Down through the years many people have asked me what a RolePlaying Game (RPG) is, and I still haven't come up with a short answer. For the nearest description that I'm aware of I would have to direct you to Trinity College Gamers. The hobby has got a lot of slack over the past couple of years but I've been playing these games since I was eight and I've never met a gamer who did anything more dangerous than thousands of non-gamers do everyday, i.e. have a few drinks, smoke a cigarette or two or maybe even something stronger. In fact I know quite a few people who have improved immensely since they started gaming. But enough of the preaching, I'm sure you didn't link to here to read about how RolePlaying Can Change Your Life.
Incidentally I've written a couple of scenarios for various games over the past year or so. Most of these have been for conventions but I also write for my own pleasure. Unfortunately none of these scenarios are online at the moment, but I am working on it. I have also written scenarios for AD&D and Castle Falkenstein. I've just finished 3 scenarios (bad mistake...), a Vampire scenario called "The Last Days", a DiscWorld sceario named "Lost Souls" and a LARP named "HomeWorld". All of these are for GaelCon '96. The 'Con has just happened and you can read about it below. If you missed it...well...hopefully we'll see you next year...
I am also about to start a Mage:The Ascension campaign in Gamers in Trinity and I'm already down to write a Vampire scenario for Trinity's Games Convention, LepreCon. I'm sure I'll fit study in there somewhere...honest...
There are really two sections to this part of the page. The first deals purely with the games themselves (and my opinion of them), however the second part deals with the Conventions at which people meet and play these games. This page is quite long and it may get broken up at some stage but for the moment the links will just have to do.
I play a wide variety of games but due to lack of time and players the only regular game I'm involved in is a WhiteWolf(WW) World of Darkness(WoD) game.
Other games I play are:
Be warned, the furthest the above links will take you is to other parts of this page. Links for far away places (when/if I get them) will be comtained in the section on each game.
I'm sure there are lots of links for this but these are the only two I can give you at the moment WhiteWolf's first Storyteller game, Vampire:The Masquerade. V:tM is a wonderful game and its second edition definitely counts as one of the best games released in the last five years. In my opinion however the Storyteller series has suffered since then.
Werewolf:The Apocalypse is good but the system lends itself too easily to base violence. Admitedly I am currently playing a Werewolf character in my regular and I cannot deny that it is sometimes fun to be able to change into a nine foot wolfman, however I do have problems with some of the rules and background (especially the characterisation of the Irish Werewolves).
After Werewolf came Mage:The Ascension and at this point things began to get silly. Once again it is not a case of me hating Mage but it could have been so much better. WW complicated an already complicated world by introducing even more power groups, who also controlled mortal society, and my giving Mages powers far beyond that of other supernaturals. Second edition Mage did see a reduction in the power of Magick wielders but no really enough of a reduction. Also Mage is a lot less dark than Vampire, Werewolf or Wraith and this doesn't do much for the WoD image.
The fourth game(there is a total of five) to come out was Wraith:The Oblivion. This game redeemed the dark image of the WoD by casting the players as ghosts, the restless dead. Equally every character has a dark side that they can't help manifesting, when Wraiths get angry they get evil. Howver 1st edition Wraith is far from perfect. Although I like lots of it the introduction of the realms of the dead, the Shadowlands, completely destroyed most people's views of WoD metaphysics and the game also introduced a new controlling faction who, despite having slightly less influence over mortal society, were another group of overlording NCPs. Also the fact that Wraiths are incorporeal damaged WW's claims that characters from all of their games could participate in one game. The fact that ghosts have to be quite powerful to affect the "real" world in any significant way seems to have escaped WW's notice.
