Glad to hear you had a great time James, but it's a shame I didn't get to play in any of your games.

I'll start a seperate thread to debrief about the stall, but this seems like a good place to comment on my own thoughts of the con. I had a great time! Even better than last year, if that's possible.

I ran a fantastic game of Covenant on thursday afternoon which was really very messy, a madcap Scooby Doo-goes-to-Innsmouth-esque game of Dead of Night on friday morning, and a really fun Charlie's Angels-esque game of Best Friends on the sunday morning.

I also got to play Dead of Night, for the first time ever! Scott ran a really creepy Dead of Night game on the thursday evening, in which I played a kid who died midway through and got to haunt his brother as a ghost. Top notch stuff, with a really dark ending. Very MR James or the Others.

I also got a spot of playtesting in too, with a (far too) quick game of Ordinary Angels, as well as a game of Iain's Stitch too.

All in all a great con, for me and the CE!

Wary as I was of anything advocated by Mr. Stokes, I actually really enjoyed myself down at Conception. I will post a fuller reflection later, when my brain and body are less tired but in short:

I ran MJ, twisted, Contenders, awesome, two playtests, played several games, mostly as psychopaths, drank loads of beer and ate well, including a fantastic roast dinner that ruth cooked.

It was great seeing Andrew, Ruth, Janos, Scott, Rich and Claire again and getting to know Gaz, Greg, Jeff, Steph and David. I think that is everyone and I think you should all be impressed I remembered their names.

Once my brain is working more I will post up sales figures, the con from the CE perspecetive, APs and my design thoughts after the two playtests I ran.

All in all it was an ace con that I am going to get a scottish contingent down for next year.

Cheers

Iain

Mob Justice now available!

'The Giant Brain':Small games, big ideas.

I echo everyone's comments.

It's a shame I didn't get to play anything with James. Actually I didn't really get to speak to him and barely saw him either :(

I'm fucking knackered. I'll post more later but the short version is that Conception 2008 was fucking awesome. The only bad thing about it is that it's over until next year.

I'm glad it was good. I'm very sorry I missed it. Oh well: I hope it was nice having extra room in the chalet.

Graham

Cross-posted with UKroleplayers

Last year's Conception was my favourite con to date, but this year's has raised the bar again. I managed to run eight games and play four, and they were all great fun. Highpoints were:

1) Having a group of largely new DitV players, who clicked instantly and came up with some great ideas. One player, Duncan, decided that his Dog, Brother Nathaniel, was a political animal, keeping one eye on becoming an elder of the Faith once his career as a Dog was over. At one point Brother Nathaniel had a quiet conversation with his uncle, the Branch Steward, in which his uncle admitted that he was responsible for everything bad that was happening in town. "Why don't we just keep this between us for now?" said Brother Nathaniel, as the rest of the players went wild.

2) Running Dread: The First Book of Pandemonium for a group of players with little Indie experience. While Dread is actually a pretty trad game, I handed over narration rights on successes (I never actually explained this, but just said, "So what happens?" a lot). After about ten minutes of mild awkwardness, the lights came on in everyone's eyes and the game started rocking hard. The players all cottoned on to being arse-kicking psychopaths with alarming ease, and the game was a very entertaining bloodbath.

3) Playing Deadlands with Evilgaz. Once again, he proved himself to be amazing at playing memorable, fun NPCs, and the game was spectacular. It was my second game of Deadlands to date, and I'll definitely be playing it again.

4) Andrew Kenrick's game of Covenant, where we all played the Chief Whips of the various political parties (and the head of the civil service), engaged in a conspiracy to bring down the mayor of London. It ended up feeling a bit like House of Cards, only even nastier.

5) Finally getting to play Mob Justice, which turned out to be every bit as brutal as I'd hoped. Who would have thought that a family of gangsters would turn out to be that violent.

6) After spending the first thirty minutes of my Dead of Night game, Lullabies For Dead Children, worrying that I'd made a terrible mistake by making it so loose, having the players start doing progressively more disturbing things (Iain wins for putting twigs and paraffin over another child's hiding place during a game of hide and seek, before burning him alive) until even I was creeped out.

7) Having the single most fucked-up game of Jailbreak I've been seen with a great bunch of players (nine of them!). The ending, with three of the player characters settling down to the leisurely vivisection of a fourth, will stay with me for a long time. The player who took the role of Morton (Unfortunately I've forgotten his name) was especially disturbing, and I was relieved to speak to him afterwards and discover that he wasn't actually that scary!

8) A player in my Spirit of the Century game, called Andy, who took the role of the drunken brawler, Kirby 'Twin-Guns' Killinghast and made him his own. His decision to try to stave off an Atlantean invasion of London by setting a Pearly King up as the supposed ruler of the British empire made for much amusement, as did his defeat of the Egyptian goddess of night by punching her in the jaw, kissing her and giving her the consequence of "besotted with Kirby".

