#ukge2018

Inked Adventures Dungeon Pics and Con News (Spring Summer UK 2018)

http://inkedadventures.com/main/2018/03/cool-dungeon-pics-and-con-news/

This was my fifth year running games at the UK’s biggest games convention and this time I’d offered to host Goodman Games writer and travelling convention  judge Brendan La Salle (creator of X-Crawl and writer of several Dungeon Crawl Classics and Mutant Crawl Classics RPG adventures)

Brendan and I had just enough time on the Thursday for a quick trip to Nottingham for lunch and some tourist stuff, making a flying visit to The Dice Cup, where I’m planning  to run a game for this year’s Free RPG Day.

In the evening Brendan ran his Black Sabbath inspired DCC RPG adventure ‘Neon Knights’ at my FLGS Weekend Warlords in Loughborough for a full table of 10 players and a good time was had by all.

Friday was the start of the expo proper and we set out early to avoid the worst of the queues.  My first game was The Jeweler Who Dealt in Stardust, a DCC RPG adventure that I ran with miniatures and 3D printed scenery.  It was great to see some familiar faces at the table and I was really pleased with how well the game ran, with no noticeable slowdown using the models

The afternoon games were scheduled after a two hour break so I had time to meet up with fellow judges Lee and Jules and some other friends for a bite to eat and a swift drink before our next game.

                                         Lee, Mark, Myself and Jules

                       Jules, Eran, Myself, Brendan, Lee and Mark

My second game was  WW2: Operation Whitebox and I ran my own adventure ‘Operation Peardrop’ which is intended as a fun ‘Commando’ comic book style wartime adventure.  We had a full table and some great players who got stuck in and really seemed to enjoy the adventure.  This was the first time I’d run this game since GaryCon and the outcome was much more successful for the PCs, despite an early fumble which resulted in friendly fire!  I’m very grateful for the fantastic support offered by the game’s author Peter Spahn, who provided a copy of the book for every player to take home.

Friday night was the only game I booked to play over the expo weekend.  Having never played X-Crawl before it made sense to book into one of Brendan’s sessions - it’s his game after all!  X-Crawl has a crazy setting where Dungeon Crawling is a televised pro sport, somewhere between The Hunger Games and The Running Man.  I had a blast with my ‘blaster’ character, even if my contribution to the game finished with with a fumble on my one and only D30 roll of the whole convention!

On Saturday morning I ran a playtest of my DCC RPG level zero funnel “The Lady Of The Dayn Hills” for a fantastic group including a family of four.  I have to admit I was a little anxious running this adventure for kids given that it has a mild  ‘horror’ theme but the whole group played very well and I was impressed that the kids seemed invested in the story and remained focused for the full four hour session.  This was also the first time I had used Goodman Games ‘Scratch Off’ character sheets, which were a lot of fun.

Saturday afternoon was the game I was most nervous about, the first playtest of my Dark Trails RPG level zero funnel “A Westward Journey”   

Dark Trails is a weird west RPG which uses (you guessed it!) the DCC RPG rule set.  The adventure is still very much a work in progress, but running it for a mixed table of new players and old hands was good fun and provided me with some new ideas and inspiration to develop the story further.  It was great to have experienced players like Jim (an old gaming friend of 15+ years) and Danny, who has contributed art to Dark Trails at the table as well as players new to the game and even some who were completely new to the hobby.  I hope everyone enjoyed the game and will look out for DCC related games next year.

Danny sketched as we played and by the end of the convention one of his sketches had developed into this fantastic picture featuring the three main NPCs from my adventure - True inspiration to get “A Westward Journey” into a publishable form!

We kept Saturday night free so we could enjoy a few beers and hang out.  It was great to meet new friends and get to know folk better over a few drinks.  I turned in just before 2AM, leaving a handful of folk still paying Hilton hotel prices for booze!            

                                         Jules, Brendan and me

with Brendan, Jules and Danny in our ‘UK Road Crew’ T shirts, designed by Danny

          Expo RPG boss man John Dodd signing a copy of his Quest RPG

My cunning plan to keep Sunday free to accommodate my hangover paid off well and I stumbled over to the trade hall, grabbing a cheese and marmite sarnie on the way.  I did a couple of laps, spent some money and met up with some more great people.                                

                        James Raggi, Lamentation of the Flame Princess

                        with Jo and Michael of Oathsworn miniatures

Friends Becky and Pat.  Becky works for the awesome charity Special Effect who I raised some money for last year.

                                   Peter Regan of Squarehex

     with fellow mini painting streamer Lance from Beasts Of War / OnTabletop

                  @billiambabble of @inkedadventures​ hard at work

                                           Awesome Dredd cosplay

Running my last game on Sunday the afternoon was tough.  Everyone was tired and we were the only table still playing in our allocated room, but I was pleased to still have a full table, half expecting that some tired gamers may have headed home early.  I ran the Dungeon Crawl Classics RPG adventure ‘Tower Of The Black Pearl’ for six players, none of whom had played DCC before.  It’s a great adventure and despite a slow start and some slightly shaky judging we picked up the pace and folk seemed pretty well engaged.  We finished a little early but noone seemed to mind, although I am frustrated that I forgot to grab a photo of this last group of players!  I headed over to watch the last twenty minutes of Brendan’s game before packing up and heading home, the Expo done for another year.

Brendan had one more encounter planned and on Monday we headed down to ‘that there London’ for an in store game at Leisure Games  We had a fun time and it was great to see Leisure games’ retail location having only purchased online or from the expo previously.

In case you haven’t heard, there’s a convention-thingy going on somewhere near Birmingham XD

The City of Games and my boss, Mr. Frank, will be there with Boardgame Geek’s most-anticipated game of 2018 The City of Kings, as well as mini-game Vadoran Gardens, art books, and all sorts of loot. You might even get to see these new additions, as well;

Day-tickets are still availablefor today and…