19 December 2015

Old School Con 5.5: Featuring VIPs Loz and the Grognardia Guy

If you live in Toronto or are within easy travelling distance, and feel like playing some ‘old school’ role-playing games for a day, consider attending OSCon (5.5) on Saturday, January 16th, 2016.  There will be a number of different games available, including Call of Cthulhu, Dungeons and Dragons (various editions), Labyrinth Lord, and RuneQuest 6.

Design Mechanism’s Lawrence Whitaker (‘Loz’) – author of numerous RPG books over the years, and co-author of RuneQuest 6 – will be there, running a couple of RQ6 games: a Luther Arkwright adventure in the morning, and a Mythic Britain adventure in the evening.  I highly recommend playing in one of Lawrence’s games if you have the chance, as he is a superb Game Master.  I know this from experience, having played in a couple of his campaigns (one set in the Young Kingdoms and one set in Mythic Britain) over the years, as well as few shorter adventures from time to time.

Also running a few games of Empire of the Petal Throne is James Maliszewski, the fellow who used to write the Grognardia blog.  I have to confess that I’m a bit surprised to see Maliszewski as one of the Con’s VIPs, given how his ‘Dwimmermount’ kickstarter turned out.  I was not interested in, and hence did not back, ‘Dwimmermount.’  And I only casually followed the massive disaster that it became.  But my impression is that there were, and presumably still are, many within the ‘old school’ community who feel that they were badly burned by his abandonment of that project.  Perhaps, though, all that is water under the bridge now?  (I have no idea.)

In any case, OSCon should be good fun.  I took part in the second one (summer of 2012, I believe), during which I ran a Call of Cthulhu game.  I won’t be running a game this time around, but I look forward to playing in a couple.

13 comments:

  1. Sounds like a great time!
    I only know James M. from Grognardia, which I miss. Having him run an EPT session sounds good to me.

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  2. I've been before, it was a lot of fun. I live in Vancouver now however, which has a derth of decent conventions.

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  3. That's a 5 hour drive. I wonder if my wife will let me go.

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    1. Take her out for dinner before asking? ;)

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    2. Good plan. And as a bonus I can get wings at the Anchor Bar on my way through Buffalo.

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  4. I think James M. had some family issues that delayed Dwimmermount, which was probably not going to be all that great in the first place (it being a mega dungeon after all). BUT he was a torchbearer for the OSR and his blog was a big help to people getting away from the overburdened mess of 3.5 back to a simpler, better time for both mainstream and OSR D&D (which is now). I think he got into a rough patch and unfortunately had used kickstarter instead of some other publishing model.

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  5. James M. had massive family issues, which lead him into depression. Finally, he spoke openly about his issues in this moving and courageous interview:

    https://penetraliablog.wordpress.com/2015/11/26/dungeons-and-depression-part-3-james-maliszewski/

    Personally, I think people should move on and forget the Dwimmermount incident.

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    1. I didn't know about this, Andrea Rocci. Thanks for the context. I certainly don't hold anything against Maliszewski myself.

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  6. Wish I could attend Oscon. Would be fun to play in chevskis ept game and catch up with some my fellow Canuck gamers.

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  7. It was a great deal of fun, as one of the organizers, I can attest to that we got lots of positive feedback.

    We listed VIPs as influential people in the hobby and I do think James M. belongs firmly in that category. A cursory look beyond Grognardia (which I think was loved by many) shows his work very impressive. See: http://index.rpg.net/display-generalinfo.phtml?key=contributor&value=James+Maliszewski&match=precise

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    1. Kudos on a great job! I regret that I could attend only one session. I hope you'll run another one next year.

      And apologies for confusing OSCon with OSRCon. :)

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  8. http://index.rpg.net/display-generalinfo.phtml?key=contributor&value=James+Maliszewski&match=precise

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I'm a Canadian political philosopher who lives primarily in Toronto but teaches in Milwaukee (sometimes in person, sometimes online).