Another blog entry about Cauldron 2024!
Woohoo! Surely the internet has been eagerly waiting for this.
My name probably won’t ring a bell to anyone in the roleplaying community, so before I start, here’s a few words about me and my history in roleplaying!
The obligatory character backstory
You know that one Quiet Girl™ in class who builds sandcastles for bugs and wants to be a tiger when she grows up? That was me! (Still applicable, just taller now.) To absolutely no-one’s surprise, I went full-on nerd and spent my leisure time drawing, worldbuilding and gaming.
But can you believe that I had no idea what Dungeons & Dragons really was until my early twenties?
I joined my first group during university. It was a carefully-crafted homebrew D20 system set in Erathia (Might and Magic) and starring the usual suspects race- and class-wise, but also including some neat extras like Skaarj (Unreal) as a playable race.
I noobishly min-maxed the most badass orc fighter I could. Her name was Snot, short for Urty-Waa Snotmosha, and she wielded a massive two-handed spiked club called Bonebreaker.
Our game nights were legendary. We laughed, we argued, we had chicken nuggets at 3 AM. Snot didn’t make it, but she had an exciting life full of adventure. Our DM was relentless, and he had a way of creating atmospheres so immersive they even haunted me in my dreams. I had to move away at some point and life happened, but it was an amazing time. (Paul, if you’re out there: Thank you for everything!)
*record scratch*
Fast forward a decade and a half later: I’m still just a humble casual roleplayer, but somehow married to a full-blood DM whose circle of fellow DMs and otherwise professional nerd friends have kindly accepted me as one of their own. (Logbook Day 2,917: They still haven’t noticed I’m one of them darn furries. Pssst!)
For one of our first big vacations I dragged my man to Gen Con 2018, which happened to be my first roleplaying con ever and inevitably set high standards for any future cons – or so I thought.
Enter Cauldron
Back when our friend Settembrini first told us about his idea for the first Cauldron con, I remember being like: “We’re gonna cook for how many people? We’re gonna make them room with complete strangers? Some of them are gonna have to sleep on cots? Are we sure this is gonna work out?” – My Gen-Con-spoiled ass didn’t compute. But at least I had an excuse to cobble together a little website. Yeee!
Lo and behold, it did work out. Because if there's one person who can make it happen, it’s Settembrini.
People from all over Europe (and even overseas) came flocking to Schloss Hohenroda – a glorified mansion in a commune of 3,100 souls somewhere between a forbidden green field and a huge ominous gravel pile – to roll some dice, despite knowing that they're gonna have to sleep on cots and eat my cooking.
And holy tapdancin’ wizard on a stick, was that an experience!
I stumbled around taking photos, waited tables, chatted with participants, collected empty beer bottles from dubious places and supported the badass Eria (Settembrini’s wife and the true backbone of Cauldron – if not for her we’d all starve to death in the middle of nowhere) in the kitchen.
I – a mere casual player who can’t tell an owlbear screech from a goblin fart and just somehow ended up in the middle of this all due to funny life choices – made the acquaintance of James Raggi and Gabor Lux, and many other brilliant minds who actively contribute to the oldschool roleplaying community.
Although admittedly I was so busy that I didn’t make it to a single game, it was incredibly wholesome to exist in the same space as this cheerful crowd who seemed to be having a good time, to get to know them, and to simply enjoy the vibe.
And needless to say, the moment I read the first Cauldron 2023 reviews and after-action reports, what little was left of my initial worries had completely evaporated!
Oh shit here we go again
Where did the time go? As I am writing these lines, it is the first weekend after Cauldron 2024.
Participants are slowly starting to sober up and write blog articles, which I’m happily putting links to onto the Cauldron website.
I am once again blown away by the amazing feedback, the magnificent folks I met, the hilarious places I collected beer bottles from and the great conversations I had. And will you believe it, I played a few games, too!
Cowards of the Sea
The award-winning B/X Blackrazor, deemed “Best DM” by the players of Cauldron 2023, couldn’t join us this time – but he kindly provided a hand-tailored tournament module so that he could be with us in spirit (and laugh and laugh).
The module was called “Children of the Sea”. My slot was DM’d by Settembrini, and our mission was to recover an important stolen artifact from a pirates’ cove.
Spoiler alert! Click here if you wanna skip ↓
I picked a pre-generated character named Sookie who was a half-elf fighter, magic user and cleric, and who was proficient at fixing things but not necessarily people. What could possibly go wrong???
Scarred and battle-hardened from past AD&D experiences, we slowly crawled through the dungeon, an inch at a time, in search of the holy artifact and to get our sticky fingers on any valuables that were not nailed down.
(“Wait, you haven't even gone downstairs yet?” – My friend Schibbi during our break about 2.5 hours in.)
Kudos to Settembrini for putting up with our collective dungeon anxiety. Luckily, eventually we had noped out of everything so hard that we’d accidentally ended up just in the right place.
You know those famous last words that go “Okay, before we conquer the ship which must obviously hold the artifact, let’s check that strange little corridor over there real quick”?
Yeah.
Who knew that stepping into an unnaturally dark corridor would trigger a fight against a bunch of shadows? … Okay, we all did, probably, but an extra spooky place had to mean extra valuable treasure!
Well, had I known that shadows are classified as undead instead of demons in 1st-edition AD&D, I would’ve turned them and this fight would’ve been a piece of cake, but alas, yours truly the party cleric dropped the ball.
*Benny Hill theme starts playing* Hilarity ensued, otherworldly beings were poked with non-magical weapons, a friendly fireball was cast, and two party members croaked – when suddenly one of my fellow players dropped a hint at the shadows’ undeadness.
Clang! That was the sound of the penny dropping, and the last thing the remaining shadows heard before I successfully turned them. We could finally push on!
We were barely done licking our wounds, as suddenly a hulking creature stood before us, encrusted with barnacles and wearing a coral crown. It was the pirate king! … Uh, is it too late to go back?
For some reason the looming spirit of Blackrazor seemed to have mercy on us, as due to some lucky rolls and skilled sling shots courtesy of our halfling, the fight turned out a walk in the park as compared to the shadow encounter. The king fell, we recovered the artifact from the room behind him, revived a dead party member, stuffed our pockets with some treasure-to-go and fucked the hell off. What a ride!
The Ransacking of Willowby Hall
The next morning’s RPG session led me into a haunted manor. The adventure was called “The Waking of Willowby Hall”, created by Questing Beast and DM’d by the awesome _x_y_z_.
Our objective was simple: Ransack the abandoned manor, discover its secrets, and get out with as many shinies as we can carry. But little did we know what we were getting ourselves into!
_x_y_z_ had brought pre-gens rolled by his regular group, and some of them were hilariously shit. I picked the 10-HP fighter and went in, along with another fighter and a thief.
I’m gonna cut this short since some of y’all surely aren’t familiar with this adventure yet and may still wanna play it, so I’ll just say so much: Even though my character died on their way out, I enjoyed the game from start to finish!
It gave me a delightfully light-hearted point-and-click adventure type of vibe, and it seemed straightforward enough that I’d consider giving it a shot if I ever gain the confidence to DM something. (Need to find me some unblemished fools first.)
To be continued
Needless to say I had a blast at Cauldron 2024, both as con staff and as a participant. Naturally, I already volunteered for 2025, because apparently this is my life now (okay okay, and maybe because it’s genuinely fun).
See you in Hofraithe Rosenthal!
PS: I can’t believe I was one of like three women, again. Where are my amazons, witches and dungeon mistresses at? Come on, girls – I know you’re out there, and I can’t wait to meet you!