Considering the Past - Part V

Trinity Bay State High School in Cairns, had long had a reputation for being involved in the Arts. In fact, two pillars of the Excellence Programme are Performing Arts and Visual Arts (something I am, of course, immensely proud of). When I found myself Head of English in 1997, I wanted to link into the great work already being done in these areas, and advance literacy in the school at the same time.

My original Tabletop Roleplaying Club started in 1998 and ran after school every Wednesday (from 3:15 - 4:30pm). We played AD&D 2nd Edition. I game-mastered a group of eight students: hand-picked because I saw the potential for most of them to be Game Masters in due course. I knew the programme was not sustainable without this going forward. I also made sure I had lots of Junior School students in the programme. This meant that by the time they reached Senior School, they would be ready to GM the Juniors (and teach them to play - and GM).

TIP ... If you are starting a game group either in public or at home, make sure that at least half of your players have the potential to Game Master in due course. This will save you from burnout in the long run, and ensure you can be a player as much as a GM. I have not always followed this advice and now I find I GM more than I play. My own fault.

The Tabletop Roleplaying Club was very successful. It very quickly grew to 16 students and we were soon able to run 3 tables per session. By the time D&D 3rd Edition rolled around in late 2000, we had two staff (teachers), 24 students, and running 5-6 tables per session.

By 2002, we were going from strength to strength and the group started playing in the Living Greyhawk RPGA Campaign. I'll write more about my own involvement in that campaign in another blog post.

So, we decided to use the Tabletop Roleplaying Club to launch the very first roleplaying convention north of Brisbane: ReefCon. The inaugural ReefCon was a small affair. It ran over Saturday and half of a Sunday in July, 2002. We mostly only got the students from the school, plus a few outsiders. It was enough to give us courage to run another event in 2003.

ReefCon 2003 was the first great success. Held at Trinity Bay SHS, we had over 60 players pass through the convention over the weekend in July (that's very good for Far North QLD), and we had some RPG luminaries from around Australia join us as well ...

ReefCon 2003. Lots of locals plus Wes Nicholson (front-right), John Deague (far-right), and Dru Moore (mid-rear).

All up, we ran eight ReefCon conventions from 2002 to the last one in 2008. Without a doubt the biggest was ReefCon 2007. It piggy-backed onto Spring Revel Down Under, and culminated in a live-action role-fest dinner entitled "Haro's Wedding". Haro, as played by Joe Fitzgerald, was a Living Greyhawk character of much renown and it was decided by the Perrenland Triad to run his wedding as an interactive in Cairns. Haro (the character) knew everybody - right across the planes of existence. He was so renowned, that his wedding was attended and officiated by none other than the famous Wizards Three: Mordenkainen, Elminster and Rautheene. And here they are at the interactive in August, 2007:

Left to Right: Rautheene (played by Antigone Paris), Haro (played by Joe Fitzgerald), Bride (played by Libby Powell), Elminster (played by Ed Greenwood), and Mordenkainen (played by Shimon de Valencia).

And to top it off, Lord Boone made an appearance as well ...

That's me (Bruce Paris) as Lord Boone on the Far Right.

In May 2008, D&D 4th Edition was released. We ran ReefCon 2008 using the new 4th Edition Rules (and ran the new Living Forgotten Realms programme). It just didn't take off. Whilst we had decent numbers, when we started to plan for ReefCon 2009, we found there was very little interest - so we shut it down. Very sad.

I've heard a lot of anecdotal stories about how game groups and conventions shut down all over Australia during this time - including the wonderful GenCon Oz. I think it was a mixture of 4th Edition Futz mixed with the GFC. I never understood the fuss about 4E D&D. It wasn't my favourite edition, but it wasn't the worst in my opinion (I think the worst was 2E because it didn't add much to 1E, and it didn't take the rules forward like 3E did). 4E was just a "different" edition of D&D (and I'll leave it at that).

Finally, it may seem like ReefCon only ran Dungeons & Dragons games. We didn't. We ran all kinds of RPGs including Call of Cthulhu, Traveller, and Star Wars (d20). I miss those days. Those 8 years were some of the best because they took me everywhere - and brought everyone to Cairns. They put Cairns on the map as an RPG city (and for that I'm proud).

Trinity Bay State High no longer has a Tabletop Roleplaying Club. My job as Deputy Principal just doesn't allow me the time to run things anymore. But there's a new generation of gamers and GMs out there I'm sure ... just waiting to rebirth ReefCon in all its glory once again!

Next Up ... My years in the Perrenland Triad with Living Greyhawk!