People's Experiences of KapCon

I missed last year's Kapcon due to being in Japan, so I was very excited about seeing old friends, running some games, and playing in some new systems and settings. My wife Debbie and I had written a Call of Cthulhu scenario set in 1920s Japan, and I had written a short scenario entitled 'Amnesia', both of which had playtested well (and been written up and entered in the Scenario Design Competition). Now, I'm a lazy kind of guy usually - I've missed more than one first session of Kapcon due to oversleeping, but I was determined to show up on time this year, and stay till the bitter end.

With the aid of a very enthusiastic wife, brother and sister in law, I managed to be up and at the venue by 8:40. Having pre-registered and signed up for a game through the website, I was free to catch up with people and worry about my own games (I had to run one 2nd session) for half an hour. I did have to make an emergency run to the supermarket with a Christchurchian to retrieve forgotten eftpos cash, but the first round was not yet in swing when I got back.

First up, I played in Andy McLeod's Over the Edge game, The Bhodhisatva (apologies for all spelling mistakes contained herein, especially people's names). It was a very cool game, with amusing characters, a rollicking plot, and great NPCs. The other 4 players really got into the game, and Kapcon started with a definite bang. I hadn't previously played in this setting, and was well impressed with the creepy undertone of conspiracy.

I managed to have my second round game swapped with someone's third round game, so I signed up for Dale Elvy's Hunger. This was a great game, playing a 'Russian' pop group who had just emerged from Russia's musical version of 'Big Brother' (locked in a house for weeks with cameras everywhere). There was some biting of flesh by 'crazed fans', and things went downhill from there. I was especially impressed with the preparation Dale had put into the game - briefings on our characters' 'PR images', photos (including 2 pictures of the same model in different clothes for the 2 identical twins), press kits about the band, and sound effects (helicopter and train sounds, audiences screaming etc). It was a very fun game, made all the more enjoyable by the crazy players. Dale most deservedly won the best GM award for running this scenario (he ran it 3 times during the con I think).

Third round I had to run a game. Much nervousness (despite having playtested the game twice in November), but it turned out OK. I ran Amnesia, and the players seemed to enjoy the game. It finished under time (it ran about 2 hours twenty minutes I think), but nobody seemed to mind, as it gave us a chance to pick up some food before the live game at 8:30pm.

Phew. Into costume, then 2 and a half hours of playing a drunken knight called Sir Toby Belch, part of the Bean King's retinue in Frank Pitt's excellent 12th Night LARP. There were a lot of great moments, from being terrified by the Cardinal, to being threatened by Cesario, to being brought drinks by all and sundry. I enjoyed much silliness for the first hour and a half, followed by some politicking and scheming in the last forty minutes. While I got a little blown up in the final scene, I more or less managed to complete my character goals, of drinking, having fun, and trying to find a use for myself after years of debauchery. The use was admittedly having my guts blown out for my new Female Duke (Duchess? Well, not a piece of furniture obviously), but it was a family tradition for Belch men. Honour was served.

All too brief the sleep of the just, then Day 2.

I ran Land of the Rising Dead first session (session 4), which went swimmingly. Very silly, good fun had by all, though I seem to have forgotten almost all the Japanese I learnt whilst in Japan, except for the rude stuff, and how to order beer.

Second session I played in Conan's Nobilis game, Station at the End of the World. I really enjoyed the game, though it was hard to get my head around. I chose the Estate of Order, while Debbie played Mischief, so there was a lot of back and forth between the two of us. Well, to be honest there was a lot of me being picked on, but it was funny so I hold no grudges. Conan's NPCs were excellent, especially the train at the end. It was a brain bender, But a very, very enjoyable one.

Between sessions five and six there were 2 highlights. One was 'The Gamers' DVD, which was hilarious, and the other was the prize giving. I have a trumpet, and enjoy to blow on it. I won best scenario in the scenario design contest. Other people also won things, but I didn't care, because I won a prize. I am soooo cool.

