CRY HAVOC, AND LET SLIP THE GEEKS OF WAR.

A report on BATTLECRY 2005 (February). By Troll (traveler from Wellington)

After 6 hours of driving I was much perturbed to discover the mercer to Longswamp four laning was still under construction after 4 years of work and we still had to endure a 70 Km speed limit on SH1. I swear, only 3rd world countries have a slower road building time than us, and they just pour gravel on the ground. Fortunately, the half million dollar re-diversion to the original route was nearly complete, and a good thing too because traffic came to a complete stand still not once, but twice as the nearby Taniwha posed for tourists. I hit the middle of Auckland 7 hours and 35 minutes after departure and was immediately slowed to walking pace in traffic. Our congestion is nothing when compared to Auckland’s mess of metal and rubber. I caught up with my host at the CON venue, the fully capable Freemans Bay Community Centre, location of the yearly Games Workshop Grant Tournament and the local City Guard gaming club. There was minor tension and panicking as last minute details were sorted and after a supply shop we retired until the morning.

SATURDAY:

There’s nothing like a sleep on the floor of a tiny room and a 6:30 wakeup call to prepare you for a full day of roleplaying. Another quick trip to the supermarket and we were ready to begin. We were the first ones there but only by minutes. Other keen gamers started arriving from 7:30 onwards and things were haphazardly arranged and assembled. A skilled eye could detect the war-gamers, from the roleplayers and the card gamers from the rest and they all began to group together and set up their areas. I greeted a few familiar faces from past Auckland forays and was delighted to meet some new ones. On the first day there was about 140 registrations for the various events. (Warhammer 40K, DBM, Flames of War, Jyhad, Magic the Gathering, and of course Roleplaying.).

After a slightly disorganized initial assembly of roleplayers we shuffled off to our first round games. Mine was a Cthulu D20 game of “Critters” set in the 80’s. If anyone knows the Critters movies that’s what it was about, for those who don’t they’re evil fanged nasty little aliens designed to eat you. There was much joking about old 80’s stuff and a wonderful performance by one of the larger Auckland gamers, Cameron, playing the Skanky Asian head cheerleader. The game was a bit of fun, but I really don’t think Cthulu can be fully justified as a D20 game, it’s just not right. The GM, Lexx was fine and organised, and in the end after a heroic display of running in circles by my character “The Jock” we blew up the mother ship and watched the house we were in fall apart into the crater. Best NPC in the game was John Wayne, the gardener, who was sadly chewed up and spat out by Critters, but not before taking a few with him.

AT lunchtime Ryan Paddy had assembled a group of Mordavians and we were invited to attend a funeral scene in the park next door. I declined as it would mean I’d have to miss the next round, but the costuming and effort was most impressive. Their system is simple but fully functional and it would be nice to see a group form down this way. (Wellington) The scene involved the funeral of a merchant and in the end it erupted into armed conflict. If you should get the chance to see or participate in a Mordavia event then I highly recommend it. Check out their excellent website for details.

Mordavia website

Round 2 in the afternoon was a D20 Warcraft game. The GM was a good player but as a GM he failed to impress. The game had a good beginning. We were all prisoners of war forced to fight in an arena for the amusement of others, but the plot drifted somewhat sideways and we never really had a clear idea of what we should have done. I think with a little deeper development to the characters and some more directed GM’ing it could have been a nice game but it kind of drifted off and ended a little sooner than expected, mainly I think through lack of things to do. The Warcraft D20 system is nice and quite detailed world wise, but again the inadequacies of D20 systems as a CON game come to the surface with crippling obviousness.

We had just enough time for a bite to eat and a quick trip to pick up gear before the evenings live game. It was based on MAGE The Ascension, but not completely. It was easy for an amateur to the system to fit in and the main plotline involved a meeting between the heads of various factions to decide what would happen about an ominous giant sphere of energy that was hurtling towards earth. The finer points of all this were mostly missed by me as I went about my own quests. It would have made more sense I’m sure if you knew about the mage universe, but I had a good enough time. It wasn’t quite as well planned as the Kapcon live game, but they did have less organisation on behalf of the players as well. Probably half of the characters didn’t know who or what they were until halfway through the day, and costumes weren’t able to be planned at such short notice. They did provide some basic costumes for some, but not every character actually needed one. Overall it was a nice evening, and we were all glad to get back and have some sleep.

