Con Report - Dragonmeet 2022
Dragonmeet, taking place on the 3rd December, was the convention that rounded out the year for 2022. Held in the Novotel West in Hammersmith, London, it's by far and away the furthest I've had to travel for a convention this year. But it is a convention that I have attended a few times previously.
I first attended this particular con back in 2017, when I ran my Trail of Cthulhu scenario The Keepers of the Woods. At that time, I made the journey down to London and back in a single day all the way from Durham, a journey that has you setting off on the 5am train and usually not getting back until getting on for midnight. I managed to survive that experience, but since I've always booked a hotel and gone down with my wife and spent a couple of days in the capital. This year, however, Elizabeth couldn't make the trip, having used all her annual leave earlier in the year. So, naively perhaps, I decided to do the one day round trip again. After all, I'd survived before, right?
Well, I had been a tad younger five years ago and, while I did manage to trip without being too affected by tiredness on the day, I spent most of the following Sunday in a daze. Or asleep. And since then I've been laid low with a bloody awful cold that I probably picked up from the con. Hence why I am only just writing about it now!
Despite the after-effects, though, Dragonmeet was a fun as I remembered it being the last time I attended back in 2019, just before the COVID outbreak took off. I didn't manage to go to last year's con, what with work and the lingering concerns from the pandemic casting a shroud over attending any conventions, but with me getting back into convention attendance this year, Dragonmeet was perfect for ending the year on.
While I have run games at Dragonmeet, I've never really opted to book onto RPG sessions on the day, instead usually perusing the vendor hall, going to a few seminars and bumping into people I know. This year, I decided to change that and book onto both morning and afternoon RPG sessions, choosing to play Never Going Home in the morning, run by Jim McCarthy of the Raspy Raven, and The One Ring 2e in the afternoon, run by James Semple. Both games were excellent.
Game 1: Never Going Home
Never Going Home is a game of occult and psychological horror set during an alternate history World War 1. The Veil has been torn asunder and now all sorts of unnatural horrors crowd the battlefields of France alongside the everyday soldiers who made up the ranks on the front lines. It's system is relatively simple, involving rolling pools of d6 and aiming to get 4-6 for a success, with certain tasks being more difficult and thus requiring more successes. A deck of cards also factor into the game, being used to decide initiative and also being played from your hand to decide the outcome of some broader, abstracted actions, such as successfully traversing battlefields etc. Our group of squaddies, attached to some form of secret weapons research facility, were tasked with escorting a reported to our base of operations so that they could report back to Blighty just how imperative the research was and how it would help win the war.
As with most escort missions, things did not go smoothly. After being attacked by corpse eaters—the games equivalent of ghouls—and then discovering the possibility that there was a spy in the midst of the base staff, our reporter decided to go and fiddle with a booby trapped corpse, nearly getting themselves killed! However, with some quick medic action, we managed to get them back to the base to recover. Once back on their feet, we were then tasked with guiding this reported, whose name was Lenny, around the base, making sure that they had everything they needed to cover their story, but without them finding out too much.
At this point, we were involved in overseeing a demonstration of the weapon that was being worked on—a super tank! I really enjoyed this bit, as Jim handed it over to us players to concoct just what was so special about this tank. Initial suggestions were a bit bland, so I suggested that its weaponry was designed to tear open a hole in the Veil and bring through all kinds of horrors on the enemy. This sparked off some imaginative ideas, including the tank's hull being electrified and it being powered by magic that required regular bloody sacrifices. Obviously, things didn't go to plan, with trench gremlins turning up and making a mess of things, nearly pulling the tank apart. However, some quick thinking on out teams part (and some bloody lucky dice rolls) got everything under control.
At the end of the day, the reporter was satisfied and we did find some information out that pointed to potential suspects as our spy. Informing our CO, though, we were surprised to find out that they had decided that Lenny's story needed to be nuked "by whatever means necessary". They left that in our hands, with a final twist of luck deciding our fate. You see, to decide the ending, we had to play in a card from our hands, with the suite deciding on the course of action we would take. However, in our battle against the trench gremlins, we'd burnt through all our cards, so each of us had to draw blind! Luck determined that the majority of us, myself included, decided that the CO was right, the story had to be stopped, but we decided that Lenny should survive. So we set up a plan to destroy all her notes and recordings in secret, but still dropped her off at the local village to make her way back to England. One of our comrades, however, had decided that they'd had enough with us and decided to turncoat and join with the enemy! Leaving a tripwire grenade in our barracks, they snuck out while the rest of us hit the mess hall to celebrate a mission well done, with us all being blown sky high when we returned for some well earned kip...
Overall, a great session. The system was nice and straight forward, requiring very few rules queries, and the story provided a good deal of action, investigation, player input and the odd dash (well, vast glug really) of comedy as we staggered about like members of Dad's Army. Very enjoyable.
Game 2: The One Ring
The afternoon's game was a session of The One Ring. Now, I wouldn't call myself a massive Tolkien nerd, but I do enjoy the books, the movies and I've everything published for both editions of the game, but I've only had the opportunity to play a brief one-shot of the new edition, and that I GM'd. So I was looking forward to the opportunity to be on the other side of the GM's screen.