The final Storyteller game was Changeling:The Dreaming. Now I'm extremely interested in the mythology of Faries and living in Ireland I have ample opportunity to hear stories about the Sidhe (pronounced Shee) and other fair folk so I had been looking forward to Changeling since it was first advertised. Unfortunately I was dissapointed. Although the book looks very pretty and the rules system has some interesting ideas the game suffers from some serious flaws. Firstly, and most importantly, the game is set almost exclusively in America. Appearently the Unitied States is the least mundane country in the world. The rule book mentions Ireland once as having a special place in Changeling society and the country which created most of the mythology is not mentioned again. Equally Changeling is another example of happy-go-lucky WoD. Everything is bright and happy and nice and the worst thing that could happen to you is that you might get a bit bored. The game could have been so much more than it is and instead of being an exciting new game it just became another WW product on the shelves.
Now from the above monologue you could get the impression that I don't like any WW game save Vampire. This is not true. However having read all of them and played all of them I do consider myself qualified to criticise them. WW have done an huge amount for the gaming industry but they need something new to break out of the downward spiral they are currently on.
If your interested in roleplaying in the WoD and computers then there is a WoD MUSH (or MUD, I'm not sure) set in Dublin called BloodLetting.
AD&D (produced by TSR) is the most famous roleplaying game and it is also, in the main, what non-gamers belive all rpgs to be like. This is not the case. AD&D and its predessesor D&D are entry level games usually played by younger gamers. Now I'm not saying that this is a good situation or otherwise, it's just a statement of fact. A lot of gamers abandon games like AD&D as they get older as they perceive the linear scenarios and "walk-kill-walk" situtations, which are associated with the game, to be childish and not for experienced gamers like themselves. However AD&D, like any rpg, can be played in many different ways, either as a more cerebral game or as a straight dungeon bash. Of course the system itself and 99% of the things written for it do not support the the indepth roleplaying and characterisation which have become associated with games like Vampire. Also the game has lost popularity partly due to problems people have with the company who make it.
AD&D has the advantage of having a huge amount of material written for it and a shade under ten published game worlds so it certainly helps those who are not good at writing their own material or wish to have definite locations for their players and a history to work from. Within the huge wealth of material published there are a good percentage of excellent ideas and concepts from which to work (if you don't want to adhere slavishly to the books) but there is also a great amount of dross which must be waded through. Equally the policy seems to be to mention the best idea at the end of a book and then publish a new one. I suppose this is just common marketing sense but it is still annoying.
I would reccomend AD&D to anyone who is thinking about starting to roleplay but there is a definite warning also. Firstly getting really into AD&D can require a lot of money, secondly some of it isn't very good and thirdly depending on your age you may find yourself growing out of it very quickly.
That said it is always nice, especially at a Con, to forget about personal angst and deep character interaction and just relax and either run or play a game of AD&D.
Now I haven't played as much Call of Cthulhu (CoC) (produced by Chaosium) as I would like to, but then again who said life was fair? The game has gone through five editions and it remains one of the mainstays of Con timetables and many a gamer's library, I know I have a copy.
CoC was supposed to be a horror game and given the right circumstances it can become such. In the main, however, the game has acquired more of a comic element. This is possibly because the characters have a short lifespan and will end up either going mad or dying, usually before the end of a campaign. The game is based on the Cthulhu mythos from the writings of H.P. Lovecraft, the American horror writer. Cthulhu is an immensely powerful being who came from the stars and now wants to take over the world/galaxy/universe. Cthulhu is believed to be sleeping beneath the Pacific Ocean in R'leyh.
All of this should come together to create a game which, in the right conditions, is frightening to play, but somehow things go the other way. During the last presidential election in America in 1996 there was a campaign to elect Cthulhu president under the slogan "Why pick the lesser of two evils?". The game has spawed huge numbers of Filk songs (songs with recognisable tunes but with altered words. In fact you can have a look at them yourself in The Cthulhu Hymnal. CoC has lightbulb jokes ("How many Cthulhu players does it take to change a lightbulb? - I don't know. - All of them, never spilt the party!") and a very silly card game (not CTCG) based on summoning your god and killing everyone else.
Basically CoC is a great game and it can be incedibly fun and occasionally very scary as well. Of course the most importantly, if Great Cthulhu sleeps, what time is his alarm set for?