Ahem. Yes, many great GMs and players won prizes and recognition that they richly deserved. The overall quality of games at Kapcon 12 was extremely high, if my personal experience and the accounts of everyone I've talked to are anything to go by. I was well impressed.

Final round, rather exhausted, I ran Amnesia again, for 6 very enthused players. It went brilliantly - the best of the 4 times I've run the scenario. Everyone played their characters with gusto, people played off each other and the scenario prompts in the best possible way, and I had a great time. It's a game that relies on the players to put in a lot of work, and the GM to have a good sense of timing (there are a lot of handouts that change the players' view of the scenario and each other, and timing when to hand them out can hugely impact on the game). It was all the fun.

After the final session I was exhausted. I sat around making grunting noises, barely able to communicate. I watched the end of 'The Gamers'. I ate chocolate. I helped clean up, then went up to Luke and Sam's (the front people organiser types) for muchos post-gaming. We discussed best Kapcon moments and worst Kapcon moments. Mine were:

Best: the final session Amnesia, which ran really well and gave me a huge high to end Kapcon (and my secret best moment which was when I found out that I had won a prize)

Worst: just before the first game I ran, when nerves and lack of real food led to horrendous 'kapcon belly'

Best Jon moment: cocaine fuelled furniture use.

I'm already plotting and scheming about next year's Kapcon. Bring on Kapcon the 13th! And a final note of thanks to all Kapcon organisers and attendees for making it such an enjoyable and entertaining weekend. Huzzah!

For those of you who don't know, KapCon is Wellington's annual roleplaying convention. It's a stable con, having happened year in, year out, Wellington anniversary weekend every year bar one (when it was at Easter), for the past twelve years or so. Over the seven years we've been attending it's more than doubled in size, and is now attracting gamers from all over the country. This year it took place at Wellington High School, on the 18 th and 19th of January, and attracted just short of a hundred people.

On saturday, we arrived early and were greeted by the usual precon chaos. People queuing to pay, people wondering what games were on, the forgotten laptop with the timetable on it... since we'd preregistered and paid well in advance, all we had to do was hang around and catch up with people. SAGA had offered a travel subsidy this year, so there were a lot of familiar faces from Christchurch, and I was able to catch up with the current gossip from old friends. After a certain amount of milling around, Luke (our organisational front) called things to order, and started getting people organised into games.

A word on the KapCon "system" might be in order here. KapCon uses 3-hour sessions, and runs three of them a day. Games are whatever people offer to run - though naturally we have someone (me, in fact) who cajoles, begs and grovels at people to "volunteer". Because of the size of the con, we have between 9 and 13 games organised every session. Herding Gamers is difficult at the best of times, and trying to deal with getting a hundred gamers into the games they want without leaving anyone too dissapointed is pure chaos. We have a method involving GM spiels, tiny bits of paper, and an overworked organiser with a spreadsheet which seems to work, but its probably nearing the limit of what it can handle. Maybe some sort of intranet solution...

Anyway, I'd preregistered, so all I had to do was sort out session two, and it was off to play.

Session 1: "Station at the End of the World" - an intro to Nobilis, by Conan McKegg. I'd been wanting to try Nobilis after reading some of the hype on rpg.net, and so I signed up for this the moment it was advertised. The characters were a bit thin (a rank, a Domain, and a couple of stats), but it didn't matter since we had a keen group who were more than willing to run with it and invent stuff on the fly. The plot was based off an old "Sapphire & Steel" epsiode, involving mysterious happenings at an abandoned train station, and it came to a suitable Sapphire & Steel ending, with time and space being warped to trap the antagonists in a snowglobe. The game ended early, so I was able to get in a quick game of Settlers over the lunch break.

