[UK] Con-Quest in Derby

[gentleman john]

Some news for UK gamers who will be in the vicinity of Derby on May 4th this year.

Darran Sims is running Con-Quest in Derby again. As it is my local con (almost on my doorstep), I am going to be there as usual along with the rest of the active membership of Team 8. This year I am going to be running games in two slots. One of the games will be a S&S2e game, "Pirates of Vega". Guess what that one is about. The other game will be a Dungeonworld game, "The Sacrifice Grove". Details of the games will be going up on the Con-Quest website shortly.

If you want to find out more about Con-Quest, the URL is: [url]http://www.con-quest.co.uk/[/url]

Hope to see some of the people from the forums this year!

[gentleman john]

So, yesterday, as well as being "Star Wars" day, was also the day of Con-Quest. This is DerbSo, yesterday, as well as being "Star Wars" day, was also the day of Con-Quest. This is Derby's local gaming con that has been going on for four years (I think). It was a bit later than usual as Darran (the organiser) had managed to get the 4th of May. There were only two gaming slots in the day, and I was running games in both of them.

The first slot of the day was a game of Starships & Spacemen. The players were the officers of the CSS Battle of Dublin, a destroyer that was patrolling the border between the Vegan Autonomous Region and the Confederation. Their mission was to ensure the safety of Confederation vessels and prevent contraband being smuggled out of Vegan space. Of course, this being a con adventure, something else was going to happen.

The adventure opened with the CSS Battle of Dublin receiving an automated distress call from a vessel just inside the VAR. The captain ordered the Dublin to travel at maximum possible speed, reducing the ship's energy reserves to the bare minimum necessary and giving his crew only two hours to make preparations. The crew wasted no time, and quickly set about readying their equipment for trouble.

When the Dublin arrived at the scene of the incident, they discovered a Confederation medium freighter, the Arabian Knight, was stranded without power at the centre of a strange energy cloud. Sensor scans showed that conditions onboard the Arabian Knight were deteriorating. The captain of the Dublin elected to use a tractor beam to pull the Arabian Knight out of the cloud before sending an away team in a shuttle. The away team, consisting of the Dublin's security officer, medic and science officer, boarded the Arabian Knight. As life support had been off for a number of hours, the crew of the freighter were suffering from hypothermia and anoxia. After evacuating the freighter's crew, the away team checked the freighter over and found that the energy banks had been completely drained and the vessel's cargo was missing.

An interview with the freighter's captain told the players that the Arabian Knight had been attacked by a vessel that spat an energy cloud at them, causing their engines to fail. The crew of the freighter were unable to stop their holds being ransacked, and were left to die. The captain of the Dublin ordered a sweep of nearby space to detect ionic residue from the drives, and our heroes were able to follow the trail into the nearby Velor system.

Once in orbit around Velor, the crew of the Dublin contacted the Vegan authorities. Two officials requested permission to beam aboard: the local Confederation ambassador and the planetary security commander. The captain of the Dublin negotiated a deal for the survivors from the Arabian Knight to be repatriated and to go after the pirates. After the local security commander left, the Confederation ambassador held private briefing for the captain and his command staff, passing onto them intelligence about the pirates' operations. Meanwhile, the Dublin's security officer collaborated with the local security commander to gain some local intelligence on the situation.

Armed with the information, the PCs came up with a plan to shadow the next vessel leaving Velor (a Zangid freighter) and intercept any attackers. The Dublin was positioned in the Velor system's asteroid belt, and the crew waited. They were rewarded when the Zangid freighter was attacked. The crew of the Dublin moved in, and found the Zangid freighter docked to a Vegan armed freighter. They moved to attack, aiming for the Vegan's engines in order to cripple it. The Vegan retaliated with its energy cloud weapon, but the Dublin's engineer had prepared by installing emergency power circuits and breakers. As a result, the Dublin's power was only down briefly, and it was able to continue the fight.

With the Vegan freighter crippled, groups of security personnel were transported across from the Dublin with order to capture the criminals alive. The first group (which included the PCs) transported straight onto the freighter's bridge and engaged the crew. As further waves of Confederation personnel came across the Vegan captain gave the order to abandon ship and set the freighter's nuclear drives to blow. The Dublin's engineer managed to jettison the freighter's engine pod just in time.

The end result was that the PCs managed to capture the Vegan pirates with enough evidence to smash their cartel, and also achieved a minor diplomatic victory by aiding the Zangids.

The reception from the players was good. Once they got into the swing of the game being related to ST:TOS, they just went with the flow and acted out the parts. Key lesson from me for future games: PCs never just fail rolls. They fail rolls for a reason. While the reason may change the scenario, it gives the players the feeling that they have not just been screwed over by the referee, rather that there is some difficulty they must work harder to overcome.

The second slot of the day was a game of Dungeon World. The goal of the scenario was for the players (a standard Level 1 Dungeon World group) to make their way to the rumoured Sacrifice Grove at the centre of an ancient forest. Some of them (the wizard, the fighter and the bard) were there for the glory and the treasure; the rest (the cleric, the druid and the paladin) were there to eliminate the scourge of evil from the land. Suffice to say, the game went down very well. While half of the players were familiar with Dungeon World, one of them was a complete novice to roleplaying. This young lady (who decided to play the druid in the game) was so taken with the experience that she decided she had to get a copy of the game for herself. I think that counts as a success.