Castle Falkenstein (produced by R. Talsorian) is a relatively new game. It only has one edition and supplements for it are still reasonably low in number. The game is set in an alternate 1870s Earth. On this Earth Europe is New Europa and the U.S.A. is broken up into several different nations. Fairies live on earth, mages walk the streets and dragons fly through the sky. At the same time mad scientist try to take over the world with their fiendish inventions while brave heroes and heroines try to stop them. The society is Victorian with fainting ladies and honourable men, with lords and ladies and with the battle cry being (outside Britain at least) "For King and Country".
Castle Falkenstein is a reasonably light game. Everything is larger than life with swashbuckling heroes and scheming villains. The characterisation is horribly overblown and ham acting is the order of the day. You may have guessed that I like this game a lot and you would be completely correct. However the game is mainly fun and while this is the main point it isn't an amazing "roleplaying experience". The system is extremely easy to get to grips with and only the minimum of number crunching is necessary. If a game of Falkenstein is played and nobody laughs then something has gone horribly wrong.
Of course it is just this silliness which I believe prevented Falkenstein from being the next major game after the Storyteller series by WhiteWolf. The game, unfortunately, didn't make the impact that it could have made and because of this it will remain a game that more people will have heard of than played.
Well, I didn't think that any section on roleplaying would be complete wihtout a bit about Paranoia. The game is extremely silly and the average lifespan of the characters is only slightly longer than that of a shortlived Mayfly. Of course the major question is if your security clearance is high enough to learn more about the game, well is it? Hmm, you're not some kind of traitor are you? Just to prove yourself join me in this chorus of praise for the glorious computer.."Glory, glory, hail computer. Glory, glory, hail computer....."
Magic:The Gathering (M:TG) (produced by Wizards of the Coast)is possibly one of the worse or best things (depending on your view point) to hit the gaming industry probably since the Storyteller series (same worse/best thing there as well). Put simply M:TG is a card game. The cards represent spells, monsters and artifact and you play a mage trying to kill your opponent by removing all his life. An average deck contains around 90 cards but that may well be out of a collection of several hundred. A game can take any amount of time from 5 minutes to a couple of hours and nearly any number of players can participate, you can even play on your own. There are a huge number of different cards available and an even larger number of possible card combinations. The game is fast, fun and it makes you think, so what could possibly go wrong?
Well when M:TG first came out very few people really knew about it, then the 3rd edition came out (it was Spring 1994 in Ireland) and large numbers of gamers started playing it. There were both pros and cons to this situation. People began to play Magic instead of playing their usual roleplaying games, people spend large amounts of money they didn't have on the game (just to get that one card) and when people went to Cons they played Magic everywhere. On the good side a reasonable number of people played Magic and got in to roleplaying, whether at a Con or by accident and money was going into the industry. Equally Magic was fun and that is the whole point of the exercise, isn't it?
The hardened roleplayer (at least those who weren't playing Magic) said that Magic was destroying the hobby and the hardened Magic players asked if they could use the table. The argument continued but nothing much happened. It began to be the case that a healthy slice of con attendees were Magic players and the game even got its own Con in Dublin (although there has been little talk of a third CardCon). It became very difficult to avoid being classified as either a roleplayer or a Magic player and a lowlevel grumbling campaign continued. At most of the Cons in Ireland this and last year Magic (and all of the other competing Collectable Trading Card Games (CTCGs)) have been given a separate room and things seem to have worked out all right.
At the moment things are fine and dandy and apart from a fall off in Magic sales there is little trouble but after Wizards of the Coast's decision to stop producing their roleplaying products I think it is valid to ask if this state of affairs can continue.
There are really two types of convention that I'm involved in. The first is a roleplaying covention which deals with rpgs, boardgames, Live Action Role Playing (LARP) games, card games and generally all sorts of mayhem and fun (drinking is usually pretty high on the list).
