Dragonmeet...

...went well. For various reasons I got there much later than I'd planned so didn't get any gaming in the morning. Fortunately my adventure was scheduled for 2 PM so I had time to look around etc., didn't buy anything but met a few people I know.

Bring Me The Head of Harry Potter went well, although it reached a natural conclusion without several of the incidents I'd planned to use. This was basically an adventure for a team of elite assassins (using the John Wick "High Table" organisation) sent to Los Angeles to assassinate Harry Potter, who fled Britain to get away from repeated murder attempts after killing Voldemort. The client (unnamed) was represented by Wolfram and Hart. Potter was staying with the Angel Investigations team (Angel) in the Hyperion Hotel, nominally for them to protect him. Since I probably won't run it again I might give the full list of player characters:

• Wednesday Addams - Where did you think the Addams Family wealth came from? Obviously they are fairly high up in the High Table. A witch, naturally, but lots of combat skills too. And disliked Harry Potter because Voldemort was an old friend of her family.
• Barbie Benn - An Auton (Doctor Who) marooned on Earth after the last invasion attempt, e.g. a plastic person who can shape-change slightly and is very good at assuming roles once she wears a suitable costume, usually pink. Basically a cross between Barbie, Mr. Benn, and Doctor Who.
• Justin Finch-Fletchley, a canon Harry Potter wizard - for obscure reasons I decided that his dad was a Wolfram and Hart (London) lawyer, and his grandad was Norman Stanley Fletcher (Porridge), so well in with London gangsters etc.
• Dexter Morgan (Dexter), turned pro after leaving Miami. Your basic serial killer turned pro.
• Martin Blanc (Grosse Point Blank), a pro killer based in Los Angeles in canon. Your basic high-tech hit man, not actually a member of the High Table, a local underworld contact used by Wolfram and Hart.

Another character wasn't used because one player didn't turn up:

• Matilda Lando - a mash up of Mathilda Lando from Leon: The Professional and Roald Dahl's Matilda. A sniper who could use telekinesis to make impossible shots.

What the players didn't know was that it was a universe where most of the NPCs were the "worst case" version of the characters:

• Angel was actually Angelus - the soul went walkies after he bonked Cordelia.
• Wes was more or less an intelligent zombie, partly turned by Angelus and serving as his Renfield.
• Cordelia was the version pregnant with the evil goddess Jasmine, with strange powers and able to summon the demon Skip if needed.
• Fred was the "insane after Pylea" version, building crazy booby traps and weapons such as a toaster that fired buzzsaw blades. Think Home Alone turned up to 11...
• And Harry Potter was actually Voldemort - when Potter was killed just before the final battle in 1997 his soul fought the Voldy horcrux for supremacy and Voldy won, taking over Harry's body. He then killed snake-faced Voldy and pretended to be Harry, gradually killing off most of Harry's friends and allies and pretending that it was Death-Eater survivors murdering them. Eventually he "fled Britain" to escape the killers - in fact he wanted to scout out the US magical scene before making another power grab there.

Briefly

• Dexter and Martin were killed.
• Justin was killed, met Death (who wanted him to get the Deathly Hallows back) and was resurrected.
• Wednesday was apparated away by Harrymort who remembered her as the daughter of his old friends and cut a deal with her - they made a homunculus then fed it polyjuice with Harry's blood so that it was a perfect replica of Harry, decapitated it, and used the head (plus Wednesday's family influence) to claim the reward for killing Harry and end the contract.
• Barbie got out unscathed.
• Angel and Spike were dusted.
• Renfield Wes was decapitated, and his head was used to make the homunculus.
• Cordelia got annoyed but was otherwise unscathed. She used her powers and Skip's help to very good effect.
• Fred and Gunn got away more or less unscathed, except for mental trauma.
• Justin wasn't able to recover the Hallows, but fortunately for him Voldemort called Death off (since he's the Master of Death) because he had other work for him. Death left warning Justin that he had outlived his allotted time, and that the universe really didn't like that sort of thing.

Fade out to a happy(?) ending, and an anvil falling from a clear sky and narrowly missing Justin, with the implication that his days were VERY numbered...

I didn't get to use some of the things I had planned - John Wick didn't make an appearance, neither did the Saint of Killers (Preacher), but the adventure seemed to go well enough without throwing in more complications, and the players seemed to be happy - even the ones whose characters were killed - which is a sign that I got things more or less right.