• return the volunteer and programme idea forms in your PR2
• download a pdf of the programming volunteer form
• download a pdf of the "I've got a Programme Idea" form
• email sofa@paragon2.org.uk  
• or find us at a con table near you.

One of our larger projects is the Audience Participation Richard III, as devised by Jasper Fforde. More about that on the Project pages.

Each member will have been given an Alter Ego from literature, history, myth or media, and there will be many opportunities for you to act and dress in character. Your Alter Ego will be disclosed to you when you receive your first Progress Report from us, or in your membership confirmation email, and you will be given a chance to change it if you wish. More details on how it all works below.

Programming will be the traditional mix of panel items, interviews, talks, workshops, readings or dramatisations, book groups, parties, quizzes & games, going on late into the night.

Space is available for activity workshops such as costume and robots. Dedicated rooms have been set aside for dealers, artists, gamers and filkers. Some of us have been fascinated with the Time Commanders TV show, featuring modern teams re-fighting historical battles - and we've all thought We Could Do Better. But we wanted to fight the battles we reallly knew and loved - Helm's Deep, for example. So to give us all a chance, as well as the regular gaming programme strand, Paragon2 is going to have a wargaming room. Our partners the Society of Fantasy and Science Fiction Wargamers will be bringing games and expertise. We've asked Gary Stratmann to run us through some of the basics, his article from PR2 is reproduced below.

The hotel features a number of different types of space, from large function rooms to small discussion spaces, including a 3-storey arena for more spectacular display events.

The programme is being run by a group of people, headed by Fran Dowd and including (in alphabetical order) James Bacon, Julia Daly, Sabine Furlong, Dave Lally, Alice Lawson, and John Richards.

More information, including programme grids, will be published here as soon as it becomes available. 

Alter Ego

Every member of Paragon2 has been given a randomly generated alter ego, picked out of the Sofa's magnificent Easter Bonnet. Yours is printed on the address label that came with your PR, or in your membership confirmation email from John. If you've tossed that already, get in touch with us and we'll tell you what the security system is for finding it out. There's also a system for changing it if you want to, but don't bank on that as we might have already issued your chosen identity to someone else.

So what are they, and why have you got one?

Goodie or Baddie?
Your alter ego is a Hero, Heroine, Villain or Sidekick. They could be fictional, historic, or mythological. We've tried to make sure that Heroines are real heroines in their own right, not just the Hero's bit of stuff. But we haven't told you what category we think yours falls into.

Actually, in a lot of cases we haven't decided ourselves yet, and we quite often break off committee meetings to have rows about Alexander the Great. Or Becky Sharp. Or Teller.

In some cases, your alter ego name could represent several different people. In this case, it's up to you to choose. Matilda, for example. Queen, liar, or trainee assassin? Or there have been several different interpretations - if you are Allan Quartermain, do you want to be from the book(s), the film(s) of the books, the graphic novel, or the film of the graphic novel?

What's it for?
Ooh, lots of things. A lot of the programming at Paragon2 will be about Heroes, Heroines, Villains and Sidekicks. So we wanted to jostle your brains a bit before we get started.

And you can join in the fun in all sorts of ways.

Only we know who anyone's alter ego is. How secret the "secret identity" side of it is up to you. If you want to shout your alter ego from the rooftops, why not write a bit for the next PR or the website about who you are and why you wanted to be?

You could come dressed as, and act like, your alter ego for the con and offer a prize to the first person to guess who you are. We're planning a Masked Alter Ego Ball. And there are Hall Costumes. And an Easter Headgear Parade.

You could represent your alter ego in panel items, from serious discussions through balloon debates to specialist knowledge quizzes.

Make friends and influence people by finding your opposite number, or other characters from your universe.

Find or make the relevant Top Trumps game.

You're all intelligent people, you'll think of something.

Please note that the building of secret lairs or Fortresses of Solitude in the grounds is strictly forbidden by the hotel. And the Weapons Policy team in Ops have a dim view of WMDs.

Wargames date back to earliest antiquity, when model soldiers were used to re-enact battles. For centuries generals used miniature soldiers for planning and strategy. The birth of the amateur wargame dates back to the publication of Little Wars by H G Wells in 1913, which introduced a simple rule structure enabling amateurs to use model soldiers to fight miniature battles. At this time European armies used a hugely complicated system called Kreigspeil, as an essential training tool, but as the Appendix of Little Wars points out it was not suitable for amateur gamers.

"Little Wars" (stated Wells) "is the game of kings - for players in an inferior social position. It can be played by boys of every age from twelve to one hundred and fifty - and even later if the limbs remain sufficiently supple, - by girls of the better sort, and by a few rare and gifted women."

Not perhaps the most politically correct message for the 21st century!

Little Wars used lead soldiers and spring loaded guns to simulate warfare, casualties being determined by how many soldiers are knocked over by the rounds. Modern wargaming turned to the more useful and safer option of using dice to determine combat results. Wargaming with miniatures is still a huge popular hobby and certainly has the most visual impact, however for space and convenience wargames played with card counters representing the units are also extensively used and are probably the most common type of wargame played. There is the added benefit that large armies do not have to be made up and painted before battle can commence. Wargames now cover almost every conceivable period from Prehistory to the latest Gulf War.

