KapCon 2025 is on Saturday 18th and Sunday 19th of January. Monday 20th is a statutory holiday for Wellington workers and can be used for recovery.
The pandemic is still with us. Please check our Covid-19 policy before attending.
KapCon is a not-for-profit role-playing game convention run annually in Wellington, New Zealand, every January. Over a hundred people get together for a weekend of role-playing, in a diverse range of styles and systems. Over the weekend, more than 30 individual games are run, with volunteer GMs (or storytellers, narrators or facilitators) running games between one and six times over the course of the convention.
Strange Squad is a New Zealand made game about weird, powerful individuals known as 'Agents' investigating and solving issues involving 'Aberrants': Paranormal creatures, beings, and phenomena that defy logical explanation. Agent's seek to uphold The Veil, a layer of secrecy that keeps the public from learning about these fragments of unreality, for their sake and ours.
Set in Ohura, New Zealand, Ella Marie has gone missing. Normally the agency wouldn't worry about such mundane matters but the pedict-o-monitor spiked to 3000 just before the call, and the Agency doesn't want another Ester Kampf situation (2016) especially as the runes of banishment are in Waimate stopping (another) demonic excursion. Plus the Guru of the Kings Country is down there and there hasn't been an IN-3-B5 (risk assessment - possession (accidental) and disclosure (Veil)) completed on her yet. So definitely do that whilst you're down there, those forms were rolled out in 2021 and she'd be one of the stragglers the Agency needs to complete it for.
Content Warning : Horror, kidnapping, cults, views about Ohura, rape/sexual violation (offscreen- think law&order SVU )
In Four Sherlock Holmes and a Vampire (Who Is Also One of the Aforementioned Sherlock Holmes)—officially abbreviated Four Sherlock Holmes and a Vampire—four players play four Sherlock Holmes who team up to solve mysteries and one-up each other. Secretly, one or more Sherlock Holmes are vampires. Can the four Sherlock Holmes find out who among them is a creature of the night?
This is a gmless game designed for players who find the aforementioned description ridiculous and hilarious.
A one page rpg that will likely conclude in 120 minutes
When a swarm of robots starts mugging the citizens of Megalopolis, it falls to a group of young heroes-in-training to intervene!
Those heroes are Daybreak, a group of teen students with super-powers* being trained for the heroing vocation*.
Much of the session time will likely be devoted to action scenes (AKA fights), for which the game system encourages inventive description of actions. Its twist system encourages the facilitator and players to collaborate on introducing unforseen side-effects of actions, so that no two games will play out exactly the same.
* No knowledge of the characters or setting is assumed, and slavish adherance to the source material is discouraged. The source material is there to give us all a common starting point.
Ordo City, 1925
Beneath the floors of the magnificent MacAllister Hotel, you'll find the Dreamer’s Club, a speakeasy frequented by the city's most interesting figures. It's a place where authors, performers, and even the law's undesirables can rub shoulders and enjoy a drink while watching the latest in world-class mind-boggling entertainment. You don't need to believe in "magic" or "ghosts" to be awed by these unbelievable acts!
Tonight should be like any other night. Unfortunately, someone is going to get murdered.
Will you be the one to drag the truth into the light? Or, perhaps, will your focus be elsewhere, busy with far grander mysteries? Just don't ask too many questions about the mysterious figures that keep the club running...
It's time for the dreamers to wake up.
The Tomb of the Serpent Kings. Everyone knows the lands around here were ruled by a snake-man empire in ancient times, but a goat-herd came back saying that she'd found one of their tombs. For most people, that was a warning.
For you? Riches and glory glittered in your eyes.
It'll be dangerous, which is why you've brought along allies. And a few of the local folk to watch your horses and maybe carry things. Before you lies a tunnel leading into the hillside, the long grass that obscured it pulled away.
The date: December 18th, 1952. The place: East Berlin.
It’s the night before the start of a nuclear weapons control treaty conference. All the movers and shakers are here. Dinner has been had, and now it’s time to ‘mingle’ and do the real power broking before the tedium of the formal negotiations. Of course, the topic on everyone’s lips will be the nuclear weapons treaty, but with westerners in attendance, opportunities for defection, assassination, and score settling are rife.
Of course, making sure you’re dealing with who you think you are will be very important.
In attendance:
Stalin,
Stalin. Stalin. Stalin. Stalin.
Stalin. Stalin.
Stalin. Stalin. Stalin. Stalin.
Stalin.
Well, they can’t all be Stalin, but they all look like Stalin, at least a bit. All characters are written to be played as any gender.
KapCon regular Dale Elvy is also a game designer and publisher, as Imaginary Empire games. He's willing to offer GM support, including posters, prizes, and printed materials for that session to anyone who wants to run an Imaginary Empire product at KapCon. In particular, games that are likely to work well in the KapCon format include:
Many of these games are KapCon favourites. If interested, contact imaginaryempiregames@gmail.com.
The War's been going on forever. Not quite forever, it just feels that way. There was that time the Reds were doing 'exercises' next to the border and 'accidentally' killed civilians, and the time the Blues blew up a hospital ship, and the firestorming of great cities - to pay each back, of course. Then there was... yeah, you forget exactly what next, just something awful and everyone to blame.
All you know now is that you have your squad, and the cold, and by the grace of whatever is out there, a place to shelter from the storm...
Hell-bent on reigning over the Gotham City underworld, the Ghost Dragons triad has discreetly taken control of a number of smaller gangs. They are now waiting for the right moment to launch a full-scale attack against the leading crimefamilies. However, this conquest of Gotham City requires the elimination of Batman, both as an adversary and as a symbol.
Batman. The guardian who watches over Gotham City - a city whose name has become synonymous with crime and corruption. A symbol of hope, tirelessly challenging all threats to its safety. In this scenario, you will play as Tim Drake, Alfred and Julia Pennyworth, Renee Montoya, and Harvey Bullock as they try to thwart the Ghost Dragons and their move against Gotham and the Batman.
Batman: Gotham City Chronicles is a traditional style RPG, using a tailored D20 system. This scenario heavily features both miniatures and maps to play out its cinematic set pieces.