UK games expo wrap up.

So as I touched upon last week, today I'm going to talk a little more about the UK games expo.

(I still can't get most of the pictures I want. So this will be a photo light entry)

I spent most of my time in the children's zone, running an adventure of (mostly) my own creation called “the Clarendon school of wizards and warriors” This adventure used a very very simplified version of the dungeons and dragons 4^th edition rules, but was designed for young children.

(its available here Link, if you want it)

What surprised me most about my time in the children zone, was just how much the children enjoyed the game. I was expecting adults to make them play, to sit down with them and try and get them involved, but when it came down to it, the kids really seemed to enjoy them selves.

At one point I even had a girl, no more than 6 years old, literally jumping up and down with excitement as she rolled a critical hit.

The kids just seemed to get it, they understood that the monsters where bad, they understood how to use the powers the characters had without me needing to understand it, and for a bunch of children all under 10 years old, they came up with some pretty impressive strategy for gaining the upper hand.

I was surprised and delighted when one boy, I think he was 7 years old, ran around a pillar in the chamber to make the monsters chase him while his friends moved out of harms way. Or the 8 year old girl who always knew just how to get combat advantage for her rouge.

I would also highly recommend running a role-playing game for children if you have ever become disenfranchised with your regular adult players. It was so rewarding seeing the monsters through the children's eyes, watching them slowly work out how a beholder works, or what the best way to kill a troll is, or simply watching them jump back in fright when a giant dragon is summoned into the fight.

Thank you to all the kids who came along and played, and thank you to Chris Lowe for helping me run all the games, I would have burnt out a lot sooner if I had tried to run them all myself.

Apart from my time at the kids table, I also got to play in a 3 session game of “Dresden files” I was surprisingly impressed with this system. The character and city creation takes a long time, its true, but it might actually be the part of the system I enjoy the most. You discuss(read “argue”) with the other players and the gm about what you want to be, what the threats are, and what themes run through the city. Then you tie all your characters back story's together. This makes for much more solid character backgrounds than you normally get in games of this type.

The system itself is much more tactical than it looks, its more about setting up an enemy for later attacked than it is attacking them outright, just running in and hitting them is a sure-fire way to get yourself killed. You need to set up aspects for other characters to tag to build up powerful attack combos.

I really enjoyed the Dresden files game I played in, and hope to play it some more in the near future.

I would also like to thank the team at the expo for the award they gave me, to say I was touched is an understatement. I got clobbered while running across the convention hall to go downstairs and watch the awards, and when I did, they surprised me with it. Enjoy this rather embarrassing photo of me accepting it.

That's enough for this week I think. Tune in next week and I'll do a Monday review wrap up of all the board games I got to play at the expo.