9) Rich Stokes' Best Friends game, where we played the members of the Village People. It was every bit as camp and bitchy as I'd hoped, and I'll never be able to look at the governor of California in the same way again.

10) The Primetime Adventures game on Sunday morning, where we explored the secret history of the Victorian space race, with the British and Germans fighting for control of the green hell that is Venus. Evilgaz took no time at all in dropping into the role of a blustery Prussian officer with little-man syndrome, and had us all in stitches throughout the session. It was possibly the single funniest game I've ever played, for reasons I will never discuss on a public forum.

Anyway, thanks to all of you who made it such a memorable and fun convention! I'll definitely be back next year.

The only game from a CE member I got to play in was Scott's 'Dread' on the Wednesday night. Between running more game's than I'd planned to and sharing a room with someone who had very bad 'flu, I was feeling pretty fatigued even by Friday morning. I did stop by the stall a few times to check up on things and interrupted Scott & Claire's game on saturday night to offer them birthday cake ;-)

I think it was a mixed blessing that i was largely running games for 4 players: that meant a lot more player contribution but the sign-up sheets filled up very quickly :-(

I thought Conception was a good con and it was made in part due to meeting some of the CE groovers and gaming with them. Kind of guaranteed a decent session. I also managed to get my hippy on a few times.

Enjoyed Mob Justice and bought it largely so that Iain would stop talking to me. I'll have a thorough read and attempt some AP if I get chance. I've got Issues with the baddie (in the climatic scene) getting a big ass hand of cards and we're all doing our individual thing as players, giving him a good chance of recouping lots of chips easily. However, I need to play it out properly to work this out.

Agon was a decent session, but could probably have done with the other players joining in a bit more. I dominated and as a result was most Glorious at the end. Rich ran a smooth game, but the game itself is not for me I don’t think. Maybe other people joining in the banter or trying to outdo me would have made it come alive more?

Prime Time Adventures worked out great. Scott’s eloquent direction and a good, active bunch of players definitely made it. Venusian Fire Monkeys are best avoided. I’m not convinced I’d like to play it for a series, or that it could be done straight, but the others tell me that’s when it comes into its own. So I’m going to borrow it from A to the K and find out if that’s the truth.

Did a spot of playtesting and think in both cases my view was that the GM needs to do more aggressively. But then I’m “trad”.

At the Con itself there seemed to be lots of indie left-field hippy games being played, notably Dead of Night and Cold City, a lot run by people other than the Collective Endeavour. A testament to the extent those products are breaking into mainstream.

It was good to meet the Stokemeister properly (possibly the only man I know who rants more than me) and the lovely Clare, who proved that you can be a lumpy-jumper and a good roleplayer. I may have to revise my Ven diagrams. It was a pleasure to finally game Iain too and even though his moods altered on the roll of a die (literally) we had fun. I also met Dave, Jan, Greg, Geoff and countless other faces, which is all good, plus getting more quality gaming time with the likes of Scott, who I’ve bumped into at conventions over the years, which is always a pleasure, never a chore. The only chap I didn’t get to game with was that Graham W character. Maybe next time…

Time permitting and assuming I get a lift I’d love to go next year and bring some of my crew if possible. You never know, I might get my hippy on and run something for the CE.

Rock.

Hi all,

I've only just signed up to the forum, but since I met a bunch of you at Conception I thought I'd say hi.

Hi.

Conception was my first con ever, so thanks to all those that made it something I want to do again. Cheers to Gaz for bring to life NPCs for Scott to gun down. Cheers to Scott for running all the games I played in on Saturday, and scaring me witless with something that in fact only wanted to give me a spanner. Cheers to Rich for making it possible for me to watch a man get way too into playing a gay character whilst his wife sat next to him, with child. Thanks to Dave for giving me the strangest occurrence of the con (him actually being there). Thanks to Iain for pointing a gun at my head several times. Thanks to Ruth for cooking an ace roast dinner, and thanks to Andrew for bringing her!

Oh and thanks to James, who will forever be known to me as random cake guy, for giving me random cake.

And that's pretty much the last time you'll ever see me say nice things in a post.

Greg

All I can say is that Conceptions is getting better and better every year. My one complaint was that games were getting signed up to faster than the sign-up sheets were being posted! Of course being part of the dual chalet CE goodness meant I got to engage in some incestuous gaming and get in on Andrews Covenant game and Scott's SotC game before the sheets went up.

All in all I had a really good time, drank WAY too much beer and got to meet and catch up with a whole bunch of cool people. So thanks to Andrew, Ruth, Jan, Dave, EvilGaz, Rich, Claire, Iain, Scott and Greg (Slythar!!!) for making the con so much fun. Special thanks to Ruth for cooking a wonderful meal for 12 on the Friday, that was a feat of legend. You know we'll expect it next con for 3 chalets though, right? ;o)

~Geoff

Dread Fuzzy Blog