Wellington Anniversary Weekend January 18th - 19th 2025

KapCon 2025

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.

What is KapCon?

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.

The Secrets of Skyhorn Lighthouse

Facilitator: 
Nick Pitt

Rumours and reports of a rampaging sea monster have ground shipping traffic in the Port Town of Skyreach Bay to a halt. You, a daring adventurer, swashbuckling sailor or rakish rogue have had your own important business interrupted amid a discovery that a merchant ship, the Jade Lion, has gone missing near Skyhorn Lighthouse.

To venture into the murky unknown, you won’t be able to go at it alone. At the very least you'll need a small crew of brave souls, but they’re in short supply here in Skyreach Bay. Who will answer the call and face the open seas and cutthroat enemies to save the crew of the Jade Lion from a dark fate?

"The Secrets of Skyhorn Lighthouse" is a Dungeons & Dragons adventure written by Kelsey Dionne designed for a group of four or five players of 5th level characters. Although no specific setting knowledge is needed for the purposes of this fast-paced adventure; the flavour of the world and characters will draw from the Forgotten Realms.

System: 
Dungeons & Dragons 5e (2014)

Vaesen

Facilitator: 
Janell Vaughn

This is a game of Vaesen which a Nordic horror role-play heavy game based in a mythical Scandinavia. You are one of the few that have the sight or the ability to see the mythical spirits & creatures (vaesen) that roam the Scandinavian countryside displaced by the industrial revolution. The change that the 19th century of this fictional land has brought changes to the society and culture and most importantly has changed the relationship between humans and vaesen resulting in increasing strained interactions.

You have been asked to help reestablish the society and today you have received a missive to help solve why Vaesen have been interfering with humans in the far north…

System: 
Year Zero

Strange Squad - The disappearance of Ella Marie

Facilitator: 
John Whyte

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 )

System: 
Strange Squad

Four Sherlock Holmes and a Vampire (Who Is Also One of the Aforementioned Sherlock Holmes)

Facilitator: 
John Whyte

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

System: 
Four Sherlock Holmes and a Vampire

Attack of the Robot Thieves

Facilitator: 
Bruno K.

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.

System: 
Sentinel Comics RPG / GYRO

LARP: Death and the Dreamers

Facilitator: 
Sarah Daymond

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.

System: 
LARP

Tomb of the Serpent Kings

Facilitator: 
Tim Crow

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.

System: 
White Box: FMAG

Larp - Oops! All Stalins!

Facilitator: 
Tim Crow

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.

System: 
LARP

GM support: Imaginary Empire games

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:


  • Arcane Crimes Division (fantasy detective stories)
  • Soaring Lions (over-the-top professional wrestling)
  • EPOCH (survival horror)
  • Wicked Lies & Abilis (1930's Whodunnit)

Many of these games are KapCon favourites. If interested, contact imaginaryempiregames@gmail.com.

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