Concrete Cow 25

I arrived in Wolverton at more or less the time I intended, paid my entry, and headed straight for the bring and buy, followed by Leisure Games. I'd been thinking of picking up some of the supplements for Masks: A New Generation and there was one of them in paperback so of course that had to come home with me. I somehow managed to resist the impressive amount of bargains on the bring and buy.

By the time I took this photo, very little remained

Game 1: The Wildsea

I used my GM golden ticket to get into my top pick of morning game. I'd seen The Wildsea around and knew how pretty it was but not a great deal else. I was also very happy to find myself at a table with five familiar faces - while it's great meeting new people at cons, it's also great to catch up with old friends.

I was immediately smitten by the pre-gen characters the GM had provided. I resisted my natural urge to play the weird bug person, and passed the swarm of spiders in a skin suit to another player. I decided on Sagrave the Ektus - a towering cactus person with a talent for smashing things up. The rules themselves were fairly straightforward. A variation on Forged in the Dark, and one that seemed a little less hostile to the idea of players passing their rolls. Or perhaps that was partly the fact that the dice appeared to have taken a liking to us?

 What wasn't so friendly was the setting, when it came to figure out what to actually do with it. 'Bunch of weirdos on a ship' is always a solid premise for a game, but while games based on familiar franchises like Star Trek or Pirates of the Caribbean provide a familiar setting, this one is so weird it's hard to know where to take your ship.

The GM dealt with this by giving the characters some interesting motivations and relations, specifically having two characters married, and a third their child. We tried not to think too much about how exactly a human and a bag of spiders had a kid. Fortunately, Sagrave and his friend Hobel the mushroom person didn't know too much about animal biology anyway. Off we sailed, in search of the Amber Irons, where the human wife was going to find an ingredient to make a tea for treating amber blight.

The Wildsea crew

The end result was a game that really put me more in mind of Pasion de los Pasiones, as the human's ex wife showed up, causing trouble in her relationship with her spiders husband, which was a stressful situation for their son. Sagrave, who'd already failed at flirting with the harbor master, concluded that he needed some surrogate parental figures, and that in the absence of any actual suitable candidates, Sagrave and Hobel would have to do.

I suspect The Wildsea is one of those games that works better in a campaign where you've got time to actually learn to setting. All the same, we did have a good game thanks to an imaginative GM and a group of players absolutely willing to lean into the bizarre relationship drama. I fondly remember Hobel and Sagrave rather confusedly asking the spider bag husband if he wasn't already technically in a poly relationship given that there were quite a lot of him.

I picked up some lunch at Tesco, then brought out my sign-up sheet for the afternoon. There were quite a lot.

Ten games on offer!

Game 2: Monster of the Week

I took Valentine's Day for another outing, and another team of elderly monster hunters assembled: a Professional, an Expert, a Mundane and a Divine. So three regular humans and the angel Jeremiel headed for Asani's Greek restaurant to find out why her new barista was being inundated with romantic gifts.

This was great fun. The changes I made for the Revelation run continued to work well, and the group efficiently got to the bottom of things, a few passionate declarations of love notwithstanding.

Then it was time for takeaways and the raffle. This time the raffle prizes consisted almost entirely of things I already owned and things that I previously owned but had since sold. Obviously that means some people won some very cool stuff.

Game 3: Darkness of the Demimonde

 Having written a brand new DotD scenario for my campaign group a few weeks ago, I decided to give it another outing. Brides of Brixton is another investigative pulp horror scenario set in London, and I needed to make some tweaks to run it for a group of beginner characters rather than the slightly more experienced campaign group. Primarily reducing the DR of the primary antagonists.

This time the party consisted of a Detective, Gentry, Feyblood, Magician and Psychic, meaning that most things were solved by either solid investigation techniques of searching and interrogation or creative use of mystic powers. I managed to make good use of my random historical knowledge. Good times. 

Sunday

We've got a bit of a tradition now of a few of us meeting up on the Sunday for lunch and an activity. This time, with some people coming who'd never seen the notorious Concrete Cows before, there was really only one option.

The Concrete Cows

Even if you've seen photos, nothing truly prepares you for the sheer physical presence of these things.

