Convention Report – Conception 2003

Convention Report: Conception 2003 By Newt Newport & Darran Sims

March 3rd-7th Naish Holiday Villiage, Dorset UK

Conception is one of the UK’s so called Chalet cons, because they are held in Holiday camps and the self catering Chalets are the available accomodation, and in some cases venues for the games. Conception is a very popular convention,which has now reached capacity for the site. The majority of the games played were various D20 Living Games and a large number of LARPS. The holiday village was good, our chalet lodge was very nice and for the price was very good. If it wasn’t for the travel costs this would have been a cheap con costing only £10 per day for accommodation. There was plenty of space for gaming either in the main hall itself or in the sprawling lounge rooms of the bars. [We chose to play in the bars]. Some of the games also take place in the chalets. Most of the games seemed to be living campaigns and one or two DnD ‘Classics’. Some LARP games also took place which is good to see although they did take over one of the bars for a long time.

The one game that did stick out was the large number of tables runing the creator owned Crimson Empire RPG. The amount of enthusasim that Chris, the author, and his demo team put in to the multiple games running at one time is immense. If you get the chance to see this energy in action, I heartily recommend it.

Darran ran the following;

‘A Hanging and a Hunting‘ Thursday 7pm-11pm.Not many signed up for this game but I ran it anyway. Steve who had signedup had played in one of our HeroQuest demos before at another convention andhad gone out afterward and brought the game. It went very well as he playedthe character so well the scenario we were playing changed to another onehalf way through just because of his character’s background. So I ended upplaying the episode ‘A Raid on Hellbreak’ which went down a storm.

‘The Dark Heart of the Dragon Lands’ Friday 7pm-12midnight. A full sign up for this game as I had seven players. These where all ‘Crimson Empire’ players involved with Chris Loizou’s demo team [recognised by the black sweat shirts embossed with said logo and artwork]. They wanted to try something different and they certainly got it. They enjoyed the episode and were trying to come up with answers to the mystery posed by the scenario, and were freaked out by the Dragonewts when introduced. They were keen to learn more about both the game system and the Gloranthan setting. A very rewarding evening indeed.

Newt ran the following games;

The Black Ziggurat Friday 7-11pm

A Heroquest game set in Glorantha. A basic heroes vs the Vampire caper, with a strong mythic background, which is available in the scenarios section. The players were a mix of old Runequest players, wanting to check out the system and complete newcomers. Everybody had a great beer and pretzels game, the old RQ players said they would definatly be buying the game.

Hot Wok Flying Battalion vs Undead Hopping Taxmen. Saturday 2-6pm

A heroquest game, set in Glorantha’s version of Ancient China, using Mark Galeotti’s Kralori background ( as published in Pyramid), the info in Glorantha: Introduction to the Hero Wars, with a strong Hong Kong Ghost Story kung fu influence. The game ran well, with the system coping extremely well with the improvisational and fast moving nature of combat that the genre demands. Again the players, a mix of old RQ players and newcomers, had a fun game ,and at least one said that he would be buying the game.

Overall had a great time, accomodation was top notch, but would definatly want to be more organised with a stronger presence next year, since we seemed to lose out to the Living Campaigns big time.

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