bugbear. Thunk! Straight into the little girl. The Cleric threw himself in harms way to cure her as the Warrior swing his broadsword. Thunk! Straight into the little girl.

The goblin, meanwhile, was manoeuvring around the room and, holding a sword to the little boy's throat, indicated for the elven archer to back off. I was very clear about the situation. When the elf refused to move, well.........

The good news is both children survived (there's a table in the rules). Bad news - both horrendously disfigured.

When the bad guys are outnumbered and outgunned they're going to use hostages as human shields and, when they do, that's the time to get clever.

In an attempt to get a God to miraculously heal  the injured children, the party accidentally joined the 10% of groups who find the hidden final room. But when the Cleric failed to turn the skeletons within, things all went a bit pear-shaped. Only a bit of quick thinking by the Halfling saved the day. (Skeletons are not brilliant at avoiding tripwires.) But not fast enough to save the Cleric from falling to the swords of the undead.

So this dungeon, and The Black Hack, delivered a memorable experience as always.

Before, I could take breath, I had another group. This time they wanted to try horror, so I ran a game of The Cthulhu Hack. This was only the second time I've run the system and the first time I've run it as part of my Choose Your Adventure setup using an introductory adventure I'd been kindly given by the game's author. I'll admit I struggled a bit. I need to reread the rules and scenario again and, maybe, play a game refereed by someone who runs Cthulhu games more regularly than I do. I don't know how much of this showed, though, as the players used my pregens to break into the warehouse and disrupt the evil ceremony. This was, however, by missing the Cult Leader and shooting the sacrificial victim instead. When this summoned the usual roiling tentacles but stopped the Acolyte from controlling it, the group chose the better part valour. To be fair they did grab a truck outside  and try to get it to ram the beastie and blow it up - but they missed. (Should've stayed at the wheel.....)

I was eating a late lunch (a Marks and Spenser meal deal which I'd brought with me - I'm sure the catering facilities were fine) when the opportunity to run my introductory Steampunk adventure arose. This group proved to be really efficient at solving the mystery and dispatching the evil Prussian vivisectionist and his creations. The players enjoyed it a lot, but I've seen wilder endings. And they didn't even manage to kill one of the captives! (I was disappointed. I thought I'd seen a theme developing for the day.)

Though I spoke to lots of other guests during the afternoon, I didn't get to run another game. Everyone was rushing from event to event and only had half an hour to spare at most. I took a tour around the trade hall. As always, it was fun and eclectic. Though I think DragonDaze has been eclipsed by the rapidly rising star of AireCon, its offerings are far less vanilla than those of its new rival and the mighty Games Expo. I just thank god that there was such a big price tag on the Serenity (the Firefly spaceship) soft toy. Even I was tempted.

And Triple Ace's new game, in development, seems ready to revolutionise the way some products in our hobby are sold.

I did buy some dice from "Bob the diceman" for a(nother) new game idea I've had and might develop. (Too many ideas, not enough time!)

As the convention wound down, some of the RPG referees got together for an informal debrief. I felt it was a successful convention with lots of games running. The local gamers seemed to have turned out (for once). The location on the balcony had proved really suitable. Apart from my games there were games of:

5th edition D&D
Star Trek
Conan
Dresden Files
Call of Cthulhu
Hollow Earth Expeditions
Cortex+ hard military SciFi
Fate (not sure of the setting)
And
Mythic Britain for Runequest.

Unfortunately, it seems the players for the last game had bailed out after an hour leaving the Referee high and dry. Maybe they'd been looking for a short introductory game of D&D? And the Cortex+ referee had no players in the morning and had to wait until the afternoon for a game. And the Cthulhu referee "only had four players". There was a debate about whether games should be presigned or not. However, it was generally agree that Facebook was not an appropriate method for booking game slots. I personally lean towards the idea of a mixed economy of flexible drop in games (which I think this convention needs) and a small number of prebookable games.

I had a chat with the organiser on the way out. He was pleased. Attendance has hit 1,000 and he felt the convention had a great atmosphere.

For me it remains the undiscovered diamond in the convention schedule. It offers loads for a visitor to see and do and has capacity for far more attendees. It's the most child friendly event on the circuit, IMHO, and the RPG track has finally begun to work. It could do with some refinement, certainly. But I'll be back again in 2018. And the RPGs now OWN that balcony!