Gypsycon VII

Easter weekend saw the seventh Gypsycon. More than a dozen people, most of whom are connected in some way to the Dreamlyrics community descended on the remote Cambridgeshire village of Pidley for four days of solid gaming.

On Friday, in a departure from the usual format, we played aone big freeform game with sixteen people, based on an Ars Magica tribunal. Every character has their own agendas and secrets; my agenda simply being to avoid being executed for my alleged crimes. The game culminated in a in-character formal banquet, in which many of the secrets came out. The whole thing worked very well, and I'm sure we'll see something similar next year.

Saturday was Vampire:The Requiem, run by Steve "Abaddon" Morley. I'm not a big fan of Goth:The Angst games, but this one was a lot of fun. Set in York (the original one!), it started off with investigating mysterious symbols painted on the floor of a hotel room, but got more complex when we realised the Prince was not what he seemed. The game ran until 3:30am, on the day the clocks went forward an hour! At the same time, the other group were playing the new edition of Ars Magica, and were still in character generation at 7pm!

Sunday was Mage:Sorcerer's Crusade, run by Mark "L'Ange" Baker. This was the game I'd signed up for at Stabcon in January, but had failed to attract enough players at that event. The game was a sequel to the game that I'd played at last summer's Stabcon and others had played at an earlier Gypsycon, set in L'Ange's extremely (if not obsessively)well-detailed Northumbrian village, at which the player characters are setting up a university, a sort of renaissance Hogwarts. We began with an investigation of the gruesome murder of a party of a dozen or so monks on the Great North Road, which soon uncovered supernatural elements, then got sidetracked following many of the villages subplots, including ghosts, and outbreaks of a disease we weren't allowed to use our 21st century knowledge to cure. Finally we had to deal with a ferocious magical attack on our premises. Let's just not mention the succubus....

On Monday it was my turn to GM, with a scenario in my own Kalyr world, with the PCs as an team from the Academy of Knowledge, investigating illicit goings-on at a rival guild. I'd originally written it to play last year's Gypsycon, but unfortunately I didn't get to run it because some players had to drop out. I had GMed it at last July's Stabcon using Fudge; this time I ran things using 4th Edition GURPS. Apart from one mistake in combat initiative, the game ran reasonably well; the players seemed to enjoy it. I'm not sure whether I'll run future games in this setting using GURPS or Fudge; the rules-light nature of Fudge is a closer match to my GMing style, but GURPS seems the more popular system with most players.

As ever, a great time has had by all. Attendance was slightly down on last year, although we were blessed by a special American guest. Roll on Gypsycon VIII!