Examples of Irish RolePlaying Conventions include (but are by no means limited to):
The other type of convention is what is generally referred to as a Science Fiction convention. It mainly deals with books, films, TV, panel disscussions, guests, occasionally bits of roleplaying and, of course, drinking.
Every October bank holiday weekend (the weekend closest to the end of October) a large number of gamers coverge on the Royal Hospital Kilmainham. They come for several purposes; to control mighty armies, to roleplay, to play card games (collectable and tradeable ones) or just ordinary board games, but above all they come to have fun. This sentiment was possibly best expressed by one of '95's guests, Mike Pondsmith, when he said "Now this is what I call a fun Con". People laugh and cry, people shout and scream and every so often there is a people problem which is only to be expected when so many people come together and have so little sleep. Games are won and lost, harried staff and committee run around like headless chickens and some 8 year old declares to a room full of Magic:The Gathering players that he could beat them all; this is the GaelCon experience.
The Con is run and organised by a body known as the Irish Games Association but the Con happens because of all of the gamers who patronise it. A huge thanks must also go to all of the staff and GMs who help the attendees to enjoy their weekend. In brief the weekend consists of; all day wargaming (inc. Warhammer Fantasy and 40k, BattleTech, BloodBowl and other games (I'm not a major wargamer), all day roleplaying (inc. AD&D, Vampire, Chuthlu and for 1996, a DiscWorld scenario) and all day card games (inc. Magic, Vampire, StarWars, StarTrek etc.). Some people said the card games were the major event and others said that they took up too much room but I refer you to my piece on Magic above. Of course it would be wrong to think that these are the only events. There are things organised by the attendees themselves, there is Live Action RolePlaying, there are live battles, the pub quiz, oh yes, and organised chaos. In my opinion GaelCon is the best Irish Con and although it costs a little more, £13 for the weekend, it is well worth it.LepreCon's date, like the con itself, is a little imprecise. Suffice to say it happens in the last couple of weeks of February and is great fun. In '97 LepreCon comes of age as the Con is being held for the 18th time. Planning has started and it looks like it's going to be fun... LepreCon is run by Trinity College Gamers Society and is a labour of love and chaos. From '96 on I've have a vested interest in the Con because I staff it, but it's still great as an attendee, honest.
The Con is spread around the campus so GMs and Staff members can regularly be seen running through the rain (it always seems to rain on LepreCon weekend) to get to a game. The progamme is the reasonably standard mix of RolePlaying, wargaming, cardplaying and LARPing and the pub quiz features as well. Over the weekend too much is drunk, too little time is spent sleeping and the rate of missed lectures among the staff the next day is quite stunning.
There is only one way I can possibly describe Q-Con II (1995), hot. Q-Con is run by the DragonSlayers from Queen's University, Belfast and it won general acclaim last year as a very good way to spend a weekend. The most important attribute of the Con centre was definitely the large numbers of windows and the air conditioning. Belfast was hot at the end of June but the Con was blissfully cool.
Apart from the temperature (and the pub quiz) the Con was generally excellent. The DragonSlayers were incredibly friendly, even when us gamers from Dublin did some silly things (you know who you are). The accomodation was great and much fun was had. The events were reasonably standard but there was on exception, the Star Trek Mega Game. The game consists of two starships going head to head while their human/klingon crews tried desperately to control them and win the battle. The playing area was about 10' by 10' (or 3.5m by 3.5m) and the two crews sat at tables on either side trying to second guess the oppositition. Card games once again played a major part, but as long as people are having fun who cares? I would recomend Q-Con to anybody who likes nice relaxed Cons with lots of fun people. I wasn't able to make it in '96 due to other committments (namely the DiscWorld Con in Manchester) but I do hope to make it in '97.
