Those who participated in the event gave a general consensus that they had a lot of fun during the 3 day event, based on the Participant Questionaire Feedback Forms.

Everyone greatly enjoyed the guest speaker, Michael Martinez. Not everyone agreed with everything he had to say, which was to be expected in the Tolkien realm. But everyone had a lot of respect for what Michael had to say and thought his comments were very insightful and pleasantly provocative in some instances.

As this article is being written, the video/audio recordings from his session are being digitized. Editing will occur shortly therafter, and then they will be submitted for Michael's approval to post on the MerpCon website in a few days.
There will be offered 3 versions of his discussion.
1. An audio only version in mp3 format so that there will not be such a huge file to download.
2. A lower resolution video version. Available to download on the site at some point in the near future.
3. High res video version. This version might only be made available on DVD at the next MerpCon due to the large file size.

The same process and offerings are planed for last year's Chris Seeman video as well.

This year's campaign adventure scenario was set in the late 2nd Age in Umbar (SA 3320). Just about 1 year after the fall of Numenor. The players are "Faithful" (Dunedain) and/or their sympathizers. No word has yet reached their network of people, who had been planted here in previous years, as spies to keep tabs on "The King's Men" and Sauron's priests in Umbar, about any word on Elendil and the others who survived. They assume all perished in "The Fall". And have not decided what to do or where to go. Some had left Umbar to try to find work around the world, but none had yet returned.

The players had just been "rounded up" because someone (possibly in their own network, maybe even in their own party), had turned them in along with a list of many others, though not all.

Many of the characters were then tortured to try to get a a more complete list of names, and/or to verify the names on the list. They were also tortured for other reasons that the party only discovered near the end of the adventure.

It was made clear that the other faithful and their aides were going to be rounded up shortly. If the players didn't get the word out then many others would be suffering the same fate.

They were also to be executed on the following evening.

The adventure was fun, but very frustrating at first, until the players finally escaped the prison. I made the old faux paux of an adventure that started out with the players in a dungeon/prison.

At first it went fine, but then one of the players did things a little too soon, which led to a blast of a battle in the corridors in front of their cells, but they ended up in worse cir*****stances and a much more difficult escape scenario than originally intended. So, unfortunately they were basically stuck in the dungeons all of Friday and the first 3/4ths of Saturday.

They finally figured out the puzzles for escape over a tedious time of many rolls.
The general consensus was resounding "Don't do another dungeon/prison escape scenario!". I can't argue with that. It's works fine on a "regular" gaming group, but definitely too slow for a convention type game. Last year's "Escape From Numenor" was definitely a better approach.

The adventure picked up in action and fun once they escaped. Unfortunately Michael had to leave for his flight shortly before the end of the adventure Sunday afternoon, but the other players were able to finish it up in the following couple of hours.

We then watched a short film called "The Gamers".
It was a very low budget, cheesy, silly film about some college dorm D&D-like gamers who flash scenes between the players and their character alter-persona.

If you're not a gamer, it would have been a mostly lame movie to you probably. But if you've role played for any length of time, you would have had more than a few good laughs. If you're a gaming and game-mastering veteran of more than 20 years as I am, well, maybe you wouldn't laugh as hard as I did, but it was almost a "gut-buster" for me. Unfortunately due to language the film is not at all appropriate for children.
Apparently the same people who made that movie are working on a sequel and have signed up with GenCon.

There was a HUGE display more than 20 tables in size of Tolkien, MERPS, and general role playing gaming material. Though most of that wasn't finished being setup until the end. I will provide lots of photos of that shortly.

So lots of fun, and a good time had by all.

Now, for the things I learned NOT to do, and that will be different in MerpCon III.
1. Do not do another "Escape from prison" adventure.
2. Offer shorter adventures. Many people felt daunted by having to be there for all 3 days in order to game. So there will be shorter 4 hour games that can be joined in by different players.
3. Offer more game systems. This was always a goal, but only now are there going to be enough additional gamemasters to finally do so for MerpCon III.
4. Shorten the length of the days a little bit. We went past midnight each night. This was exhausting to all. So we'll back it off to the original 10-11 pm cut off time for each day, as it was in MerpCon I.
5. Have the audio recording equipment for webcasting and guest speaker working properly before the speech. Video worked fine, but there were a number of issues with audio, and unfortunately audio streaming was not working.


Next year MerpCon III will be able to offer more than just one game, and indeed will offer multiple game systems.


Other suggestions were made to include possible auctions for which all proceeds would go to a charity or charities.

There are plans to create a non-profit LLC to continue the MerpCon events annually. This is being investigated further for viability considering any possible complications from either of the TE entities (Enterprises or Estate).

So to sum up.
MerpCon II was fun.
MerpCon III is under way and will build on, and improve on what has been learned from the previous events.
Several possible candidates have been contacted as prospects for guest speaking. When a final determination and commitment have been made, the announcement will be made in coming months.
The RSVP form will be updated shortly to begin taking RSVP's for MerpCon III.
Remember, there are a limited number of tables and game sessions to reserve, so please RSVP.