RogerBW's Blog

Dragonmeet 2014 07 December 2014

On Saturday I spent the day at Dragonmeet, in its new venue at the Ilec Convention Centre round the back of Earl's Court. All images are cc-by-sa.

As a rule I assume that normal convention space in London is prohibitively expensive, and the trick here seemed to have been to pick a hotel in a dodgy area replete with pawnbrokers, cheque-cashing services and, um, fabric shops.

However, I was able to get in fairly promptly (some of the demo team were less lucky with transport), and got things set up before the flood arrived.

Slightly later I got a chance to look around a bit. Shadow Warriors were running Wings of War.

Dropzone Commander is still going strong. I have to say that this looked like a gimmick when I first saw it at Salute last year but it seems to have some legs.

The main focus of this show seemed to be the trading. Where previous Dragonmeets have had two double-sided aisles of stalls, this one had definitely expanded. And the punters turned up. People were already talking about a larger venue for next year.

Yes, there really is a Primeval RPG. Based on the TV series that's now been off the air for three years after truly ghastly ratings, and which shows no sign of being resurrected. Gareth knows his stuff and I'm sure he did a decent job, but… wow.

Yet more miniatures skirmish gaming. Miniatures skirmish is still apparently the Big Thing, either fantasy or SF, either way you don't have to do lots of fiddly historical research. (Me-ow.) Being fair to Spartan Games, whose Firestorm: Planetfall this is, it did look very good indeed.

Though I couldn't help feeling that some of the miniatures available for some games were, um, a bit specialised

There was also Dark Armada, a starship combat game. Didn't see it being demonstrated but the record cards make it look fairly lightweight and playable.

And of course Giant Pandemic.

Someone had bought this rather attractive dice tower. If I played at a table, and wanted a dice tower at all…

Of course, I ran quite a lot of games too. Revolution and The Stars Are Right are two of my favourites, and both of them got outings this time.

I got out around 7pm fairly wiped (wasn't feeling great before I got up at 6.50am to get there in time for setup and then spent ten hours mostly running games).


  1. Posted by Owen Smith at 01:21pm on 07 December 2014

    I watched Primeval and thought the first series and a half were quite good and showed promise. But then they started to lose cast members (the usual curse of UK TV series which don't lock cast in like US series do) and it went downhill rapidly from there. I also got annoyed that the model for how the portals opened which was briefly interesting got sidelined, but I guess hoping for a proper model of how it all worked was too much to ask for.

  2. Posted by RogerBW at 01:26pm on 07 December 2014

    It had its moments, I agree mostly in the early series, but like most TV SF it suffered from not having a coherent setup from the beginning. I suspect that someone tried to retrofit one later on, but by then it was too late.

  3. Posted by Dr Bob at 01:56pm on 07 December 2014

    So the Primeval game is finally out, eh? My mate Mark has been waiting for it to stop being "coming soon" for years. I think he said that some Canadian TV company bought the rights to keep making it and did a season or two before it was cancelled again.

    Keith (of Stabcon) had a theory that the original palaeontologist was secretly a creationist who had blagged his way into a uni post with a fake cv, since he kept declaring things like "But that means evolution is true!" and shoving all evidence of prehistory back through the portals as fast as he could! :-)

  4. Posted by RogerBW at 02:05pm on 07 December 2014

    Heh! There's a scenario in that somewhere.

    Primeval: New World, which was a spin-off rather than a continuation, was broadcast in 2011 a little after series 5, but was cancelled after one series of thirteen episodes. I've not heard of any more recent revival plans.

  5. Posted by Owen Smith at 09:49pm on 07 December 2014

    There was talk of a Primeval film at one stage, series 5 was supposed to set things up for it.

  6. Posted by Ashley R Pollard at 05:11pm on 12 December 2014

    Of course you missed the great Ogre/GEV game being run with miniatures that some nobody of any great importance ran. ;-)

  7. Posted by RogerBW at 05:13pm on 12 December 2014

    It looked excellent, but I didn't get pictures of it. Fortunately somebody else did.

Comments on this post are now closed. If you have particular grounds for adding a late comment, comment on a more recent post quoting the URL of this one.

Search
Archive
Tags 1920s 1930s 1940s 1950s 1960s 1970s 1980s 1990s 2000s 2010s 3d printing action advent of code aeronautics aikakirja anecdote animation anime army astronomy audio audio tech base commerce battletech beer boardgaming book of the week bookmonth chain of command children chris chronicle church of no redeeming virtues cold war comedy computing contemporary cornish smuggler cosmic encounter coup covid-19 crime crystal cthulhu eternal cycling dead of winter doctor who documentary drama driving drone ecchi economics en garde espionage essen 2015 essen 2016 essen 2017 essen 2018 essen 2019 essen 2022 essen 2023 existential risk falklands war fandom fanfic fantasy feminism film firefly first world war flash point flight simulation food garmin drive gazebo genesys geocaching geodata gin gkp gurps gurps 101 gus harpoon historical history horror hugo 2014 hugo 2015 hugo 2016 hugo 2017 hugo 2018 hugo 2019 hugo 2020 hugo 2021 hugo 2022 hugo 2023 hugo 2024 hugo-nebula reread in brief avoid instrumented life javascript julian simpson julie enfield kickstarter kotlin learn to play leaving earth linux liquor lovecraftiana lua mecha men with beards mpd museum music mystery naval noir non-fiction one for the brow opera parody paul temple perl perl weekly challenge photography podcast politics postscript powers prediction privacy project woolsack pyracantha python quantum rail raku ranting raspberry pi reading reading boardgames social real life restaurant reviews romance rpg a day rpgs ruby rust scala science fiction scythe second world war security shipwreck simutrans smartphone south atlantic war squaddies stationery steampunk stuarts suburbia superheroes suspense television the resistance the weekly challenge thirsty meeples thriller tin soldier torg toys trailers travel type 26 type 31 type 45 vietnam war war wargaming weather wives and sweethearts writing about writing x-wing young adult
Special All book reviews, All film reviews
Produced by aikakirja v0.1