SUNDAY:

Started a little bit later than Saturday, not quite as much pre-org to do today. A new event was on, Bloodbowl Seven’s just a one day mini tournament that attracted about 12 players. It was more roleplaying for me though. I played in a game run by Adrian, one of the original Battlecry and America’s Cup organisers, and quite a reputable roleplayer going by general opinion up there. It was set in a city Under Siege and was a mix of roleplaying and a little bit of strategic board-gaming. Divided into turns we got to move our troops around the city and roll for mass combat but each move we made also affected the roleplaying element of the game, and we had to organise alliances so our particular squads could support (or not) each other. In the end I become possessed by my long dead twin brother and took over the nation, and through an alliance kind of ran the neighbouring land that was attacking us. I spared our mother and sent her away to a country estate to live out her life, but a couple of the other characters got theirs on a cold plate of revenge. Eventually the whole land became corrupted by evil and everyone but me considered this a bad thing. This was the best game of the weekend for me, and was a bit slow to begin with but worked out good. The thing that slowed it up mostly was the necessary secret meetings outside between players and GM, but that gave us more time to plot and conspire too.

Then it was lunch time and we had a special treat. From Hamilton had arrived Alfs Imperial Army, a group similar in nature to KAOS, and that’s why they had arrived they were here for an epic battle with Auckland KAOS agents and whoever wanted to play. We faced off in the park outside and it was a battle of much entertainment. Alfs, in their royal red and fancy helmets VS a motley crew of Kaos agents, roleplayers and even some wargamers. You could tell the wargamers as they were the ones talking about defensive lines flanking and maneuvers and pointing out inaccuracies in their costumes. Much flower bombing and paper sword waving ensued and in the end as is the way, nobody was declared the winner and we went back inside. Highlights of the battle: Me being used as a human battering ram, various futile charges and withdrawals, a selfless act by myself of leaping onto an unexploded flower bomb to save the troops and the justifiable bashing of a traitorous wargamer who helped the enemy. Read more about Alfs right here.

Alf’s website

After a bit of a brush down and some eating we were back into it. The last game I played was “Lost” run by Patrick. This game was based on the TV series, but in concept only, we had all just crash landed on an island, my mission was to keep a suitcase safe, that’s why I was on the plane, I was transporting it. After a trek up a ridge to try and get a radio signal we noticed some military vehicles heading down to the crash site, there was gunfire and they took the rest of the people hostage. A bit of exploring later we’d found their base, an old WW2 airfield and we devised a plan to get the hostages and escape. Using a series of cunning ideas and a bit of brute force we rescued the hostages and got involved in a bit of a gun battle where I almost died from a grenade. In the end I was able to contact me “people” and they came to the rescue with all guns blazing. This was a nice simple game and a perfect CON idea. It turns out that every group who went through it in the weekend had pretty much the same technique going. It’s good to compare the way different groups completed it, which is a decent benefit of GM’ing.

CONCLUSION:

If I had to rate this CON I’d give it a 8 out of 10 overall. It was good and well organised but there was a couple of things that could have been tweaked however it was a great experience. The roleplaying itself was average, acceptable but not stand-outish. And apart from the roleplaying venues (including a table storage room) there wasn’t really any negative aspects of it. Having a CON that includes every main group of geeks was a bit of a drain on the roleplaying side of things as there were a few who favoured other disciplines over rolling dem bones, and of course 2 of the organizers were key roleplayers too, and let me say BIG UPS to them, I saw personally how much effort and time went into organising it and they all did very well. I shall definitely be heading up for it next year and I hope to see a few other locals make the effort too. Definitely the best event in Auckland and it can only get better as new relationships with the local gaming community have been made and repaired thanks to a dedicated few.