Dragonmeet 2019 Loot

Several people pool together to get tables on the Dragonmeet trade floor so its not always clear who represents what, if I’ve misrepresented who was selling or creating what then my apologies. I’ll try and fix it up later.

I picked up a copy of Troika Numinous Edition (along with lots of other people I know). It has nice artwork but it’s essentially still the same Troika as the A5 booklet for better or worse.

Rakehell is an interesting setting for Knave that takes the form mostly of random tables. It outlines a mountainous border territory between larger kingdoms where exiles, dissidents, heretics and other outsiders can find refuge amongst the strange and isolated natives.

Last year I picked up Best Left Buried which I had pretty mixed feelings about. This year the game had been remixed into a two volume “zine set” of summarised rules and a bunch of one night dungeons called the Crypt Collection. The new format did get me to look at the rules again and I’d be willing to give this one-shot formula a go in a way that the original’s OSR-light approach didn’t really engender.

Graham Walmsley had a game design zine out and I’m still going through it but so far it’s all solid sensible advice that talks about the consequences of what you put into game rules and is a good statement of the virtues of intentional game design.

DnDice were selling “booster” packages of randomly selected dice. Their dice have a beautifully heavy feel to them with a satisfying roll. However initially I was very sceptical about the idea of choosing a colour-scheme randomly. The boosters are still quite expensive compared to regular dice. In the end though I decided to give it a go and ended with a charming blue set which I’m quite taken with.

Lost Pages had a shared stall and I picked up a copy of Genial Jack a fantasy city built on and in a whale. It is nicely illustrated and conceptually is an interesting idea of producing the anti-Cthulhu. A ancient behemoth from beneath the waves who likes the small beings on the surface. I also got a print copy of Maze Rats and I was persuaded to by a set of polyhederal dice to round out my order. I’m not really sure what I was thinking of but credit to Paolo for his upsale skills.

On the Pelegrane stall Steve Dempsey was selling a few copies of his Five Women of Whitechapel game with the money going to the East End Women’s Museum.

The controversial tote

The most controversial purchase turned out to be a Lamentations of the Flame Princess tote bag. I have a certain amount of respect for James Raggi as a man from an indie point of view. He has a particular taste and vision and he’s goes out and puts a lot of effort into realising entirely on his own terms. I’m not particularly into most of his work and therefore I tend to prefer to offer a bit of support by buying t-shirts and other bits of merch when I see his stall.

However at the con someone seeing the bag told me I should be contributing to Mandy Morbid’s defence fund instead. They had a point and I’ve done that now.

However there are lots of people who have collaborated creatively Zak Smith and I think I’m going to decide who of those people’s work I’m going to engage with in future.

Naturally part of that decision is how they decide to respond to the whole situation. Raggi was selling his decidedly unhelpful scenario “Zak has nothing to do with this book” at Dragonmeet (this blog from Coins and Scrolls has a good overview of the problems with this odd defence or satire). If he can’t find a more constructive way to address the issues at stake or even support his friend then I would agree that it would be problematic to continue to support him.