Timinits & Trolls: Back from the Eternal Con 2018

Yet another great convention. This one was a mere fortnight after Chimériades, resulting in a very weird 'embarrassment of riches' situation. I wish cons were regularly interspersed throughout the year...

the pathway to Burg Stahleck

As always we were welcome at beautiful castle-turned-youth hostel Burg Stahleck and given our room numbers. I ended up in the notorious snoratorium but since I had wisely added earplugs to my luggage everything went perfectly well.

Burg Stahleck - the Tower

I have already mentioned that the Eternal Con was a very family-friendly con, with many families with kids attending; I think this is the year when we saw most kids... If you have never been to a gaming con and have a family— honestly, this is the con to be!

the view from the castle

FRIDAY 18 MAY, 19:00, Grand Opening Ceremony

This year Franziska presented us the schedule and the activities under the form of a choose your own adventure book. As a long-time T&T fan, I really liked the idea!

FRIDAY 18 MAY, 21:00, Chaosium Panel

I won't bore you with the general RuneQuest stuff because (a) it was pretty much the same Jeff had already talked about at Chimériades, and (b) there was a dedicated RQ panel on Sunday (q.v.). As a result, I will focus on the non-RQ news that struck me as interesting.
First of all, we shall witness the return of two old favourites: the Credo card game, and the Nephilim role-playing game. The new edition of Credo is pretty advanced, whereas the new Nephilim is still under development.
There will also be a new edition of HeroQuest that will be non-Gloranthan in content so as to enable third-party publishers to publish games using the HQ engine.
As for Wyrms Footnotes, there should be a new issue soon (?) for some of the stuff that won’t get into the new RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha (RQG) books.

SATURDAY 19 MAY, Morning

I just spent the morning relaxing with friends— after all these years, and with pretty much the same people attending, the Eternal Con has really become a gathering of friends!

relaxing with friends

Then I prepared the pregen PCs for my afternoon game (see below).

busy busy

SATURDAY 19 MAY, Afternoon

This was quite interesting. I have been running an RQG campaign set in Eastern Genertela in Paris as one of the playtesting groups for about a year, and two of my Parisian players were also attending the con. So I ran a one-shot RQG adventure that I also managed to include in the overall story arc of my RQG campaign game. That showcased to the new players (4 of them) how deeply intertwined with Glorantha the new rules were.

weird artefacts at the castle

SATURDAY 19 MAY, Evening

Played Massive Darkness, an incredibly daft miniature boardgame: open door, kill monster, take treasure... Jesus, are we still playing this in 2018??? The cool thing, however, is that the material is fantastic, and the miniatures quite evocative. Alas we got killed at about 3/4ths of completing our Quest.

SUNDAY 20 MAY, Morning

Played Maria, an AWESOME three-player wargame by Histogame about the War of the Austrian Succession. I was playing Maria Theresa and had to face two enemies on two different fronts: the annoying Louis XV of France on the Western front, and the sly Frederick II of Prussia on the Northeastern front. Louis XV was trying to prevent my husband Whatsisname to become Holy Roman Emperor whilst Frederick II was quietly stealing large swathes of land from my northernmost estates. The first extraordinary idea of the game is that the same player who plays my enemy Frederick II on the Northeastern front plays my ally George II on the Western front, which led to... interesting developments. The second extraordinary idea of the game is that everything (battle results, diplomatic achievements, purchase of supply trains and/or reinforcement troops for the armies...) is fuelled by the use of cards so you're always hesitating as to how you should use them (obviously you never have enough of them) and, as we all know, a good game is about difficult choices.
And in the end I got to crush Louis XV and to slightly come ahead of Frederick II, so I was elated.

the perfidious Franco-Bavarian attack

in dire straits — luckily I managed to keep a cold head

make Alsace deutschsprachig again!

the political board

SUNDAY 20 MAY, Afternoon

I got to play Illuminati for the first time in my life— can you believe that, the game has been around since 1982! I was playing the Servants of Cthulhu (whose aim is to destroy cards rather than to control them) but I think I exaggerated on the 'not controlling any groups' side and as a result I was always cash-strapped. Anyway, a good starting impression of this classic game.

my game (with four destroyed cards)

the winner's game

Then I played an old favourite of mine, Nations the Dice Game, a very fast game of civilisation-building with a pleasant 'rolling dice' aspect (we gamers do love dice).

SUNDAY 20 MAY, Early Evening

The sad, sad Closing Ceremony. I want to let you know that next year is the 10th Eternal Con and the 30-year jubilee of the cons in Bacharach, so there should be some special events. Be sure to attend!

SUNDAY 20 MAY, Late Evening

The dedicated RQG panel. Here are a few news on top of the ones I've already mentioned in my Chimériades blog post. The triptych books should be available in hard format by Christmas 2018.
We had looooots of discussions about art, in the core book as well as in the future books. Jeff wants all of the future RQG books to look as good as the core book; e.g., Gods of Glorantha is fully written but work on art hasn’t started yet. And it’s going to take time because it will be good.