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Convention Report Brot und Spiele 2005

Name: Brot und Spiele Convention
Date: 6th/7th Aug. 2005
Location: Würzburg/Germany

Hello all,

two weekends ago I enjoyed once again two days of gaming in Würzburg at the "Brot und Spiele"-Convention. The convention is organized by the local gaming store in order to vitalize gaming in the area. Unfortunately the weather was rainy and the con is hosted in a winery and tavern outside of Würzburg: Sitting in the sun between vineyards and fields whilst gaming was a one advantage of this con, so the people showed up lately and less people than last year attended. The con was nevertheless a success and about 100 people showed up to enjoy a variety of roleplaying systems and board or card games, too.

Nearly half of the gaming groups were hosted by support team members. I met MIB from SJG, German Cthulhu supporters or from smaller German systems. No system got more than two gaming groups each day (don't know if by chance or by intent), so the players had a great variety of games to choose from. Due to the small decrease in visitors there was a little oversupply in gaming groups so it became difficult - especially on Saturday - to get enough players for a gaming group. The supporters of the Warlord CCG gifted every player who tried their game with a starter deck so some people wanted to play this game instead, too.

There were several guests of honour from the German roleplaying and gaming community like Lutz Stepponat (author of the board game Return of the Heroes), Pegasus Spiele business manager Janni Steines and several book authors from smaller publishers. I talked with Lutz about storytelling games in general and explained some concepts of HeroQuest to him and he was impressed by it. Our enjoyable discussion was interrupted as he had to leave for an interview with the local newspaper.

"How to catch an ape" was the first group on Saturday morning and I had to run the game with three players only, as the bunch of visitors showed up after midday. One player was a complete HeroQuest newbie while the other two were my guests who tried the game once before with me. I never ran the ape-scenario in Teshnos with three players only, but it ran well. I had incorporated Mike Holme's suggestions for the scenario and they helped me much as the players managed to create a very unique story - compared to previous games - as they tried to befriend and control the dumb and evil villain Monkeykiller. They even managed to aquire the position of personal servants in the empire he dreamt of but ultimately changed sides when the Orang Utan show up and threatened their home city and saved the complete city in the end. The twists in the story the players created were challenging for me to handle but the game was great fun and left several scenes I'll never forget and still chuckle about.

"About the art of satisfying a noble" was my game on Sunday and I ended up with five players. One had bought a Tales of the Reaching Moon in a shop and was eager to play HQ and another one played a Duck in RuneQuest a long time ago. The spirit was cheerful as I presented the pre-generated characters and everyone got the character he wanted. The spirit rose and rose during the game and I think there was no group who laughed that much. Luckily no one dropped from his chair and hurt himself. The game was fast paced and the players learned nearly everything about the background of the sly magician I created as opponent. They did also fairly well on the HeroQuest and enjoyed it very much - some players where nearly overwhelmed (positive!) as I explained to them that they were travelling into the world of myths. They failed to pass the HeroQuest moment successfully so they were overrun by the rabbits in the last scene, where they've to defend a sapling of a banana tree. They tried then a little bit of experimental HeroQuesting as they tried to bargain with the dragon of the scene before to eat the rabbits but he ate the tree, too. So the player whose character could change into a tree sacrificed himself and became the new magical tree of the Walkers of the Straight Path. The player seemed undetermined at first, but as I explained to him that (if we would continue playing) the tree will be the Guardian of this Heroband and all his friends can join and will remember what he did he was quite impressed. So the game was a complete success. One player even visited us afterwards during his and my vacations to join us in our Sartar Rising campaign.

The convention will be held again next year and I'm sure I'll run a game or two.