The game was well run by James Semple, who started out at a bit of a breathless pace, having admitted that there might be a little too much content for the 4 hour time slot, but quickly settled into a rhythm as the game progressed. Their energy and enthusiasm for the game and the source material really shone through, making the whole experience great.
The scenario we found ourselves in began at a festival in Breeland, with myself playing a young Esmerelda Took and the others playing Bungo Baggins (my uncle), a Dunedain, a Dwarf, an Elf and a Man of Bree. The festival started off well enough until some rough looking ruffians were spotted amongst the crowd, leading to the unveiling of an orc who they had somehow smuggled in, who set about the festival much to the dismay of all in attendance. Fortunately, our plucky heroes brought them low and managed to round up most of the other evil doers for interrogation. From this, we found that they were after a particular mirror, which our dwarven friend had found in some old ruins far to the North, one of several items they had robbed from some tombs. After some deliberation and questioning of the leaders behind these ruffians, we decided to set out to return these ill-fated objects back to where they belonged.
This set us on a journey, one of the core parts of The One Ring. We journeyed up the Greenway northwards, eventually fathoming that our destination was Fornost Erain. On the way, a troll was battled, we were tracked by orcs, met and were sheltered by some elves, and took out some orc patrols before making our way into the haunted ruins of Deadman's Dike. There, we were attacked by snow wights while we solved the puzzle of which of the looted artefacts our dwarf had stolen needed returning to which tomb. Eventually, while our dwarf, elf and Ranger held the wights at bay, the hobbits and the Man of Bree managed to puzzle everything out and thus the wights were laid to rest once more! We then returned back to Bree, whereupon we were met by Bilbo Baggins who, after hearing our tale, decided to lay it down in true hobbit fashion with the title "Seven Snow Wights and a Dwarf" (badum-tish!).
After much groaning at this most terrible dad joke shoehorned in at the end, we all agreed that the game had been excellent fun. My only comment on it was that, with six players in total, the sense of involvement was somewhat lessened and the opportunity for roleplaying a little diminished compared to the morning's game. However, the story made up for this with plenty of Tolkienesque moments throughout.
Vendor Hall
Between my two games, I did managed to squeeze in some time to whip around the vendor hall. Knowing that I would likely have but a limited time, I had come prepared with a list of things I was after. This was mostly filled by new titles for Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, but I was to be disappointed there as Cubicle 7 had nothing new on show either for WFRP or for Soulbound. Still, that opened up opportunities to spend elsewhere, allowing me to pick up Ruins of the Lost Realm for TOR2e, a bevy of items from Pelgrane Press, taking full advantage of their 4 for 3 offer, Paul Mitchener's Out of the Ashes, and Regency Cthulhu from Chaosium. I also stopped by Chris Bissette's Loot the Room stall and had him talk me into buying both In the Blue Light and Beyond the Drowned Spire, two zine adventures for OSR/Mork Borg. I also took the opportunity to pick up my Kickstarter copy of The Medieval Marginagerie from Paul Baldowski, as well as a copy of the HLPHS's print of Lovecraft's commonplace book—a fine source for Call of Cthulhu inspiration! Finally, I picked up the last two definitive edition books in the Kai series for Lone Wolf, a choose your own adventure series that was pretty formative in my roleplaying and gaming youth. Plus, I also got these signed by Gary Chalk, so I was very happy about that!
A final stop off at the Free League stall after my final game of the day, and just before the vendor hall closed no less, allowed me to make one last spur of the moment purchase, picking up the Blade Runner starter set. I managed to resist buying the core rulebook for the same, as I had it down on my RPG Geek Secret Cthanta wish list , along with a ton of Modiphius products, meaning that I also avoided their stall as well. It was mostly all for the best, though, as I ended up getting the Utopia Planitia source book for Star Trek Adventures from Cthanta, and Modiphius just dropped everyone on their mailing list and early Christmas present of 33% off all their core products, so I'll be able to order much of what I passed up cheaper now anyway. Except for Blade Runner...I'll have to buy that later when it comes to retail at my FLGS (where I get discount!).
Final thoughts
Dragonmeet was a lot of fun again this year. Both games I got to play in were excellent (and a huge thank you to Jim McCarthy and all the players in the morning's game for accommodating me into the Never Going Home despite me arriving 30mins later due to a delayed train!) and I got to pick up some great books that I've been wanting for a while.
What I will say, however, is that next year I might choose not to book in for two RPG session. While the games were great, the timings meant that I had very little opportunity to really wander around the vendor hall and visit all the smaller stands and see the more unique offerings that were available. There are also certainly a few things that I missed by being guided by my preplanned list and a few books that I wish I'd been able to pick up while I was there—and might have done if I'd been taking more time. I also felt that I didn't have much chance to bump into a chat to other gamers. While I did bump into a few people I knew from other cons or off of Twitter, we didn't get much chance to properly chat, as I was either between games, getting ready to head out for my train home, or stuck in the excessively loud bar area.
Also, next year, I'll be trying to plan on booking a hotel, which should allow me to take things a little easier and not feel quite so exhausted afterwards!