German RQCon 6
Berlin - May 1995
This year's German RuneQuest-Con has just finished, and it was a truly wonderful event! The Con took over an East German youth hostel, a fine location (though the organisers plan bigger and better things for next year, when the convention will be held in a castle!), where despite official "dryness" the beer flowed like water -- our hosts explained that beer shouldn't be considered an alcoholic drink in Germany, though it certainly seemed to work as one. (Or was that the Krupnik?).
Reaching Moon Megacorp sent a delegation consisting of David Hall, Kevin Jacklin, Dan Barker and myself. The Con's feature event was Heroes of Wisdom, a bilingual freeform set in and around the Lhankor Mhy temple of Jonstadt (that's "Jonstown," if you speak Lunar). For some reason, we were cast as leading lights of the Lunar administration: in my case as Octavian Suppositorius, chief missionary of the Seven Mothers, a man who sees everything through rose-tinted glasses.
The game was fast and furious, with Orlanth providing appropriate background weather; after strutting around as if we owned the place (which we did!), we got down to the serious business of pulling the wool over our visiting VIPs' eyes, covering up our colleagues' various excesses (financial, religious, sexual -- you name it!), and making arrangements for the peaceful handover of a third of the Jonstown library's books to the Empire. During the game I was mindblasted (by a professional colleague), stupefied (by an unknown assailant), betrayed (by a visiting dignitary), assaulted (by a misinformed youth), groped (by the high healer), married (to my own high priestess), and almost sent off to convert the trolls of Dagori Inkarth armed only with a toothpick. Sterling work at the last minute won me a cushy job in the East Isles instead: the books were handed over, the moonboat departed, and we all breathed a sigh of relief.
Tales #13, the long-heralded Western Special, made its debut at the Con. I got my hands on RuneQuest Adventures #5, which looks to be an extremely fine issue on first reading: this zine keeps getting better! Formal and informal discussions covered heroquesting, astrology, Esrolites and Wenelians, inter alia; we also played an English-language RQ game set in Dark Age Britain, and lounged around in the sun a lot (when the Trollball wasn't on). I lost three shirts, about my average for Cons. I also played a wonderful storytelling card game, Into the Dark Continent -- it's not remotely Gloranthan, but I'm giving it a BIG PLUG here anyway.
As before, there was no hint of any language barrier (I don't speak German), except when the barbarians wanted to keep things secret from us. The organisation was excellent, the food plentiful, and the company most convivial. My one regret was that it was all over so fast: just Saturday afternoon to Monday morning -- mind you, at the rate things were happening I'd have burned out in another day.
Well worth the journey!
Nick Brooke
Glorantha Digest
5 June 1995
