The UK convention scene is growing. For many years Great Britain has been blessed with a plethora of small one day conventions and ‘game days’ around the bigger events like UK Games Expo and Dragonmeet. With the recent growth in these events, it feels like a weekend rarely goes by without someone posting a session report or a review of a convention. It’s a great time for Road Crew judges to get out and run some games! And here’s a short recap of a few of those shows!
The Owlbear and Wizard’s Staff 2019 (Leamington Spa, UK)
After attending last year’s inaugural Owlbear and Wizard’s Staff convention as a player, Judge Bruce Cunnington was quick to sign up for this year’s event and offer to run some DCC Lankhmar. As the schedule was confirmed it was great to see that demand for the DCC games on offer was high.
Judge Bruce ran Acting Up In Lankhmar, a scenario he picked at random to be his Lankhmar convention game for 2019—and by pure (fleeting?) luck it turned out to be the perfect convention scenario! His Owlbear and Wizard’s Staff players were familiar with the setting and although some had played DCC before, it was everyone’s first taste of DCC Lankhmar. They rose to the occasion and much like Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser avoided complete catastrophe, turning near-defeat into a victory by the narrowest of margins!
Across the room, Judge Andy ran Enter The Dagon for a full table with some experienced players and new blood to DCC. The group worked well together, turning the tables on their would-be poisoner and battling it out using the slick, slimmed-down spell duel rules provided in that module.
BurritoCon4 (Manchester UK)
BurritoCon is organized by Neil Benson and held in one of Manchester’s finest gaming stores. BurritoCon has grown quickly from a grassroots meetup of like-minded gamers into a very well organized mini-convention.
Once again Judge Bruce opted to run Lankhmar, this time using Blasphemy and Larceny In Lankhmar which, despite being a lot of gaming for the relatively short (three hour) BurritoCon slots, ran very well. This time the majority of the players were new to Dungeon Crawl Classics and they were soon learning the hard way about the magic system. A wizard cast a very potent Choking Cloud that did more damage to his own party than the wolf spiders they were fighting!
Meanwhile, in the post-apocalyptic land of Umerica, Judge Griff was showing a bunch of players new to DCC how to roll characters up the ‘right way’—3D6 down the line of course! Griff’s band of merry scavengers were herded into a mall (or was it a palace?) to tackle the ‘Vendibeast’—a living soda machine that contained various caffeinated “Fountain Goo” beverages! Judge Griff is so fluent at describing modern-day items and concepts in terms that Umerica or MCC characters would understand that it can be easy to wonder if he’s actually from the wasteland himself and not Leamington Spa as he claims.
If there’s a downside to having so many shows to choose from it’s that inevitably some will fall on the same day! Thankfully the Road Crew is growing, and whilst Judges Griff and Bruce tackled BurritoCon, Judge Andy hit up Spaghetti ConJunction in Birmingham!
Spaghetti ConJunction 3b (Birmingham, UK)
Spaghetti ConJunction is a one-day tabletop RPG now in its third year, organized by stalwarts of the UK RPG hobby Pookie and Simon Burley. Andy ran two games, the first being Frozen In Time. A highlight in the game being the critical success on the cleric’s Food Of The Gods spell check, which resulted in their deity dumping a small granary’s stock of flour on their robotic assailant!
Judge Andy clearly has a taste for the old school style blending Sci-Fi and fantasy as he also ran his own adventure The Ship Beyond The Sands, where the party encountered a dormant alien spaceship that appeared to be carrying a very troublesome furry alien cargo!
The Rest of the Year
All in all the UK Road Crew are in fine form and as the end of the year approaches we’re looking forward to our now traditional final event of the calendar: Dragonmeet.
Dragonmeet is on Saturday the 30th of November at the Novotel London West in Hammersmith, London. We’ll be waving the flag at the gaming tables so come and join our games, and don’t forget to bring your pocket money for the trade hall, as some of our favorite vendors will be carrying brand new Goodman Games stock!
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