Moving south to University College Cork (UCC) we have WarpCon. WarpCon happens every January and it has just had its 6th birthday. Now it must be said that I've only been to one of the six but I think it was probably a fair representation of the Con. The programme was fairly standard with AD&D, Vampire, WereWolf, GURPS and Call of Chuthulu all making an appearance. Pendragon also popped up but I didn't get a chance to play it. There was also large areas set aside for both wargaming and cards and while the layout caused a couple of problems it was nothing major. The only gripes I had with the roleplaying element was with the structuring of the AD&D and Chuthulu games. Both of them were run over a number of rounds with AD&D lasting three and Chuthulu lasting two. The first round of the AD&D competition wasn't very well written and a number of people became very disgruntled with the entire thing. It must be said, however, that I was told that the second and third rounds were better but I was off playing other games at the time. The Chuthulu game was excellent and while it could have been run over two rounds it was worked wrongly and once again people got annoyed. I was playing in one of the two final tables and we never got anywhere near finishing it because of the set up.
Apart from those problems the Con was excellent. The atmosphere was great and from an attendees point of view things were no more chaotic then usual. The pub quiz was huge amounts of fun (mainly because Trinty Gamers won by cooperation) and the auction was equally drunken and fun.
Overall the weekend was lots of fun and it is definitely a Con that I would go to again. There were problems and by the end of the weekend tempers were getting a bit frayed but that's only to be expected, sleep deprevation is a bastard...
It would be very nasty of me to say that University College Dublin (UCD) were only jealous of Trinity when they conceived VatiCon and it probably wouldn't be true either, but hey. Seriously though I would never say such a thing, at least not where Baj or Feargal might read it. VatiCon II was a bit of a mixed up affair. There was very little advertising for it and there were all sorts of rumours flying about as to its final location etc. As it happened I only managed to get to one day of the Con but I must say it was fun.
In the morning it looked as if the Con was going to have about 5 people at it but the numbers improved steadily. Once again the bulk of people were there to play Magic and related games but roleplaying and wargaming got a better percentage than usual. The programme featured the usual games, but with a twist. VatiCon has an unusual event called the Trilogy where the same scenario is played out in three different games systems. I unfortunately didn't get a chance to play it but it certainly looked fun. I did however play an extremely amusing Mage game and a linear (and quickly written) AD&D game. The pub quiz was lots of fun (and let's remember that I'm generally sober during these events) and getting the entire of the last round right (thanks Baj) was very helpful.
All in all I think that VatiCon could have been better organised and advertised, but then again that could be said for 99% of all conventions. Hopefully there will be a VatiCon III and presumably it will be held around the end of March once again.
On the social side things couldn't have been better. The pub quiz was insane and without a drop of alcohol in me I was accused of being drunk and stoned. Winning the quiz was an added bonus. Things became a bit strange when the whole Con had to be moved from the students centre to the Arts Block but this didn't cause too much hassle and Sunday was as much fun as Saturday.
The Con wasn't perfect. It was definitely overstaffed (a case of too many chiefs and not enough indians) and a bit more advertising wouldn't have gone amiss. However it was great fun and for a nice relaxed weekend Con I would recommend it.
The last Con reviewed herein (and the newest Irish Con) is Kevin Street D.I.T.'s KevCon. The Kevin Street crowd are a regular sight at Irish conventions and I suppose it was only a matter of time before they decided that if the I.G.A. and Trinity could do it then they could do it too. And they did it quite well.
The Con was a one day event and although it had better advertising than VatiCon it wasn't as well attended as MooCon. Magic featured alongside Middle Earth RolePlaying (M.E.R.P.) and Vampire. There were other tabletop events but, curse my memory, I can't recall them, rest assured however. the moment I remember I will write them in here. The rpgs were fun but nothing special and the constant pestering of Magic players throughout the Vampire game was beyond annoying. The visual high point of the day was the Paranoia and Highlander LARPs. Paranoia looked like lots of fun as clones died left right and centre, while the Highlander LARP consisted of lots of running around and then some very short battles. There were no outward signs of staff chaos but once again the lack of an organised social occasion like a pub quiz meant something was missing from the experience (but thankyou for those free drinks).