It was meant to be part of a series, The Slayer Chronicles, but I haven’t quite got round to writing the others yet.

No editors cast their eyes over this one, and it’s basically the spruced up game notes so if you see any glaring errors please let me know!

Enjoy!

So the games were:

• Mountain Witch – a game of Ronin in a mythical Japan fighting to the top of Mt Fuji in order to destroy the Mountain Witch.
• Not our Future – a Buffy the Vampire Slayer game set in the modern day around a group of misfits.
• My Life with Master – where all the players are the minions of some crazed ‘Master’ figure who makes them do many odd and morally questionable acts.

Mountain Witch

So first up Mountain Whitch. This is a system that I’d played once before at KapCon in an awesome Residant Evil game, so I was keen to give it another go. We started of making out characters and it became apparent for then that there was a bit of a disconect between some of the players around the tone of the game. However we carried on and I developed a Ronin named Tanaka who had killed his master due to being in love with his master’s sister and was now trying to find the money to buy her out of indentured servitude. It seem a dark enough past made all the better when I picked the Past Alligence dark fate.

The first few scenes didn’t really flow that well for me due to the tone issues, but once they got sorted it really got going. Tanak’s dark fate managed to keep itself pretty well hidden until the last scene, when he killed one of the other characters who was about to kill the Mountain Witch’s lover.

Key moments in the game for me were:

• Simon’s (the GM) describtions of all the verious Japanese demons. He really knew his stuff.
• Malc’s reveal of his dark fate as his character plunged his sword into is stomach. Very dramatic.

Not our Future – Buffy the Vampire Slayer

Next round was Dan’s game, Not our Future, and was a faithful rendition of a Buffy episode. Unfortunately Dan was caught slightly unaware and hadn’t known that he was running that round, so we were really a bit of a play test but that was all good. The group of people playing obviously really loved Buffy and knew the tone to take. The players and their characters were:

• Mitch the Slayer – me
• J.D. a former Vampire Groupie (I think) – Played to hilarious effect by Jenni
• Jo the geeky wannabe witch – Bryn
• Paul the werjaguar and Mitch’s on again/off again boy friend – Played in all his sullen glory by a girl I hadn’t met before and whose name I forgot to write down. Sorry!
• Brand the jock and Mitch’s protective older brother – also played by someone I forgot the name of! Talk about bad notes! Edit: However thanks the to joy of comments, his name Lance!

The characters where great fun to play and interact with and everyone around the table totally through themselves into the action and most importantly the pithy diagloge. It was awesome and unfortunately I didn’t write down the quotes due to excessive laughter.

My Life with Master

On the Sunday I got to play in my final game of the con, My Life with Master. I had played this game the year before, in the same session with the same GM and was very keen to give it another go.

After quite a long period of brain storming we established that our Master would be an Ed Wood-esque Z grade director named Hershal Castle. He needed money and props in order to make that movie that would finally show the critics that he has worth the time it took to review him! The townsfolk, not surprisingly were the people of Hollywood.

My minion was named Jamison, a very short actor who’s less than human trait was “Extemely short, except when on film” and more than human trait was “Utterly convincing, except when telling a lie”.

The others were:

• Earnest the AD played by Ruth
• Jack the elderly muscician played by Naomi
• Bob the blind special effects guy played by Christian

Unfortunately the remaining time was enough to finish off the game, but we had some golden scenes in the mean time. The highlights were:

• Bob’s scene with his dog, trying to gain more affection and constaintly getting stopped due to ties in the dice roll. Who knew that dogs were so hard to crack?
• Jamison’s scene with his very secret boyfriend, played by Naomi. It was actually pretty gut wrenching for Jamison when he realised that his main squeeze wanted him to get out of the acting game.

So there you have it. Another whirlwind two days of gaming. It was a fantastic time and I’m all ready thinking about next year!

With out further ado it was time for A.C.O.R.N. again. This time I’d made some timing changes and decided to make the start a bit different. And it rocked! The players were fantastic and totally jumped feet first into the craziness. I think it was helped by the fact that everyone had a chance to really get into the RP vibe by this stage. Svend deserves special mention once again for his awesomeness as the jock with an inflated sense of his own ego. A few key moments:

• I will never hear “One way or Another” by Blondie without smiling ever again. Thanks Svend!
• Paul the techie, played awesomely by Bryn, while looking at security footage in the middle of the dance floor totally brushes off a Geek Groupie. Even though she thought geeks were “Sooo hot! Right now.”

Next round I ran Project Breather for the fourth and I think final time. It went well, though I found it difficult to capture the creepy, claustrophobic feeling that I was going for. Once again though the players made the characters their own and I only wish that we hadn’t run so short on time at the end. I have to say that none of the other groups who have played through this scenario with me so far have been quite so trusting. I do still feel a little bad about poisoning one of the characters, though the player assured me it was ok!

I also just realised that I forgot to write down everyone’s names but special mention must go to Herbet Jenkins player for so playing the upper class prat so well. Also to Samantha Askew’s player, you guys really captured the characters. So thank you.

My final game of the con was another go of My Life with Master, which deserves a post all of it’s own.

All in all a great con which has left me feeling ever more fond of the great group of people who make up the Wellington RPG community. I’m also brimming with ideas that I can’t wait to get on paper.

Thanks again to the organisers for just being awesome, Simon, Dan and Malcolm for running such great games and all the people who signed up for and enjoyed the games I ran.

KapCon (for those who have no idea what I’m on about) is New Zealand’s largest con. It takes place over two days and attracts over 100 people from around the country and even The World. It is a really approachable and friendly con with 6 rounds of table top games scheduled, plus a board game room, RPGA games and a LARP on the Saturday night.

I had decided that this year I’d branch out and see what it was like to run three games. That way I’d have three sessions to play in and three to run, a nice even split. I’ll have separate actual play threads for the games I played in and will talk about the game I ran on day 1 here.

First round dawned and I was running my comedic spy scenario A.C.O.R.N. and it went well. The players got into their characters easily enough and seemed to be having fun with the ‘anything goes’ nature of the scenario. I however wasn’t overly happy with some of it still and decided later to change a few key elements. Fraser as a bad ass marine in a cowboy hat totting 2 sub-machine guns made a great image.

The rest of the day was taken up with me finally getting to play Mountain Witch (through Games on Demand) and playing the Slayer in a Buffy game.

I had decided to not take part in the LARP this year and have to say I was very happy with my decision when I was home at a good hour with plenty of time to unwind.

KapCon is New Zealand’s biggest RPG convention and happens here in Wellington every January. It is two packed days of games and if you’re in the area, and interested it is well worth coming to. However there seems to be a bit of reluctance for people to GM games. So I’m going to do my bit to help pimp the idea.

I’m running three games. Derby of the Damned, Project Breather and A.C.O.R.N.. All of these are written up over at the site. Also to get more back ground nip over the The NZRag boards.