Dragonmeet 2013

/Hello, gamebookers!  Apologies for my silence recently.  The last weeks of the winter term are crazy busy, and I normally publish a post that I have prepared earlier.  However, this year, I tried to write about

Tony Hough, Neil Rennison and myself.

Dragonmeet, but didn't.  Anyway, here it is now.

So this year, Dragonmeet was attended, not only by Steve Jackson and Ian Livingstone again, but also by Lone Wolf writer Joe Dever.  I spoke to all of them, and they are all top guys.

Joe complimented Fighting Fantazine and talked to me about the upcoming Lone Wolf RPG.  I also thanked him for putting all of his books on his website for free.  As well as being very kind, it also seems to be a good business move as giving away free e-books increases print sales (here is one site that quotes that, though I first heard this in several episodes of a podcast I used to listen to called The Future and You).  I hadn't bought any of my Lone Wolf books, as they were in my loft, but I managed to find a haul and bought some for Joe to sign, after getting into a round of politeness judo with someone (I was taking all the books I might want out, he liked some.  I said he could have them as I hadn't paid for them or claimed them. we both took some books in the end).

I showed Ian the Island of the Lizard King app (out now in Google Play and on iTunes), which looks amazing and talked to Steve about the new Khare app from Inkle.

I then met up with Tony Hough (who has illustrated the recently released Forgotten Spell (out on iTunes and Google Play) and has more illustrations coming in Awakening of Asuria).  He showed me some of his awesome collection, including a battle scene with half a horse hanging off a wooden pole (nice!) and then had a talk with Neil Rennison (who is clearly busy - have a look at his blog) and Jon Green (who is also busy dealing with an increasingly expanding YOU ARE THE HERO).

It was great to see all the gamebook people at the convention (including John Berry, a fan of my blog).

Pictured:  Awesome cake.

Other things I enjoyed doing was seeing the Lords of War people again.  It's great when you walk by and you hear 'I know you from last year!', from the creator of a game.  Lords of war turned 1 on December the 7th and they have had a great year, which includes releasing Elves vs Lizardmen and getting Templars vs Undead 120% funded on Kickstarter.  I'm looking forward to seeing more from them, which may not necessarily be fantasy.  They also had some awesome cake.  I'm sure they will be there next year.  If they are, I expect more cake!

I went to one seminar this year, and it wasn't the Steve and Ian one (it was in the morning and I had some pressing house business to attend to that morning), but instead, I went to the Storygames panel, where the London Indie RPG group talked about what story games are, including using Witch as an example.  They are games where a small amount of information is used to facilitate the group to co-create a story.  There is no DM and no dice rolls.  Conflicting ideas about what should happen go to a vote.  I was wondering if a gamebook could utilise some of these things.  It would be more book than game and if there were succeed/fail options, you could choose them, but failure would not lead to something bad...just something different.  Anyway, there is plenty of food for thought there.

So, another great Dragonmeet.  I'll be there next year, as it is a great day out.  Looking forward for more!

The posts will return now.  I ahve plenty saved up, and now it's the holidays, I'll be writing more up for later.

Happy gamebooking!