ImberCorvus Blog

Its been some time since I last posted here and in that time I’ve been far from idle.

I spent a night in the hospital, got a new gaming group, organised my trip to GenConOz 2009, attended a funeral and lost all of my inspiration. Its coming back to me slowly now and I’ve decided to work on some short fiction.

The new gaming group necessitated the creation of a new fictional world for those self same characters to inhabit so I’m working on an island nation for that and its all in the “in my head” stage currently. I’m tossing up chronicalling my worldbuilding on here for all of you so that you can take something away from it. I’ve been looking at Campaign Cartographer for my mapping recently but it looks too… generic for me at the moment.

I’m trying to light a fire under my creativity by doing some short fiction work and some character development. There are a few stories I need to tell and I’m working on easing those out. A steampunk tale of gearworks and blood magic, a samurai tale with a twist and the rest of my Gillis Svend story.

I’m flying to Brisbane a week from now for GenConOz 2009 and I’m getting more excited about that for every day that passes, it’ll be good to hit up some writing seminars and bury my head in the joy of volunteering at a convention that large.

Till then I’m out.

I’ve been thinking about this for a long while now and I think its not enough to just turn up at the Con play some games or whatever it is you came for and then wander on home.

The GCO staff are going to put on another awesome Con just like last year in less than two months time and I figure its up to us to pack the place out. So my challenge to everyone who reads this is, come to GenConOz 2009 but more than that, bring a friend, or two friends or fifteen friends, bring everyone you know who might be interested.Because the bigger this years convention is, the better NEXT YEARS convention will be.

Register for your Event Badge soon so that the GCO staff know that we are coming and then descend with me as a black cloud over Brisbane and show the Organisers, the Exhibitors and the Community that we support our Convention and that It and Us are here to stay.

So its coming up on GenCon time again and this years convention looks to be just as awesome as last year.

The dates for the convention have moved to September 18-20 to better align with the global convention scene and the Australian calender but it all sounds very promising. As last year I have been added to the throng of volunteers though unlike last year I hope to be added to the smaller  throng of senior volunteers.

Games I hope to catch this year are Quincunx, Pheonix (4th Edition Shadowrun) and Homecoming (2nd Edition Exalted) if I can fit them in to the Volunteering Schedual. You may note with some surprise that I wont be looking to play any D&D this year and the reasoning on that is? I play enough D&D at home!

I thought I might take a moment to reflect on last year’s GenConOz experience for those of you who did not make it to the Convention;

We flew up the day before the convention, Wednesday, and met up with Tom who I’d been talking to on the GenCon Forums and he showed us around brisbane a bit, it was somewhat ironic being shown around an Australian city by an American tourist. We got the train from the airport into south bank which is where the convention and our accommodation were.

I’d had a shop around leading up to the convention and decided on Brisbane Backpackers Resort, a lot of people stay at Hotels during a convention but I don’t really see the point, all I used the room for was sleeping and I was going down at midnight and getting up at six in the morning anyway. We booked a six bed dorm for the six of us so we didn’t even end up sharing with strangers and locked our valuable valuables into steel security lockers down stairs for the five days we were in QLD.

BBR does not pretend to be anything other than what it is, a Backpackers Hostel. The beds in the room were bunks with foam mattresses and one somewhat thin blanket, but again I didn’t really mind as I was only in it six hours. What it does feature is a bar and kitchen downstairs with reasonably priced counter meals and cheap drinks where we spent many a night with happy hour pitchers of Strongbow.The hostel was situated about a ten minute walk from the Convention Centre and there were a number of places to get breakfast situated between the two.

I reported bright and early on the first day for my volunteering stint and took up my position as an informant and sentry guarding the entrance to the trade hall until it was time to open it and allow the throng to rush in for their purchasing frenzy. I also got to know the retailers a bit and recognise the people I was supposed to let by me.

That became my morning routine and my afternoons and evenings were dotted with the games I could manage to fit in;

I got a chance to play in three Role Playing Gamers Association Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition (RPGA D&D 4E) events and this was the month after the game was released and featured a lot of play test content. Because of the way I’d booked the events I got to play at a table entirely comprised of my friends from home which really made the game shine.

I also got to play the 4th Edition Revision of Shadowrun again with my friends from home and it was a most interesting game. The Game Master acting as an agent for Catalyst Game Labs who are the current liscencees for the Shadowrun Franchise had created a deep and rich story set in central Australia including such characters as a Frill Neck Lizard Shaman and a Maori Troll.

The Seminars I attended in no particular order were Anatomy of a Duel, which was an intimate demonstration of Japanese swordplay by an Iaido master, Writing in Someone Else’s Sandbox, about writing in an established setting and a round table discussion including Ian Irvine and Kylie Chan on creating worlds and characters.

I will be returning to GenConOz this year for another round of amazing memories, anyone thinking about making the journey from interstate, inter nation or even locals I will be staying at the same hostel and would be more than happy to roll you in to our little group.

Below I’ve included a few photographs I took during the convention in 2008;

[View with PicLens]

I was recently a guest on the Here Be Gamers Podcast who are friends of the blog. They had me on to talk about 4th Edition D&D and to discuss the diferences if any to the previous editions. For those of you intrigued that podcast can be found here.

This is a small excerpt from an article I am completing on Dwarves;

Anti-Religion

The Dvergar are a post-theistic society who while believing in divinity and the greater forces that direct the flow of the world are at a stage beyond the worship of a deity or deities. Occupying a similar role in their culture is the veneration and respect for their ancestors and the earth from which they came.

Dvergar are naturally suspicious of magic having progressed to a point in their culture where they place far more emphasis on the creations of the individual through labour and time than through the manipulation of magic. This intellectual and spiritual suspicion of magic in its many forms makes the Dvergar highly resistant to its effects.

Ancestors

The Dvergar celebrate their ancestors and their actions and draw from their lives the teachings of the next generation.

Each Clan and Family venerates its own direct ancestors and exarchs as well as the communal ancestors of the Dvergar who are drawn from antiquity like Vigdis the Battlemaiden who fell at the last stand of Iron Hope.

The stoneworkers and metal smiths of the Dvergar call out to their ancestors for guidance when they ply their craft and in doing so work their tools with the experience of a hundred lifetimes which allows them to create works that are not possible for other smiths and masons.

Some Dvergar called Skalds can tap into this broad spectrum of racial memory and summon up the talents and songs of their ancestors.

The Earth

The Dvergar are by their nature creatures of the earth born from stone and mineral in the beginning of it all, they are drawn to the earth and connected to it in a fundamental way.

This very tie to the earth makes them uniquely talented artists and crafters because many Dvergar can “see” a creation in the raw materials they work from.

This also gave rise to the earth shapers;

Earth Shapers

While resistant to magic and beyond the need for divinity the Dvergar are still moved by the masterful skill of the earth shapers who draw their power not from the gods or the universe but from the very earth beneath their feet.

Gifted with the power to shift and change the world around them with their hands and their minds the Earth Shapers are the natural evolution of the link between the Dvergar and the earth and their paradigm shift towards creations made by the hand and the mind alone.

The Dvergar are not forward in their post-theistic beliefs and acknowledge and respect the existence of deities and the importance they play in the lives and societies of other cultures.