OSRCon Thoughts (Part I)

Originally, I'd planned to write a single post summing up my thoughts and feelings about everything I did and saw while at OSRCon this past weekend, but I've now become convinced that there's enough of interest to justify several posts. Let me start by praising both the convention's organizer, Chris Cunnington, and its sponsor, the Merrill Collection of Science Fiction, Speculation & Fantasy for making this happen. The con went off without any hitch that I could detect and the facilities at the Lillian H. Smith library were fantastic. So, kudos to everyone who helped inaugurate what I hope will be a long-lasting tradition here in Toronto.

As I'm certain I've stated innumerable times before, I am not a con-goer. I've been to GenCon and Origins once each and am frankly not in a huge hurry to attend either again anytime soon. I find such gatherings simply too overwhelming to enjoy properly. Likewise, I haven't run an adventure for a group of total strangers since I did so at "RPG days" at local libraries back in Baltimore County in the early 1980s. I've got a long-established group of players with whom I've been playing since the early 1990s and the last new player added to that group joined us over a decade ago. Consequently, it's no exaggeration to say that I felt some trepidation at the thought of attending OSRCon.

As it turned out, I had no reason whatsoever to be concerned. I very quickly felt quite comfortable, due in no small part to Chris Cunnington's excellent organization and discussions with me beforehand. But, much as I wish to praise Chris, even more do I wish to praise the con's attendees, who were, to a man, some of the friendliest and most pleasant gamers I've had the occasion to meet. As I noted in a comment to an earlier post, gamers have a reputation for being socially awkward misfits who are in large part responsible for the bad impressions outsiders have of our shared hobby. I came away from OSRCon with the feeling that, while that description may be true of some gamers, it certainly isn't true of most of them, certainly not any of those with whom I interacted over the course of two days. I won't go so far as to claim that "the ugly gamer" is wholly a myth, even if I am sure that he's not as common a creature as conventional wisdom would have us believe.

On Friday, I ran a single four-hour session of my Dwimmermount megadungeon. This session had six players -- the maximum allowed to register -- and involved the exploration of Level 1 of the mountain fortress. All the players used pre-generated characters, resulting in a party that consisted of two dwarves, a fighting man, a cleric of Typhon, a magic-user, and a thief. I was (mostly) using LBB + Greyhawk OD&D, supplemented with a few minor house rules. I allowed spellcasters to choose their own spells and used Jeff's "deck of stuff" to give each character something unusual to play with. I also provided a frame for the session: the PCs were sent by some dwarves to seek out the whereabouts of a dwarven cemetery reputed to be on the first level, as well as to determine what had become of a previous scouting party, consisting of three dwarves and a gnome, that never returned from their mission. This latter bit proved very useful, since it kept the players focused. Otherwise, four hours could easily have elapsed without any sense of "conclusion," if you catch my meaning.

There are many things that stick with me after Friday's session. The first was just how fresh Dwimmermount became when seen through the eyes of players who'd never walked its corridors before. I've been running that megadungeon for 2+ years now with the same crew of players and, while it's still fun for us, familiarity can sometimes breed contempt. Playing it with new people made it all seem new, even to me, and that's a terrific feeling. Also, I felt very much at ease refereeing, since I knew the dungeon inside and out already, having run it many times previously. This afforded me the opportunity to present everything I already knew in an entertaining and intriguing way. Whatever "stage fright" I had when I first sat down at the table quickly evaporated.

What was also neat to watch was how quickly this group, consisting of people who didn't know each other before the con, cohered into a unified party. They acted as a group and did so well. Furthermore, their characters, who began as little more than a jumble of stats I handed them, were true characters by the end of the session, so much so in fact that I found myself wishing I could continue to play with this same group again in the future. It was amazing to watch them them develop tactics and procedures as they dealt with the tricks, traps, and monsters they encountered. There were times when I felt myself transported back to those heady days when my friends I did the same and it confirmed for me that it is possible to go home again. Good games never get old and D&D is a very good game.

There are too many moments from the session to recount and this entry has already gone on longer than I anticipated, so I won't share most of them here. However, the one that really stayed with me is one where, having fought innumerable small skirmishes with kobolds in the caves leading to where the PCs felt the dwarven cemetery was located, they corned a large band of them and attempted to parley with them. One of the dwarves, believing that negotiation might work, offered to help the kobolds against the orcs inhabiting another part of the dungeon in exchange for the kobolds' leaving the dwarven cemetery alone. The kobolds were unwilling to accept this offer, since, as they explained, "We need the dead dwarves to replenish our numbers." Yes, that's right: kobolds are made from dead dwarves in the Dwimmermount setting. Upon learning this, the formerly pacific dwarf raised his warhammer (which he dubbed "Grool") and ran right into the kobolds' midst to slay them. As he explained later to his companions, "I pitied them at first, but, now that I know what they're doing, they must all die!" It was a great moment in a session filled with them.