We had an awesome time yesterday!

It was great to meet the folks that we write to each week and the fact that so many of you guys came by our stand to check out the Arcverse was just incredible.

Our table was right next to Ian Livingstone (creator of fighting fantasy and godfather of the UK RPG scene), and I was able to speak with the great man himself (it cost me £7.99, because I thought it was only right that I buy a copy of Deathtrap Dungeon for him to sign).

Ian is, as you might imagine, a fairly normal and down to earth man and our conversation was short, awkward and slightly cringey (mainly down to me, I hasten to add).

Having met a couple of famous people in the past (Chaz of Chaz'n'Dave, David Soul from Starsky and Hutch, the guy who played Cliff Barnes in Dallas and Chris Eubank on the Stop the War March), I am a dab hand at this sort of thing.

I start off with a joke which invariably falls flat on its face, then I transition on to the awkward silence. From there, said celebrity tends to rescue the situation with a 'oh well, very nice to have met you but I think we're both meant to be doing other things' facial gesture and we go about our seperate ways, both diminished by the encounter.

It wasn't like that with Ian; I refrained from starting with a Fighting Fantasy related joke, I just played it straight and probably came across as a standard dangerous obsessive that Ian's security people have to deal with all the time.

I did, in passing, introduce him to Arclands: The Spellforgers Companion, that was sitting in neat stacks but a stones throw away, explaining (see previous email on this one), that Deathtrap Dungeon was the start of my RPG journey and Arclands was the result.

This made Arclands a very distant descendant of 'Deathtrap'.

Ian said: "Oh good, that's nice," or words to that effect, but I could tell what he really meant. Ian wanted me to know that I was that worthy successor to him in his lifetime of fantasy game creation, he just didn't quite have the words to say it.

Don't worry Ian, your polite, reserved ways tell me more than actual words ever could.

So Dragonmeet is over for another year, and we're already making plans to get to the UK Games Expo at the NEC in Birmingham in June.

PS:

If you didn't catch up with us yesterday, you can get your discounted copy of The Spellforgers Companion and The Book of the Graces here and here, reduced from £35 to £30.

Many thanks

Nick at Team Verse