From Newsgroup: rec.games.frp.dnd

Tooting my own horn here as it's my con report from Cauldron, but it's content!


Source: https://gmkeros.wordpress.com/2024/10/28/cauldron-2024-manor-on-the-borderlands/

Cauldron 2024: Manor on the Borderlands

rCaof Hessia and Thuringia that is. But that means in living memory the
Iron Wall ran merely a few hundred meters away from the location.

And I swear I wanted to go there and make a proper picture but there was simply no time. I managed to play more during the last weekend than I
did during some of the last few years.

So last weekend was Cauldron 2024, the rCLOSR-Euro-ConrCY, organized by the PESA Nexus.

I saw it happened last year and was miffed I completely missed it until pictures showed up online. So I made sure to plan for it early on this year.

The convention took place in a small manor house in eastern Hessia
(Schloss Hohenroda), which makes for really central Germany. It ran from Thursday the 17th to Sunday the 20th.

I managed to get there by Thursday evening, much too late and tired to actually do much but talk a bit with people and watch them play a
Braunstein game where I lacked context. This was an issue I will have to
deal with next year when the convention is planned even further west:
either I get someone else to drive with me, or I have to travel by other means. I am not used to driving this long alone.


The next few days were filled with lots of gaming, as games started
right after breakfast and were only interrupted by meals (and sometimes
ran into the mealtimes as well).
It was fun, it was nice having people around that actually were talking
the same things I was interested in, and which understood what I was
talking about. Even with other RPG conventions thatrCOs not necessarily a given. It was also fun doing some really nice creative gaming that did
not involve following some sort of railroad for the sake of it.

On the other hand it also showed the audience of the hobby definitely
trending towards the bearded old guy demographic (and considering how
early I went to bed I definitely feel like IrCOm part of it).

Games I played

2 games in Wanderer BillrCys Grenzland campaign (ODnD White
Box+Chainmail). Different characters though, because the one from the
first game was time-locked (and the one I played previously in his
campaign safely back homerCa).

The campaign is running in real time, and when the game moves ahead the characters are out of commission for further games until it catches up.
Which meant when we started venturing out in the second adventure the
big fight of the first scenario still was in the future.

Our first adventure we were supposed to explore south of the campaign
base Blaufahr to find new people for the depopulated settlement. The
last few months in the campaign seem to have been quite rough. So we
were given money to find new people and opportunities.

Instead we decided to go to the dungeon to loot. We rescued a few
goblins from bandits and tried to establish friendly relations with the
goblin king. Unfortunately the goblins at the local goblin settlement
were wary of us, and when one of our MUs decided to steal an ancestral artifact the whole situation went sideways. Our fighters heroically
managed to behead the goblin king and show off his head to his people.
Then they were slaughtered by his enraged citizens.

(There was in fact a chance theyrCOd crown one of them the new king)

We spellcasters instead headed to the exit when it started to go wrong
and managed to survive largely unscathed.

The second adventure was a scouting mission northwards, to figure out
where a group of orcs that had attacked recently had their settlement.
Through some smart play and good die rolls we befriended some scouting
elves, hitched a ride on their ship, found the settlement, mowed down a patrol, then took their leader prisoner. All without casualties.

Then a random encounter with cockatrices hit us hard and turned the
adventure into fantasy-vietnam, as our decimated party tried to hurry
through unknown territory, getting the prisoner back to Blaufahr.

The four petrified elvish men-at-arms we left behind are now a permanent fixture in the ongoing campaign, at least until someone with a
stone-to-flesh scroll comes byrCa

And thatrCOs all exactly the weird off the wall gaming experience I love
when playing ODnD.

baexta had a session of Albie FiorerCOs The Lichway (from White Dwarf #9)
on offer, run in ADnD/OSRIC, and I decided to take part. Especially as I realized I had forgotten everything about the scenario from running itrCa
12 years ago? Well, not everything. I remembered the central conceit.
But the GM telegraphed that early on and the others figured it out and I didnrCOt have to feel bad about it. He also offered The Halls of Tizun
Thane, and while I would have loved that one as well I just prepped that recently.

This was also the first time I actually properly played ADnD 1st ed. by
the book, and I realized my view of it was correct: itrCOs a good resource
to take parts from, but I do not care about the complexity itself. And
ADnD is not actually all that complex, just more so than I like for this
kind of game. I think thererCOs other games that do the complexity better.


It also was the first time I played Old School Essentials proper, as in another game we went down to The JewelerrCOs Sanctum from the OSE
Adventure Anthology I. Despite OSE being basically just a restatement of
B/X with clearer design it also oozes some dark fairy tale vibe that
seems quite different from standard B/X DnD. The game bore that out,
even though it was quite the standard dungeon crawl: we were to explore
an improbably large dungeon under a jewelerrCOs workshop. The scenario whittled away our resources with smaller encounters (giant centipedes
and rats) before hitting us with a near TPK in the form of grey oozes.
Our GM daeman managed to present this all quite well (he has a knack for
using minis and terrainrCa and printing them out), but I canrCOt help but think that the scenario itself has issues. On the other hand we clearly didnrCOt figure out some of the stuff in the dungeon, so I might just be missing the point.


The last one I took part in was The Veiled Vaults of the Onyx Queen, a
DCC funnel presented by le moule intello as a basic DnD scenario. It
seems he wanted to run it as a DCC scenario as well but received some
negative feedback about that before, so decided to switch it to DnD on
the fly. WhichrCa I donrCOt know. I signed up for the game when it was advertised as a DCC game, and so did daeman (see above), and I think we
both wouldnrCOt have minded to play DCC instead. And I think it would have worked oh so slightly better because the magic system of DCC seems more
geared towards this. That said, it still worked the way he ran it.

A funnel is a scenario concept where you start with multiple 0-level characters and develop them during the game for use in a later campaign,
or you lose and replace them. Your characters might come out with some
useful skills or magic items, and a proper backstory.
playing Veiled Vaults on erasable battlemat, with meeples as minis

That said this scenario was more linear and basic than I might have
liked, and seemed very specifically intended to introduce people to the
hobby. And for that it might be very useful. It just also drops the
players into a very specific Heavy Metal-style setting where nobody
questions a queen living for 300 years and regularly sacrificing her
least liked subjects to some eldritch being from beyond.

Other thingsrCa

* Blackrazor wrote a tournament module for the convention (rCLChildren of
the SearCY), and I originally wanted to GM it, but didnrCOt find the time to look into it before. And when I signed up for it I either mistook the
time slot or the game disappeared, so in the end I didnrCOt even play in
it. It seems to have been quite fun though.
* There was unlimited coffee. Unlimited coffee!
* Also a free candy bar for brain food.
* I received a Nibelung Saga game and the new issue of Grenzland on the Convention, but I will have a look at those in separate posts

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