Today I ran two Dark Heresy demo events at 4 hours each using the Jurisdiction scenario.

The first event was full, and had a good group of players. It's nice when some of your GM energy gets reflected back at you and everyone seemed to have a smashing time (in some cases literally).

The second event was more sparsely attended (half full) and the players were much more reserved. It took far more work on my part to "trick" them into relaxing and enjoying themselves. I finally got everyone in the groove during the climax scene, so everyone left happy, though they lost some of their party at the end.

Tomorrow is a 12-hour extravaganza - Part 2 of my Emperor's Heart Campaign , previously run for the first time at GenCon '08. I got some excelent insight into possible improvements at that time, so I'm really looking forward to seeing how it turns out.

There are several other GMs running Dark Heresy at the con, and it looks like the events are pretty much sold out within minutes of registration opening so the game seems to be doing very well in the area.

More tomorrow after I have a chance to sleep...

Is the "Jurisdiction" scenario provided for download somewhere?

Yes, I'd like to know that too. There is never enough of good adventures.

OK, now that I'm safely back at work (no Monday holiday for me)...

Ran the 11-hour marathon that is Blade of Steel on Sunday. I had one or two players that had also been in the demo games and arrived with shiney new copies of the rules, so I (not so) humbly consider the demos a success.

Generally speaking, the game went well, and everyone was thoroughly entertained - excepting perhaps my voice, which seems to have suffered some from the experience.

There was an odd mix of characters, which wasn't necessarily ideally suited to the task so... Lesson 1 : For convention games, always double check that the players have the skills they need to succeed, even if that means "artificially" granting them an extra skill or two for the session (this assumes that you allow them their own characters and aren't using all pre-gens - if it's all pre-gens, then there's no excuse!)

The characters pretty much stayed on the track of the adventure - though that's by no means a guarantee - but they did talk to some NPCs that I hadn't expected. You know, the kind that don't have names... Lesson 2 : Make sure you have a list of spare names matched with a voice/personality note so you don't have to make it up on the fly. I'm relatively quick on my feet, so I managed, but this would have made things easier!

...and for those curious about the Jurisdiction scenario, I'll be posting it at www.scholaprogenium.com after I get it laid out and some artwork for it!

Sounds like you ran a good con game,

as for the names, I never run a game these days without a list of random names.

I've been using the one at www.malleus.dk for DH.