The short walk there and back meant passing a field with some ponies in it. It was good to see that with five of them plus a suitably horse-sized d20, they were all set up for a nice game of D&D.

This one was probably the GM

This was followed by lunch at Yo Sushi and then dropping everyone back at the station.

Reflections

This is probably the best turn-out we've had at Concrete Cow since before Covid. We had loads of games on offer, and most of them filled up. Next time we'll have the main hall set up so we can deploy the divider and split it into two rooms when the games start, and can start looking at hiring additional space.

I love running games here.

Revelation 2025

I set off at a reasonable time on Friday afternoon. It should take about two hours to drive to Sheffield, but I know from past experience to allow at least three. So I got to the Garrison at 6pm, within minutes of my room sharer, and then headed to the bar, ready for another weekend of Revelation.

Some of the Garricon regulars have started going for meals out on the Friday nights. With dietary requirements significantly cutting down the options this time, we headed out to Church - Temple of Fun, an all vegan bar and restaurant run by the front man of the band Bring Me The Horizon. This was a little surreal. We were, after all, a group of nerds going into an extremely hip venue. But on the plus side, one of our party was someone the rest of us were meeting for the first time, and I hope it made it a lot easier for him to identify the group of nerds while we were surrounded by really cool people.

The whole place was like this

I managed to obtain a drink free of alcohol, kombucha or CBD (a bigger challenge than it sounds), admired the black cutlery, ordered a seitan and facon burger and fries followed by cheeseless cheesecake, and enjoyed the absolutely bizarre decor. It was certainly the right atmosphere for preparing to run Kult.

black cutlery

Vegan chicken and bacon burger and fries

Vegan black forest cheesecake with chocolate ice cream

Game 1: Monster of the Week

I kicked things off with Valentine's Day, a scenario I originally wrote for a campaign, updated to work as a one-shot. I kept the campaign's group concept of the characters all being retirees and acting as the neighbourhood watch group in their suburb of Milton Keynes. I stuck with the standard set of playbooks, and the players picked the Spellslinger, Expert, Initiate and Monstrous. After establishing histories, they set out to find out why Lizzie the part time barista was getting so many unwanted valentine's gifts. By the end, an appropriate amount of love was in the air, nobody died and nothing was on fire that shouldn't be. So a great success!

I modified this slightly from the original scenario, adding in some extra monsters to add theming, excitement and things for me to do on a failed roll, and I'm pretty happy with the result. I expect I'll give this a few more outings over the year.

I put all my game materials for each game into separate themed bags this time. My new Matrons of Mystery bag seemed appropriate for retirees investigating mysteries, even if it wasn't quite the same game.

Matrons tote bag

Game 2: Monster of the Week

Proving just how versatile MOTW can be, my second game saw me playing an agent of a United Nations agency devoted to tracking down dangerous uses of fringe science. I picked the Professional, and along with an ex-military Wronged, an ex-police Gumshoe and an ex-alive person Monstrous, we investigated strange goings on in a gated community in Oxfordshire.

I love how this game rewards creativity. Lily the ghost proved to be an extremely valuable team member due to her ability to get inside places without having to open doors (and then telekinetically open them when necessary). It was also tonally very different to the game I ran. Rather than my cosy group of retirees, this was action and body horror.

Game 3: Kult: Divinity Lost

I'd done one practice run of Not For A Million Dollars, confirming it would fit into a four hour slot, and resulting in a few tweaks to the characters. While there's still room for improvement, the tweaks were good choices, giving every character an opportunity to use at least one of their advantages. But I think in future this one needs a longer slot. I put it in the Saturday night slot to get the maximum amount of time, but I think six hours would be a more comfortable timeframe. Definitely one to run at a longer con like Contingency.

Based on the test run, I picked up a few props and prepared some handouts. Based on this run, I could do with a few more props and handouts, which I will have ready for the next time I run this.

Of course it's the players who make a game like this, and I had an absolutely lovely group, all embracing the messed up reality show contestant PCs, bringing both pathos and humour. The grumpy scientist, determined investigator, dramatic influencer and himbo model were all a delight, and I don't think I'm going to forget the phrase 'Luigi board' for a while.

