The Kraken 2 (and this time its personal)

The Kraken is a fantastic Gaming Vacation in the east German countryside and is truly made of awesome sauce.  I was back for my (and the event’s) second year and it was another thing of beauty.  The idea is essentially that gamers from all over can get together, experience great games and events, and also have enough time to relax, socialise and otherwise take the intensity out of a gaming convention.  No need to run from slot to slot and have a packed timetable – you’ve got five days and plenty of time.  You’ve guests such as Sandy Petersen running Cthulhu games, and a good range of ancillary events like horror seminars, workshops and other things too.  With an all inclusive price tag, there’s no need to worry about paying for anything and you’re well fed and watered in the grounds of a historical German Schloss.  What’s not to like?

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The Kraken – A Gaming Vacation

Only vaguely prepared – as frankly I wasn’t entirely sure what to expect, and packing hippy left-field Indie games after all – I headed out on the strange and wonderful adventure that is The Kraken. Tuesday I headed off with a stop at Lemur’s house that evening to play games and break the journey to Stansted airport. We played a few hands of Dominion, which has always been highly rated by anyone I’ve talked to and it was indeed a great little game. This would prove important later in the week when I’d got to Germany.

Tentacles Omega Con Report

How can you not be tempted by a journey to play games in a castle on the Rhine? I was there for my third year and it was as great as ever.

The journey to Bacharach was as easy as ever, with only a slight delay at the airport on the Deutschland side while the bus turned up, but the sun was shining and a free beer on the journey over was most welcome. Everything about the con was ruthlessly organised as always, with the notable exception of games, for which there seems to be an almost masochistic desire to make it a scrum to sign up for things. I took to my usual method of avoiding troubles by taking lots of games to run. Apparently I now hold the record for most games played at a Tentacles, and as that was the last one…

Tentacular Preparation

It was with an invasive sense of horror that I realised I’ve less than a week until Tentacles and my preparation for four (count ‘em) Pendragon games is not even really started, never mind complete. I’ve got characters to write out, baddies to stat, plots to configure, props, maps, all sorts I could do… so why have I waited so long? Laziness? Partially. Hoochie leading me astray. Sort of. But mainly because I know it’ll all work out fine. How do I know this? Read on dear readers, read on…