Lock & Load is a huge event for all of us every year, so I’ll take a turn to talk about how things went for me, and more specifically, how things went at the lectures I presented. First, I wanted to say it was fantastic to get the chance to meet so many of our enthusiastic and friendly players. This show is a great way to stay in touch with our community while also getting a chance to play a ton of games.

When Jason Martin came to me about Lock & Load this year it was to talk to me about doing more seminars. A lot more. We talked about what sorts of talks I might give, and I threw out a few ideas. At each turn Jason replied, “That sounds good; let’s do that.” I thought he was being indecisive, but instead what I had done was accidentally agree to deliver not one lecture multiple times, but three different ones multiple times. Whoops!

Turns out this was a great idea. Hopefully the attendees enjoyed listening to me blather about the setting and our characters as I am prone to do when given any encouragement. I thought I would give a quick description of the talks so people who didn’t attend would have an idea of what they missed. (I should note that the Privateer Press studio was running lectures where participants could develop skills by way of valuable instruction. I assure you my lectures had no similarly useful applications.)

Life in the Iron Kingdoms
(subtitled: “Presume Everything is Trying to Kill You”)

– This was a lecture I shared with Simon Berman as we gave an overview of what life is like for regular people in our setting, a topic unfamiliar to a lot of our WARMACHINE and HORDES players. This was based on material Simon and I had been immersed in for some time while writing one of the largest background chapters for the new IK RPG. As the subtitle suggests, we also suggested our setting has some unusual dangers.

Simon spent a lot of time talking about economic conditions, organized labor, pollution, and the opportunities and new professions arisen from alchemy, industry, mechanika, and increased urbanization. I felt the need to hammer home the fact that, unlike any similar eras in the real world, the people in our setting also have to worry about full-blood trolls eating their children if they meander off or sudden Tharn attacks followed by heart-eating which might put a damper on logging efforts. Hopefully my warnings will not adversely impact Iron Kingdoms tourism.

Simon and I had planned to have a lengthy Q&A, but we clearly both like to talk, and every time we did the lecture it got a little longer as we thought of more things to include. But we still managed to answer a number of great questions from attendees.

Cosmology of Western Immoren
(subtitled: “The War of Souls and You”)

– This lecture was a modified and simplified version of the talk I gave last year at the first Lock & Load. Last year I made the foolish attempt of telling the entire history of our setting from the creation of Caen to the present in a single hour. Turns out that isn’t possible! So I narrowed the talk to covering the gods and cosmology and the creation of the various intelligent species in western Immoren. This was still a large and sweeping topic but one that could at be tackled as an overview in an hour.

This lecture allowed for some Q&A, and I was quite impressed and gratified by the great questions. People seemed particularly fascinated by the dragons, which I’m sure made the gods a little jealous, but I have to admit our dragons are pretty cool.

State of the Factions Address
(subtitled: “Who Hates Whom Now”)

– This was a bit of an unusual lecture, and was the one I was the most nervous about presenting since I would have to keep my wits about me to make it work. I allocated four minutes to every faction in both WARMACHINE and HORDES to summarize how things were going for them. For each faction, I took the role of someone trying to put a positive spin on recent events, treating the attendees as if they were members of that faction. As you can imagine, this was easier to accomplish with some factions than others.

This lecture was less about facts and more about maintaining morale. I reassured Khadorans that Karchev would probably be OK and may have just wandered off somewhere, being pretty old. Menites of the Protectorate were pleased to hear the crusades had been going well, with Reznik doing a great job as head of public relations. On the HORDES side, I had a tough time cheering up the Trollbloods, given all the homelessness. I told them I was sure unleashing ancient giant trolls that had been chained up below the mountains to stop them from consuming the world would probably work out great. I suggested Legion attendees not get too worried about the dragons having meetings about Everblight’s destruction since Lylyth had found a stray athanc on a broken down wagon, which should make it easier to pick up than the last one.

Giving these seminars was a blast, and I thoroughly enjoyed answering questions and talking to our players during each of them. I’m already starting to think of some topics I can cover next year.