Game 4: Escape from Dino Island

While PBTA is thought of as low prep, both my previous games involved quite a lot of prep. But all I had to do for Dino Island was print out playbooks. We ran through the standard questionnaire, skipping the first question about why they were on the island, because in the process of writing a blurb, I'd already done that: guests at a destination wedding on a dinosaur themed resort. They were expecting animatronics. What they got was the terrifying, electrically active, genetically branded, Tesladactyl.

In addition to the box of tiny dinosaurs, my kit now includes a set of dinosaur dice for when I need to roll on the random tables.

This is one game I'd love to see more people running. While I consider myself a generally competent PBTA GM, I know there are plenty of people who do this kind of low prep, high improv GMing better than I do. Plus, I really want to play it some time.

Dinosaurs!

Game 5: Threadbare

There were two more MOTW games I could have signed up for - but instead I went for Boogie Shoes, in which a group of toys had to overcome a series of obstacles in order to participate in a dance contest in a post-apocalyptic world populated entirely by toys. I played Millicent Mouse, a well constructed cuddly toy mouse manufactured by Steiff, meaning she was able to get served in high class hat shops, unlike her friend Rollup, a cuddly six-limbed alien who had been a carnival prize.

Millicent and Rollup were joined by Coco the gorilla and her barrel of monkeys, and Martha the Christmas sock. We arranged for dance lessons for Coco (to get her monkeys working in sync) and Rollup (to help him figure out which of his limbs were arms and which were legs). We got a sparkly hat and cane for Millicent, and some Christmas lights and music for Martha. And we put on a musical spectacular, the like of which had never been seen before.

This was a very different setting to the last toy based game I played. It's got great potential for creativity as the players come up with toy ideas. We didn't get to see much of the part of the game where bits of you get damaged and can be replaced with other items, largely thanks to the dice who had decided to be cooperative for once, so we didn't get much of the stitchpunk aspect. But it was Sunday afternoon, and this was an ideal time for a cute and cuddly game in which all conflicts were resolved via dance-offs.

Millicent Mouse's character sheet

Reflections

Well that was great. Exhausting - I probably shouldn't have offered three games (although I had a great time running them all) so next time I'll try to remember to not be quite as enthusiastic. Or at least, try to make sure I'm GMing something energising in slot 5 as that's the one where I start to flag. Oh, and try to make better choices at breakfast so I don't have a horrendous mid-morning sugar crash.

It's impressive how much variety there is in a convention where all the games are PBTA and adjacent systems. Even across just Monster of the Week there was a lot of variety. And it's great to see older games like MOTW and Apocalypse World itself still getting plenty of love alongside much newer arrivals.

Revelation was my first in-person Garricon, back in 2022, and it might just still be my favourite.

ConTingency 2025

Once again January saw me and my husband taking a trip to Hunstanton. We were the first of our group to arrive, and parked outside our assigned lodge, only to discover we'd been given an upgrade!

The new lodge was bigger, and had WiFi and a dishwasher, as well as a table that can seat the six people that the lodge claims to be for. But it seems that I'm the victim of a strange and extremely specific curse. For the previous two conventions I was in the same lodge, and both times I had trouble with the toilet door, resulting in me getting stuck in the toilet for a bit. This time I was assigned a different lodge, which I'd previously visited and knew the toilet doors worked. But now we'd been moved...

Fortunately this lodge had two doors into the bathroom so we were able to leave via the other door before visiting reception to request a visit from maintenance. But really, three years in a row?

Tuesday features a talk in the afternoon, and this year it was CJ Romer talking about parapsychology and his career in ghost investigations. Entertaining as always, and further cementing my opinion that CJ is a Call of Cthulhu character who has somehow ended up in the real world.

After a couple of days relaxing it was time for the games to begin.

Wednesday

Foretold: In Its Shadow

The Dragonbane game I initially signed up for was cancelled due to GM illness so I jumped at the chance to play a story game with James Mullen.

We had a deck of cards and a list of prompts, and with that put together a story of hunting for an alien beast through the abandoned ruins of an industrial area. My character Flora, a xenobiologist, was the first to be entirely consumed by the beast's corruption, but it had already become increasingly obvious that in true Event Horizon style, none of us should have been allowed on this mission. I think we ended by destroying the planet. Good times.

