From: john.hughes@anu.edu.au (John Patrick Hughes)
Subject: Et in Arcanacon Ego (Review)
Organization: Australian National University
Date: Mon, 27 Jul 92 04:52:35 GMT

ARCANACON X: THE MELBOURNE VIEW OF ROLEPLAYING

Warning: This review contains opinions of a craven and highly subjective
nature. Spelling likewise. Please preface every sentence with IMHO...

Arcanacon used to be an annual pilgrimage for NSW/ACT roleplayers: a chance to
see what our friends in Mexico were up to, to sample new games and new ideas,
and for many of us, to devote a convention to playing rather than organising/
gming. The annual pilgrimage has become less of an event in the last few years:
ideas and originality of games has been lacking (with one or two notable
exceptions), and game quality eratic at best. ARCANACON X has done nothing to
correct this downward spiral.

I played the entire convention this year: the first time I've <played> an
entire con for nearly five years. Although I gave a seminar and organised the
roleplaying auction, I came to play. My experiences seem to indicate a
growing rift between Sydney and Melbourne gaming cultures, and a strong 
conservative reaction in Melbourne gaming.

First the Good Bits...

I actually was scheduled for every game I'd entered - a first for me at
Arcanacon. The organisers were unfailingly friendly, helpful, knowledgeable
and <available> something Sydney organisers should try to learn from. Apart
from one organiser throwing chairs across the room in anger during the opening
minutes of registration, everyone was very approachable and very helpful. This
alone added a world of difference to my experience of the con. Congratulations and thanks to all
and thanks to all concerned. The venue was not as crowded as in previous years,
unfortunately because of the substantial drop in attendees - I understand that
Arcanarcon will lose money this year. People I spoke with seemed to enjoy the
banquet enormously. The canteen offered a variety of edible and even healthy
food as well as the usual 'raise your blood sugar' convention fare. Non-stop
Japanese animation videos provided entertainment for those lost between
sessions. The dealers area was the largest of any Australian convention (well,
maybe, - I've never been to Conquest). Seminars - on module writing, freeforms,
and women in gaming - were held each lunchtime. If only lunch was longer than 
30 minutes...

In short, Arcanacon provided the best and friendliest organisation I've seen
to date. Sydney organisers (me included) can learn a lot from their attitude
and attention to detail.

And the Auction. I ran the auction to raise money for Greg Stafford's visit
to Australia in October, and received overwhelming support, even if no one
wanted to bid for the ADnD Trivia Game. The event was very successful. 
I owe a big personal Thank You to the Arca organisers, and to Wes Nicholson,
the RPGA, and Mark Morrison for their support and assistance.

The Games, and other Not So Good Bits...

The Major DnD was well received and innovative. Andrew South is back with a
vengence after several years of 'retirement', and with Martin Dick he provided
a gypsy module that was well researched and definitely inspired. It provided
two sessions of gratuitous characterisation and a final session of slugfest for
the traditionalists.

I only played one of the three 'Holiday in Glorantha' Runequest modules, but
what a gem it was. Melbourne has always provided very light-hearted and 
whimsical RQ, but "7 Brides for 7 llamas' was the funiest and most endearing
RQ module I've ever encountered. We played stereotypical characters from the
tribes of Prax- Storm Bull, Healer, Scholar and Waha warrior, but were all
allied spirits in the bodies of animals. I bought the other two RQ modules and
they seem to be of similar high quality.

Benella was the only 'thematic' game at the con, and, not surprisingly, was a
Sydney contribution. It was a Trauma game, where characters played
themselves. I found it to be very well paced and genuinely surprising, but
talking to others it seemed to depend on the gm you got -- some played it
very jokey and melodramatic. It also depended on how seriously you took the
Trauma character sheets -- we basicly ignored them. If nothing else, Benella
showed how much our social selves are in effect roleplaying masks. Paul
Eccleston seems to be going from strength to strength.

'The Old Damned House' was the major Cthulhu, slick, well gmed, enjoyable,
 but ultimately predictable and lifeless. PCs were all detective genre 
stereotypes, and mostteams experienced a very high character death rate.