It was a natural progression to go from recreating historical battles to fictional ones. Some of the earliest examples I can remember are games based on Lord of the Rings and Valley of the Four Winds, both in the late 70s. The latter was based on a story serialised in White Dwarf and was originally a miniatures game with figures from Minifigs. It was also one of the first four games produced by Games Workshop. There was also a long running strategy game based in the world of Conan which was serialised as battle reports in Military Modelling.

In the science fiction arena one of the oldest and best games is Star Fleet Battles, originally appearing in the early 80s as a game which allowed the players to fight battles between rival Star Trek Universe races. The game, which is still in production, has grown through numerous editions to perhaps one of the most complex, comprehensive and detailed games ever produced. Possibly only the classic Advanced Squad Leader rivals its pre-eminence. A word of warning about Star Fleet Battles, for various copyright and other reasons the background, while firmly rooted in the Star Trek milieu has undergone parallel evolution and has many differences from the current version seen on film and TV.

A rather less successful game that appeared in the wake of Star Wars was Freedom in the Galaxy, an attempt to create a strategy game of rebels against the evil empire. Unfortunately it didn't really work as a game.

The development of the role-playing game, itself a spin off from skirmish (small unit) wargaming greatly increased the interest in SF and Fantasy settings and companies began to produce a huge range of games. Everyone was jumping on what looked to be a popular and therefore lucrative bandwagon. A leader in the field was Steve Jackson Games. As well as creating one of the most popular role-playing systems, GURPS (Generic Universal Role Playing System), he produced classics like OGRE, the game of supertank combat, and the immensely popular Car Wars.

One of the leaders in the field of miniature wargaming is Games Workshop with their Warhammer (Fantasy), Warhammer 40K (Science Fiction) and Lord of the Rings lines of rules, miniatures and accessories. However they are not the only player in the sandbox, there are many other manufacturers producing genera games. Ground Zero Games produces miniatures and rule books for several SF games including StarGrunt, Full Thrust and Pig Tickler, the latter for an alternative Victorian setting.

Others have produced games of giant robot combat (Battletech), alternative 1920s flying adventures (Crimson Skies), rampaging monsters (The Creature that Ate Sheboygan, Bug Hunter), classic SF (Starship Troopers), classic Fantasy (John Carter Warlord of Mars - regrettably the Plan 9 from Outer Space of games).

Basically if anyone has been able to imagine it there's a pretty good chance someone has produced a game of it. Drop along to the games at the convention and see for yourself.

Glynn Christian (the mutineer's great-great-great-great-grandson): "There is nothing new to say about Bounty, Bligh or Christian ... William Bligh was a magnificent navigator and a truly awful man just as Fletcher Christian was a wicked mutineer and an interesting pioneer of democracy and female emancipation."

Lenin: "All our lives we fought against exalting the individual, against the elevation of the single person, and long ago we were over and done with the business of a hero, and here it comes up again: the glorification of one personality. This is not good at all. I am just like everybody else."

Ralph Waldo Emerson: "A hero is no braver than an ordinary man, but he is brave five minutes longer."

Thoughts on the Philosophical Foundations of Heroism, by Dr Andrew Bernstein: "What, the first question must be, is the distinguishing essence of heroism? What characteristics must one possess to qualify as a hero? What is it that unites Achilles, Cyrano, Isaac Newton, John Galt and Ayn Rand? What is it that differentiates them from: both the folks next door, and from Iago, Ellsworth Toohey, Adolf Hitler, Hilary Clinton? In short, what is the rational meaning of the concept "heroism"?

Webster's Ninth Collegiate Dictionary defines "hero as: a) "a mythological or legendary figure often of divine descent endowed with great strength or ability, b) an illustrious warrior, c) a man admired for his achievements and noble qualities, d) one that shows great courage." These attempts at defining the nature of a hero are woefully inadequate. Observe first the predominant emphasis on the physical, on great strength, courage and warlike prowess - second the absence of any mention of the mind or intellect - and third the attenuated reference to the criterion of a man's moral character ("noble qualities" is listed as one of the term's meanings). The American Heritage Dictionary, though endowed with such a promising name, provides a set of definitions essentially no different. Based on this definition, one might conclude that an Arnold Schwarzenegger character is a hero but that Howard Roark or Ayn Rand are not. Sadly, this is a common perception in our culture.

A hero is (this is my definition, not Webster's): an individual of elevated moral stature and superior ability who pursues his goals indefatigably in the face of powerful antagonist(s). Because of his unbreached devotion to the good, no matter the opposition, a hero attains spiritual grandeur, even in he fails to achieve practical victory. Notice then the four components of heroism: moral greatness, ability or prowess, action in the face of opposition, and triumph in at least a spiritual, if not a physical, form.
Of these, the hero's moral stature is unquestionably the most fundamental. An uncompromising commitment to morality is the foundation of heroism. Although the point can be stated simply_the hero is a "good guy"_its reasons are philosophical and apply to all instances of the concept."

From a school essay: "Macbeth was a true Shakespearean tragic hero. He had many noble qualities as well as several tragic flaws. He was a courageous, brave and good nobleman who was haunted by superstition, moral cowardice and an overwhelming ambition. Progressively through the play, his flaws started consuming his qualities until they are all that can be seen of him."

Ernest Renan: "As a rule, all heroism is due to a lack of reflection, and thus it is necessary to maintain a mass of imbeciles. If they once understand themselves the ruling men will be lost."

Solomon Short: "Nature abhors a hero. For one thing, he violates the law of conservation of energy. For another, how can it be the survival of the fittest when the fittest keeps putting himself in situations where he is most likely to be creamed?"

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