Session 2: "Terror at Camp Waka'Naka" - run by Conan (again). This was a published adventure for QAGS (Quick-Arse game System), in which a group of group of teenage camp counsellors are stalked by a serial killer through an American holiday camp. Screamingly funny, conforming to all the sterotypes of the slasher-flick genre. We did have to make up our own characters, but QAGS really is quick, so it didn't matter. Again, this finished early, so we skived off to Courtney Place in search of dinner.

Session 3: "A Dilemma, of Sorts" - LOTR by James Flowers. I have to admit that this game didn't meet my stylistic preferences. It was basically a situation game - two factions (Dwarves and Dunedain) bickering over who got to take a captive Orc chieftan back to their king - which is all well and good; unfortunately the characters were stats only (no names, or even genders), which IMHO isn't really enough to support that sort of plot. There were some character flaws to stop us from coming to a reasonable arrangement, and so we squabbled, traded insults, and fought Orcs before running out of time. It didn't suck - I quite enjoyed doing Gimli impersonations - but it was vaguely dissapointing.

LARP: "Twelth Night", in which various people squabbled over the Duchy of Illyria. I was cast as the Bean King for this one, so all I had to do was sit on a throne, call for drink and drunkenness, and vaguely try to stir . Practically every one of the 60 players was in costume, which added a lot to the event. In the end the Duke's youngest son Cesario launched a coup, and it degenerated into a mechanics fest until some sorceror blew him self up. Or something - I was too busy hiding in the chapel to notice.

Session 4: "The Well: the Asgard Imperitive" - by Nate Cull. Some familiar faces in this game - Nate has run his "Well" games since KapCon 2000, and has acquired a bit of a following. The setting is sortof B5-meets-post cyberpunk, and heavy on the corporate intrigue. This one was a First Contact mystery involving a corporate team investigating giant alien artifiacts, one part "Revelation Space" and one part "Anvil of Stars". Two and a half hours of plotting, scheming, note-passing, private confabs with the GM, trechery, betrayal, sabotage and murder. Best moment: being killed when abandoning ship - my security escort touched his headpiece, said "yessir", and calmly shot me in the head. It was fantastic, and I'm hoping Nate runs another one next year.

Somewhere in the break here I think I did my first run of Interactivities, Ink's mini-larp, "Bell the cat". Eight mice, one cat, and certain death for whoever does the deed. I also watched a bit of "The Gamers", a screamingly funny movie about a bunch of D&D players.

Session 5: "LEPRecon: Koboi's Revenge". I'd foolishly promised to run a game this con, and worse, told my sister-in-law "you write it, I'll run it". So I ended up with a game based on Artemis Fowl, in which a group of m isfits have to save the Underground from an escaped Opal Koboi. The plot was solid, the characters good, but I was tired, and didn't seem to get with it. Fortunately the players didn't seem to notice, and enjoyed themselves anyway. Phew!

Prizegiving: prizes were handed out for various things, and people grabbed their swag. Huzzah!

Session 6: "Archmage's Crown". Having flubbed the last game (or so I thought) I went back for more, and ran Archmage's Crown. This was once of last year's SDC entries, and I'd run it twice before as well as participated in the author's original playtests, so I was confident I wouldn't fuck it up. Fortunately, the players got with it, and we had three hours of comedy-fantasy evil wizardy scheming, before a summoned demon ate a few of them and the tower fell down. Better luck next time, maybe. But for the first time ever, Sephore followed her heart rather than her craving for power. You go, girl!

["SDC?" I hear you ask? It's short for Scenario Design Competition. Submit an original scenario, and win fame, fortune and the esteem of your peers (and maybe something else as well). Why not enter it next year?]

Post-con: A second run of "Bell the cat" ended when Algernon got stupid, stuck his head out to take a look, and was decpaitated; his heartless fellows then stuffed the bell into his headless corpse and fed it to the cat.

Success! I also watched the end of "The Gamers" - I swear I used to play in that D&D group :) Finally, we headed home - it took me the rest of the week to recover, but it was worth it.