Herowars Games at GenConUk

[MrWrong]

Herowars games at GenconUk 17-21st April Olympia 2 London Uk

Over all 4 days of the convention there will be a diverse range of 11 scenarios available. As well as the usual episodes based around the Orlanthi our team of heroic narrators will be running two non-human episodes featuring Trolls and Dwarfs, plus two all Lunar episodes. We shall also be running a game of Roderick Robertson's skirmish level game Heroband.

For more details and times

http://www.eurolog.org/gencon2003.htm

Regards

[Ron Edwards]

Fight the good fight! Good luck with the scenarios and please post here about them afterwards!

Best,
Ron

[MrWrong]

Well here's the Report of how the Hero Quest games went at Gen Con UK as writen by my fellow Narrator Mick Rowe. As you can see from the length of the report he and the rest of the Narrators and players had a barrel of fun;

"Hi folks,

As you know Darran, Newt [aka MrWrong], and I have spent Easter at Gencon Uk, demoing Heroquest.

Four days of drink, sleep deprevation, drink, eating, drink, bargain hunting, drink,oh and a bit demoing as well. It was excellent, and i particularly want to thank Newt  and Eurolog for organising everything so all Darran and I had to do was turn up,Darran for continuing to ply me with alcohol when my meagre cash ran out. I'd thank one of the players too, who supplied me with tinnies one evening when i was not playing in any games, unfortunately he supplied so many i've forgot his name.

The hotel was good, nice large rooms, colour TV, en suite bathroom, breakfast in bed.A bit of a change from the student digs at Leicester. Its onlydrawback was Darran's snoring, I never realised he'd swallowed a bullroarer. It was a twenty minute walk fromthe hotel to get to Olympia, fortunately it didn't rain too much so wasnt a problem.

The event venue was Olympia 2. This is a large conference hall somewhere in London (not exactly sure where, but it was easy to get to on the underground). It consisted of four floors, the basement and ground levels being taken up by CCG competitions and networked computer gamimg. The 2nd floor held the trade stands, and the 3rd floor held the role playing events.

I spent most of my time on this floor (or in the pub), but we did go on a scouting mission around the trade stands to see what Hero Wars and RQ goodies we could pick up. We saw quite a few of the old boxed sets, but their prices were extortionate,Borderlands was £80, Gateway Bestiary and Foes were £25 each. The one true bargain was the Thieves World boxed set and Companion which was initially £25,but on the last day Darran got it half price, a mere £12 for a very good citysupplement.

As to the gaming, each of us were scheduled to run 8 sessions, unfortunately a mix up by the Gen Con organisers meant that a few of the games didn't take place(because they didnt give out any tickets for the sessions in question). so half the events didn't happen.

Its a pity because those that did take place were pretty well attended. each game had at least 5 players (where the numbers were small Darran and I filled in the spaces to make a full group). The players were mostly made up of people of had bought Hero Wars but not got their heads around the rules, old RQ2/3 players who had heard of Hero Wars and wanted to try it out, or those who were completely new to the system andthe game world. We had no active Hero Wars players, but these were never our intended target anyway

I ran 'A Hanging and Hunting' and 'Destors Fort', episodes from our campaign. I've been gamemastering/narrating in glorantha for twenty years plus, but this is the first time i've tried demoing gloranthan games to strangers. So i wasa bit nervous as to what style of game to play and how Gloranthan to make the games.

To get the gloranthan feel I placed the micro myths on each hero sheet, for the playersto use or ignore as they wished. These included cut down versions of those in the yahoo group files section. I didnt tell them they were important, in fact i didnt even mention them i just gave them plenty of time to read the sheet before we began play. Then as theywent through the story the events occurred similar to the myths, they could use them as hints. It was incredible that when they got to part of the story where their myth or ritual was useful they all got it. There eyes shone and theywere 'illuminated', more was going on than i was actually saying and they then used the myth or ritual to develop the story themselves. They even found places to use the myths I hadn't thought of, which to my mind was brilliant.

AFAIK everyone enjoyed themselves, I certainly did. Importantly, We
all made the players comfortable. They laughed, fought, and looked on in horror at the appropriate moments. It was interesting to see how the story changed with different players. In one session of Destors Fort Filbar criticalled his feeling in crack roll and pulled out Palashee's Longaxe instead of Jaram's Staff. They then opened the fort and returned to the village where Hendrakos the king said "That's my father's staff, It can only be wielded by the king, give it to me". Filbar replied "Hold on i'm weilding it, that means I'm the king" and promptly started to regale the onlookers with why they should choose him.

The feedback i got was totally positive. I thought the magic system might be difficult to get across, but after I described what happened when a player cast the first magic spell, they were off and running, each making up effects from those listed for their character. I've got to say it was a buzz to see the eyes of players unfamiliar with the system, suddenly light up when they realised how simple and how powerful the system is.

