Andy meets a Cyberman

Dragonmeet 2009 happened, in its original London configuration, over the last weekend of November. As usual, it was held in Kensington Town Hall, which has good facilities. BITS were there, as we have been since the convention was re-launched, with the trade stand, a demo of At Close Quarters, and a number a scenarios for Traveller including the latest instalment of the Angel’s Share campaign which has nearly reached a conclusion.

The Ad Astra in all her Glory

The trade hall was busy, but noticeably emptied when the seminars were on, and the At Close Quarters game grabbed a lot of attention thanks to Nick Bradbeer’s latest masterpiece model, an Ad Astra liner. This was built from foam board, and looked excellent. Scaled for 15mm, it was perfect for an exciting skirmish game.

Battle commences!

We had a number of worried people looking at the notices of reduced prices and ‘last ever’ for some of the 101 Books and other products, but they went away reassured when we explained that this was tied to a planned PDF release of our back catalogue in 2010. We’ll also hopefully have the first volume of Angel’s Share ready for a full release in the New Year, possibly followed by some smaller adventures, and – if the playtesting works out – something for Power Projection.

The adventures we ran went well, and seemed to be popular, with both Simon Bell and Dave Elrick GMing. Andy and myself manned the trade stall, which was constantly in demand, even in the quiet times.

From a personal perspective, this was my first return to Dragonmeet after a 3 year break for a variety of reasons, and I was really glad to be back. It’s one of my favourite cons, and has quite a frenetic pace, which is unsurprising as it starts at 10:00 and ends around 19:00! The trade hall was buzzing, and there were lots of new and shiny things to look at such as pre-release copies of the Doctor Who Roleplaying Game on the Cubicle 7 stand, the proof copies of Triple Ace Games’ core Hellfrost books for Savage Worlds and the Collective Endeavour’s latest game, Umlaut, in which get to be a rock band.

I was also quite pleased to finally see the Power Projection miniatures by Ad Astra Games and a real (non-PDF) copy of the Power Projection: Fleet book in its US guise. Mongoose Publishing also had a huge stand with lots of Traveller front and centre, both for our much loved setting and for the 2000AD settings such as Judge Dredd and Strontium Dogs.

Finally, it was great just to catch up with the rest of the BITS team, including the people like Simon and Robin who I’ve only met by email. The fires of my enthusiasm for Traveller are well and truly relit, and now I must properly finish my adventure for release in 2010! And I'm happy to report that Andy escaped from the clutches of the Cybermen by the end of the convention.

Dom, BITS Webmaster

All friends now!

Tags: Dragonmeet