I enjoyed running and playing games at the College of Southern Maryland’s yearly gaming festival: Hawkland. Last year’s con got rescheduled due to a big storm that rolled through, so it’s been less than a year since Hawkland 23. I’m still relatively new to running games at cons compared to how long I’ve been running the game, but as long as I get a table of people it seems to go well. This year I ran what I’m calling “Shadowloft 24”, my combination of Shadowdark RPG and the old I6 Ravenloft module from 1984. Running Castle Ravenloft in a single sitting isn’t a new concept at all, and I’ll do a bigger writeup on my approach once I’ve run it one or two more times this October. I also got to play in a one-shot of Heart run by a friend.

Shadowloft 24

my table of Shadowloft victims

Again, I’ll post more on this once I’ve refined it. My run of Ravenloft using the Shadowdark rules was heavily influenced by Sly Flourish, but the concept of jamming all of I6 into a single sitting goes much further back - maybe even to Tracy and Laura Hickman’s home game before publishing the module back in 1984.

The peasant mob attracted some beasties

In this run, I found that my 2d6 table of wandering monsters only rolled at the center of the bell curve, which I found disappointing. All the same, the peasant mob attracted some fun.

Skargut died bravely to the devil Strahd

As I revealed the general layout of the castle, the players quickly found all three treasures before facing Strahd. Still, brave Skargut was felled in the final battle to CON life draining. Much is left to chance but I think I’ll need to up the difficulty and change how random monster encounters work for my main meetup group.

Heart

From Rowan, Rook & Decard - a publisher I've only recently started enjoying

My friend Jamie ran a “new school” dungeon crawler called Heart - the City Beneath which I’ve been meaning to read and run after its glowing review from Quinns Quest. I had to get used to the core mechanic of the game. It’s a game about risking taking stress and I found I wanted to try something every round. At a point I realized I had taken more stress to my character from these extra ideas than the actual threats of the adventure … but it was fun.

my premade character in Heart

Spire and Heart are going higher on my to-read list and I’m glad I got to sit as a player. I need to work on my bad Bane voice. I got some laughs but, I’m sure I can do better.

Thanks CSMD

8 hours of gaming is about what my brain can handle. Kudos to the organizers.

Thanks Hawkland! I'll be back next year