It made my day and i think it made their day too, to paraphrase one of
the players."Wow. I've been trying to understand the rules for months, and you'vemade them understandable in two minutes". This was a bit of an ego trip and bodes well for the release of Heroquest, where the rules are far clearer.

We even had one ardent RQ2er, who regaled the group with the sad story
of Glorantha's fall from grace via RQ3 and Hero Wars, and how crap these later games were. It looked like he was going to be a thorn in the side of a decent game, but by the end of the game he was the most enthusiactic among them. He even came back to join in a second session

All those that spoke to me afterwards said that they like the system
and weregoing buy Heroquest in June. Good news me thinks. Thus my overallfeeling is that the hero wars sessions were a great success. Would I do it again? Youbet!

Hopefully, by the time of the next major con, and if Newt's plans come
together we'll havemore narrators and more sessions to inspire even more newbies to the ways of Glorantha and Hero Quest.

Cheers,
Mick"

[Mike Holmes]

We even had one ardent RQ2er, who regaled the group with the sad story of Glorantha's fall from grace via RQ3 and Hero Wars, and how crap these later games were. It looked like he was going to be a thorn in the side of a decent game, but by the end of the game he was the most enthusiactic among them. He even came back to join in a second session.

That, sir, is way cool. I love it when a player suddenly gets an entirely new paradigm because he's seen it work effectively in play. Congratulations.

I am now cleaning up drool from my keyboard; drool that was caused by my desire to own a copy of HQ. No other game is nearly as high on my "need it" list.

Mike

[MrWrong]

We even had one ardent RQ2er, who regaled the group with the sad story of Glorantha's fall from grace via RQ3 and Hero Wars, and how crap these later games were. It looked like he was going to be a thorn in the side of a decent game, but by the end of the game he was the most enthusiactic among them. He even came back to join in a second session.

That, sir, is way cool. I love it when a player suddenly gets an entirely new paradigm because he's seen it work effectively in play. Congratulations.

Ah gawd I Narrated that Game! It was really tough at times, as well as the RQ2 fanatic, we also had another of my favourite HW demo beasties the player who "nicks bits of Herowars to use with Runequest". Such players invariably have a smug halo around them as you run the game, and are for ever suggesting mad RQ/HW rules hybrids when ever they fancy being a ruleslawyer. They are entitled to their own opinion, but its annoying when you are trying to teach the game to newcomers and all you hear is the refrain "oh in my game we use a mix of....." To make matters worse the newbies where all dreadfully hung over from the night before...the amount of coffee that was drunk at that game! We got there in the end though. The RQ2 was well into playing his Lunar Missionary, something he admited he wouldn't have been able to do in RQ2, the RQ/HW hybrider stoped quoting rules mods, and was playing straight by the rules (I think it helped that I pointed out that I was running the game from the draft Hero Quest rules...the RQ/HW hydrid is often as a defense to the fact they didn't like the editing of HW and only use the bits that made sense to them) and the newbies had got enough of a grasp of the rules and setting to really go for it.

The toughest demo game, in any system I have ever run though.

I am now cleaning up drool from my keyboard; drool that was caused by my desire to own a copy of HQ. No other game is nearly as high on my "need it" list.

Mike

I was lucky to get a draft copy the morning I went to GenconUK, and nearly missed the train because of it. It was like Christmas came early :)
I was entertaining thoughts that if HQ was just HW re-edited I was going to drop playing it and bugger off and run Warhammer RPG. Now I'm gathering the troops and getting ready to resurrect the ongoing campiagn I played 4 years solid, but stopped for the last 3 years.

Overall they've managed to greatly simplyfy the game and setting without dumbing it down or lossing the charm of the setting.  Plus there's a ton of new gamming goodness in it :)

[Palashee]

Thanks Newt for posting my report.

I am now cleaning up drool from my keyboard; drool that was caused by my desire to own a copy of HQ. No other game is nearly as high on my "need it" list.

Mike

You'd better have a cloth ready for this.
Having briefly seen the new HQ rules before we ran sessions at Gencon let me say that they are excellent. I'm betting they are even better than you think are. They certainly surpassed my expectations.
Clear to read, simple to understand and most importantly playable - very very playable.

Cheers,
Palashee (Mick Rowe)

[Mike Holmes]

Yer killin' me guys. I'm almost dehydrated.

Don't build it up any more, though. I want to be surprised by the quality. Build it up too much, and I'll be dissapointed when it's not the perfect game. So let's leave it at that.

Thanks for the reports, though. :-)

Mike

[Palashee]

Mike Holmes wrote:

Yer killin' me guys. I'm almost dehydrated.

Don't build it up any more, though. I want to be surprised by the quality. Build it up too much, and I'll be dissapointed when it's not the perfect game. So let's leave it at that.

Thanks for the reports, though. :-)

Ok, now HeroQuest is finally out, are you disappointed or were we right to hype up the game.

Cheers,
Mick