23rd of Jan 2026
Wellington’s TTRPG convention, Kapcon was held this last weekend and what a fantastic time it was! I have never been to any other TTRPG conventions, so I don’t have a point of comparison for how it stands compared to others. The greatest thing about Kapcon is that it's an excellent way to try out a bunch of different TTRPG’s, some you may have never heard of. This year, I set out to Kapcon with a couple goals in mind:
1.
Playtest The Vow (in particular, the way I teach the game and how that is structured).
2.
Try several systems that I had heard of and was interested in, but had not played before.
3.
Contribute, in my own way, to the con.
I think that my playtests went very well! Players seemed on board, and there wasn’t too much confusion after the first round. I was trying to explain the game as players were playing it rather than dumping all the rules on them before we began. This seemed to go well overall, though I do think I need to make some slight tweaks to the order in which I introduce a couple of elements of the system.
In looking at the schedule, a couple of systems popped out to me – Draw Steel and Shadowdark. Draw Steel is the MCDM RPG, and truthfully, Matt Colville is a bit of an inspiration. I backed this system on kickstarter and have the rulebook in PDF format, but I hadn’t had the opportunity to play it yet since its release. The combat of this system was excellent, but unfortunately the onboarding and explanations to the newer players (I had played the playtest version released to backers) took up a lot of the session time. I’m still excited to try this system out again when I get the chance. Shadowdark I’d heard little things about, but I didn’t know much other than “it’s a throwback to old school D&D”. This felt very true as the system had elements of D&D in there, but was so bare bones comparatively. While I can see this being an issue for some people, in a convention setting it was fantastic. We were able to have the rules explained, create characters (yes, NO PRECONS) and still have time for role play and two (TWO!) combats. None of it felt rushed. While I wouldn’t personally play Shadowdark for a campaign or longer session, it felt like a convention was the perfect place for it. The final system I tried was Mike Sands’ Glourious! Mike Sands is the creator of Monster of the Week, which I absolutely recommend if you haven’t tried it. Glorious is his latest creation, an RPG about playing as sailors during the napoleonic wars. This system had some excellent rules for ship combat (that I think may well be worth stealing for other RPG’s if your players end up on a ship). This is definitely a system to keep an eye on, especially if you are a history buff or have any kind of fascination with this specific period of history.
Finally, I wanted to give something back to the con. When attending previously I had thought that although the games are fun, there could be more to encourage attendees to meet new people. So, I had an idea. Very simply, I was going to give out little “quest” cards to people, with some kind of task for them to complete that requires them to speak to other attendees. Things like: “Introduce yourself to a player that is attending for the first time”, or “Find a player that also performs Improv” or “Find a player that is also a member of NZLarp”. I did actually have a couple of people complete these quests and come back to me with them... but I hadn’t really thought this far ahead. Next year I will come a little more prepared, with more quests and some kind of reward for those who are able to complete them.
All in all, I had a lot of fun. I’m hopeful that I can improve on my little side quests and have more of these for people at the con. In addition, I’ve been working on making some custom pieces for The Vow, which I really hope I’ll have ready by the time it comes around next year.
Thanks for reading, and I’ll see you at Kapcon next year!
