Hello Everyone,
Can you believe it’s been a year since the last Adepticon already? Well Paul Wagner was kind enough to return and answer a few questions about the event and give some advice about organizing these kinds events!
1. For those who don’t know you, tell me a bit about yourself!
Hi all! My name is Paul Wagner and I am a NEO! (Narrative Event Organizer.) I have the honor of running the Age of Sigmar Narrative Event at Adepticon which we call the Gibbering Dome. Along with Will Simpson we strive to run a fun and relaxed event allowing narrative players from all over the world to be able to meet, engage, and tell narrative stories together all in one day! We both are members of the Mortal Realms Podcast Network and contribute to the Story Phase and the Path to Story podcasts.
I personally am a massive AoS Lore fanboy and have been since WHFB. I’ve been helping with Adepticon for over 10 years now, and stepped in to run a narrative event more than 5 years ago.
2. Since this is a continuing story can you bring our readers up to speed on what has been happening?
The events of last years narrative event led to the Gibbering Dome becoming un-anchored from its place in the realms. Now freewheeling throughout the void, players will encounter the setting as it careens past a near miss with Aqshy. The sheer gravity of the Dome has sucked in parts of the realm creating not only a fiery addition to the setting, but also a hole in the sub realm allowing magic to insidiously seek its way into the Voidstone of the building itself. Players will choose a side during their day, either to attempt to stabilize the Dome or work to make the Dome go even further off kilter. Their own narrative will be their astral compass, perhaps they want to stabilize the dome in order to plunder its rich base of knowledge, or alternatively they may want to encourage it to continue on to keep a nefarious secret of their army’s history out of the hands of their nemesis. The choice is entirely up to the player. I must say, Will and I are extremely excited for the players to help us in crafting the story again. They brought so much to last years event, it was frankly overwhelming. We cannot wait to see what they bring this year!
3. Are there any changes to the structure of the event you are making from last time?
We’re making some minor modifications to the event based on player feedback from the past year. The biggest change is that we’ve doubled the size of the event! We were very excited to sell out again this year and really wanted to have a stable system we already knew functioned well in order to meet the challenges inherent in growing an event. Most of the terrain in previous years was all my own bespoke creation, but this year we’ve had to include other terrain as we’ve quadrupled the number of tables from last year. This has led to some deep thinking as to how we’re going to expand the narrative to accommodate more than just our personal passion project.
4. What are some improvements from last year’s events you are hoping to see?
The biggest improvement (and feedback from last year) was being able to make our final RIVALS game be a 1v1 showdown vs playing as part of a multipart battle like we did last year. People really enjoyed our RIVALS mechanic and we saw so much awesome narrative interaction in game and between game we really wanted to see how we could facilitate that even more this year. One of the big challenges of a narrative event in a massive convention like Adepticon is how to create narrative engagement from the beginning of the event (Even before a single die is rolled!) Players aren’t going to necessarily have the benefit of meeting any of heir opponents before the event starts so the RIVALS system assigns pairs pre Game 1, and players have a narrative system (based on Path to Glory) to build up their forces to fight the final battle against their newfound nemesis.
5. Is it difficult to plan at all knowing that we are on the cusp of a wave of AoS armies getting new books?
I think we have a unique situation with AoS, being fully focused on the narrative. We didn’t actually have to make any rules calls last year as we asked players to come to a solution amongst themselves that fit their narrative. Since the focus of the event is telling collaborative stories through the vehicle of multiple games of Age of Sigmar, more battletomes just equals more narrative hooks for each army to tether their stories to. Adepticon also has a requirement that each model must be fully painted, and we know that players lavished untold hours upon their armies starting months in advance. The rules for our event allow each individual player to win independently of whether or not their opponent scored more victory points in the scenario, so making an optimal list is welcome, but not required to win.
6. Any plans to use full, or elements of, Path to Glory rules for this event? Why or why not?
We will be taking full advantage of Path to Glory again this year with just a few exceptions to help players form their narrative. For example, players cannot add units to their order of battle during the event so the story is more focused on the units that started the event ending the event together. Back to the point of more battletomes being released, since Path to Glory updates are included in each battletome and independent of your opponent, this also allows players yet another tool to really provide details to fill out their narrative. I personally hopeful at least one Gloomspite Gitz player will have an *accident* while brewing their mushroom potions and leave the event with a different warlord than when they arrived. I have to imagine we might see a few Slaves to Darkness players witness their warlords achieve Daemonhood as well! Only time will tell.
Thanks Paul! I am excited to hear how this event goes! Keep us posted!
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