[UK Birmingham] Games Expo 2011

[gentleman john]

Games Expo is in Birmingham over the 3rd to 5th June this year. I'm going to be running two old-school games: one of Labyrinth Lord, one of Mutant Future. Details of the games are here:

The Old King's Tomb: http://www.ukgamesexpo.co.uk/game.php?id=RPG88
Welcome to Earth: http://www.ukgamesexpo.co.uk/game.php?id=RPG90

Just a note to those who are interested ... Games Expo charges for entry and games. The advance sign up sheet for the games is here: http://www.ukgamesexpo.co.uk/bookevents.php?category=rpg

[Wulfgar22]

Yet again I won't be able to make it...but I really am planning on hitting Dragonmeet this year. Will you be there?

[gentleman john]

Been there every year since it began, although it may be a casualty of the economies this year

The hotel we usually stay at has increased its prices to silly levels - even for London - and our daughter is at the age where the hotel management will demand she has her own room. We're currently looking to see if we can find a cheaper hotel and decide whether we can trust our daughter to behave at home for a weekend. Failing that, we could always try the "day return" option.

You never know your luck.

[gentleman john]

Just a bit of thread necromancy and an update on the bookings.

The Saturday morning LL game (The Old King's Tomb) still has all six spaces available. However, the Sunday morning MF game (Welcome to Earth) has only two places left.

For some reason, the popularity of old school dungeon crawls seems to be down this year.

[gentleman john]

Well, I've finally recovered from Games Expo. At my age I should know better than to try and emulate the gaming of my youth. After all, a gentleman needs his sleep. And tea. Lots of tea.

Anyway, just in case anyone is interested, here's a rundown of some of the games I ran over the weekend.

The Saturday morning slot was the Labyrinth Lord game. I was running a homebrew dungeon crawl, "The Old King's Tomb". I was trying to go for an adventure in the classic style; you know: party enters tomb, party loots tomb. Unfortunately I only had two players for the morning game and two characters would just have been chewed by the adventure. So, I let them have two characters each.

The adventure centred around the PCs exploring a desert tomb left over from a previous empire. The tomb itself was built on three levels carved into a sandstone plateau. The defences were a mixture of technological, architectural, magic and undead, spread over a total of 25 locations - difficult, but not insurmountable to a group of 6th level characters (1 elf, 1 thief, 1 dwarf and 1 cleric).

The first encounter of the game was a dozen zombies. Judicious use of a scroll of Ward Undead and a successful roll by the cleric managed to hold enough of the zombies at bay for the elf and the dwarf to polish off the rest. However, a corridor filled with mechanical traps gave the players pause for thought and forced them back to explore the upper section of the tomb. This proved to be a challenge as well, as the PCs encountered a number of areas that could only be reached through large, stone slabs.

Disheartened by the effort of going through the slabs, the PCs returned to the lower levels, disabling the corridor of traps only to discover a false burial chamber. The next section of the tomb also contained a false burial chamber, but after encountering a ghoul that paralysed the dwarf for an hour, the PCs decided that there was something fishy about the other coffins and elected to rest and recover before returning to their explorations.

For the final phase they returned to the upper level and pressed on through the slabs, using the dwarf's pickaxe to tunnel their way through the slabs and avoid some traps. This led them to the true burial chamber and its undead demi-lich inhabitant (a lich, but with a lower power level). Unfortunately, their cleric tried to turn it and was hit by a Maze spell that took them out of the fight for over an hour. The others tried to close for hand-to-hand combat but were blinded by the effects of a Prismatic Sphere, leaving them vulnerable to the lich. The elf was killed by a brace of Magic Missiles, while the dwarf was drained of all his hit points. The thief elected to jump down a chimney rather than face certain death, but this only resulted in their death.

The cleric returned to see the results of the carnage and the lich waiting for him.

"What do you do?" I asked.

"I'm running. I need reinforcements," the player replied.

The cleric left with the lich's laughter ringing in his ears. The player turned to his partner.

"And that's how we did it in 1979."

The Sunday morning slot was a Mutant Future game. However, instead of using a post-apocalyptic setting, I had decided to set it on 21st Century Earth. The players were tourists come to Earth for a big game hunt. Fortunately I got more players than for the Saturday am game (four in total), so everyone got one character. One player elected to play a mutant plant (the Colonel, a Great White Hunter), two went for androids (cybernetic warriors with built in weaponry) while the last one elected to play a mutant animal armed with a plasma cannon.

The PCs were armed, equipped and dropped in the middle of Podunk County - a farming community somewhere in the country of Usa - with only their weapons and a malfunctioning robot guide for company. They immediately set on their mission to reduce the population of Earth in the name of bored, rich aliens everywhere. First kill went to the mutant animal with his plasma cannon when he literally blew a cow into hamburger and stampeded the rest of the herd. This drew the attention of the farmer, who fell victim to one of the androids' warp swords.

The Colonel complained that this wasn't sporting, and set out to look for game that presented more of a threat. This duly arrived in the form of a police patrol investigating a UFO sighting. The police patrol lasted long enough to impress the Colonel, who got on the police radio and taunted the sheriff into sending more into an ambush. Unfortunately for the PCs, the cops were not stupid and engaged in a firefight that actually managed to hurt the PCs. This really impressed the Colonel, who led the rest of the party in search of more game of the same calibre.

When they reached the town, the PCs found that the table shad been turned. The town was being evacuated and the National Guard had been called in. This show of resistance forced the PCs to retreat and hide in the buildings of the town, where they were easy meat for an attack from support helicopters. Three of the PCs (including the Colonel) elected to go for a "Butch and Sundance" moment rather than surrender to the primitive Earth creatures. The last PC used the diversion as an opportunity to sneak away, leaving her comrades to their fate.

Just goes to show that primitive ape descendants are still to be feared.

[Oublieditor]

Hi John,

I didn't have time to come and play in your LL game as I was only at the show for one day and I wanted to take in as much of it as possible. It's a good show and I'm hoping to be back next year for the whole thing.

My show report is HERE

[gentleman john]

Oh ... That's what the rest of the con looked like

I spent so damn long in that basement, I thought I was going to end up with the Innsmouth Look. As far as there being an OSR-shaped hole in the UK hobby, there are a couple of products going atm. Arion Games have the Fighting Fantasy system out again via Cubicle 7, as well as reprinting Maelstrom. Also, Simon Burley was knocking around and running Golden Heroes, which he has re-released under a new name. We are doing stuff, it's just that the OGL didn't apply to the British old-school games, so they are still bound up in licensing - or so it looks.