The Cthulhu Conglomerate
seems to suffer from lots of ideas but at times little unitary vision- last
years Geurnica is perhaps the best example of this. TODH had similar touches-
why did a duck with a $20 dollar bill appear every time you said 'that' word?
Why the bizzare rooms in our business office that had nothing to do with the
plot? The investigation centred on an old mansion and the strange history of
the Hazard family. The logical climax occurred in uncovering the dread secret
of the house, yet the module tried to drag it out with a long 'visionary' 
chase down to hell (al la Taterdemalion) to return the cursed amulet. It
seemed unnecessarily long, and I feel the module would have been much better
as two sessions.

The freeforms that ran seemed well received. Silverwraithe II was cancelled
despite being advertised at last year's con - it seemed no one wanted to 
risk three sessions to a designer of unreliable reputation. The Lolly Freeform
and the Edwardian Club both pleased the freeformers in my group.

These were the highlights of the con. The other games I encountered were 
ordinary at best. 'Blood of Emeralds' by Gary Fay & Lyn James intrigued me
when I first saw its blurb. It seemed to promise an episode out of the High
Irish Mythology of the Tain and the Ulaid, the hero wars of Cu Chulain
and Conchobar mac Ness. Instead, the module was fairly straight Pendragon set
300 years later in the time of Arthur. I felt that it would have made a better
campaign than tournament module; our enjoyment was lessened by an arbitrary
and meaningless character death in the second half, an overeliance on dice
(the reason for that death) and a gm who didn't seem to have playtested or 
understand the genre (he kept pronouncing "Sidhe" as "Sid").

I don't know if the Paranioa had a plot. If it did I didn't notice.

Corporate Music was a single session CyberPunk. It was run by a fairly young
and inexperienced team who tried their hardest, but like so many of the modules
on offer didn't seem to have been playtested. The plot was handed to you on a
plate, the characters were unbalanced (loving Christian with a chainsaw) and
the character dynamics and motivation were such that many teams voluntarily 
self destructed in the course of the module. While I certainly believe in
encouraging young designers, the best time to do it is before a convention,
with some supportive playtesting and devil's advocacy.

Hotel Barstardos was supposedly Cthulhu and supposedly humourous. The 'don't
tell them anything' blurb misled some teams, and the module floundered with
acceptable characters but illogical and strained plot. The only innovative
thing about 'Sensitive Gamers For A Better Tomorrow' is that they reverse
common trends by getting worse with each module.

Oh yes, the StormBringer. Richard Watts, IMHO is our most gifted designer, with
a truly unique writing style. Unfortunately, in this module I didn't see much
of Richard's writing or ideas. The gm seemed extremely coy about the more
explicit nature of the artefacts the character recieved, and the characters
were so socially powerful that the module developed into a power freeform for
3 (there were 4 players). The best thing about the module for me happened
afterwards, when a less coy gm told me what the artefacts actually did.

A CLASH OF CULTURES

Well, there you have it, honest, cruel and totally biased. Perhaps the most
interesting thing about Arcanacon (and my review) is the growing divergence
of the Sydney and Melbourne gaming cultures. Sydney has a well established
circuit of six cons a year (CanCon, Sydcon, SAGA, Necro, Newcon, Macquariecon)
a willingness to experiment and innovate and a commitment to playtesting and
module development through alpha testing. It also has a strong case of burnout
through trying to cope with six cons a year. Melbourne has two largish cons,
a commitment to commercial gaming (almost all of Australia's published
modules and games come from Melbourne) and a resultant conservatism and 
unwillingness to experiment. It seems that very few of the Arcanacon modules 
were playtested: most of them would have benefited enormously from even a few
runthroughs. Nor did many gms seem to have beta tested the modules: most ran
them cold. There seemed to no organisational input into the type or quality of
the games on offer: it seemed very much come one, come all.

Will Melbourne's reaction to Sydney push them further into dice
bound, lowest common denominator games? Will Sydney burnout lead to a lowering
of module standards (I think this has already started) and the collapse of
experimentation? Do Newcastle or Brisbane hold the key to the next renaissance
in Australian roleplaying? All of these issues and more will be discussed at
Arcanacon XI. 

John.

john.hughes@anu.edu.au

 

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