After the game I nipped over to the neighbouring lodge as fellow Raspy Raven member Graham had been running a game of Matrons of Mystery and had offered to show me the props he'd made for it. There were actual printed cards for the suspects and clues! I'm really going to have to up my game.

When Worlds Collide

I had absolutely no idea what this was, and signed up because my husband did and I wanted to play a game together. Then he was ill and couldn't play. Still there were two other guys called Mark at the table so we were well covered there.

So it turned out it was a game about agents who could travel through dimensional rifts. Our team were prepped to go and recover a scientist who'd been trapped when the rift he arrived through went one way, then locate a new rift to bring us all back. Expecting to arrive on the bustling streets of New Amsterdam, we dressed as tourists, which rapidly turned out to have been a poor choice when we arrived to a bunch of biohazard signs.

The system was unfamiliar but pretty easy to get the hang of, rolling 3d6+skill against a target number with modifiers for professional skills. The character sheet was also colour coded, which was good for readability. While I can't see me running this, it's definitely something I'd play again at a convention.

Alien

I knew Alien was a popular game at previous cons so I took the Misfits and their road crew for another outing. A new record - all original PCs plus two replacements killed by the end.

I had a table right in the middle of the main room for this, and while I think I managed to be heard, I decided to relocate my other games to my lodge now that we had enough table and chairs for six people.

Thursday

Cthulhu Dark

I dived straight back in with The Temple of Artemis, my newest Jamesian ghost story using Cthulhu Dark. Once again four brave souls uncovered the secrets of Suttonham Abbey although I don't think it was any less haunted by the end given what happened to Williams.

This one is on the way to being publishable so watch this space, or rather the space on DriveThruRPG where I publish my games.

Sla Industries

My husband had recovered enough to play a game, so off we went to play SLA Industries. This time another player picked the purple cat sniper, so I went for the Frother, basically a crazed Glaswegian on combat drugs with a massive gun. We were on the trail of some stolen ammo, which we retrieved through a complicated series of events that included attempting to book a motel room, sending someone for pizza, and hiding the Stormer in a van, before we got to the required violence.

I'm starting to get the hang of SLA's system now, and while I'm still not sold on the backwards initiative system, I do at least understand how it works. Also it's nice to bring out the bag of d10s for a change. Two games in, and I'm keen to play more.

Black Code

I planned to take a break on Thursday evening, but when I saw a game of Black Code on the board, I decided to add myself to the waitlist, just in case. Just in case happened, and off I went to play.

I've got a reputation with Whitt (the author) and Mark (the GM) for playing weird bug people in their games, and I felt I was only cementing this reputation further when I was offered a choice of new pre-gens and immediately picked Itzy the tech in her spider themed bioframe. I decided she had some extra eyes, to fit with her fairly high Notice level, and hairy fingers, a phrase which seemed to cause some concern.

Off we went on a mission to recover a sacred relic stolen from the Temple, aided by mech frame Sherman's very useful ability to turn into a tank along with all the usual hacking, tracking, and cutting people up with a big sword that the rest of us were bringing to the party. Itzy proved just as much fun as Aedon the scorpion medic and I hope I'll get more chances to play her at future conventions. Black Code is one of my favourite cyberpunk games and maybe one day I'll even run it.

Friday

Matrons of Mystery

Another Matrons game not run by me! This was the same GM I played with last year, who remember my character Rosemary and her giant bunny Pierre. But I decided to do something new this time, and created Audrey Wells, widow of Steve Wells, a rock star who died of attempting to act like Ozzy Osbourne while not being Ozzy Osbourne. Audrey's hobby was now folk music, although she maintained her vintage punk style.

The game was initially pitched as us being the village sewing circle, but when the GM gave us the option to choose, we decided we were going to be a band instead, quickly named Earl Grey Rock, possibly the loudest thing in the village of Soggy Bottom On The Marsh.

Soon we were digging into the intrigues of theatre production when our breakfast with the cast was interrupted by the discovering of the death of the financier behind it all. Between secret passages, whispered conversation and wild speculation we eventually got to the bottom of it, and hopefully assisted a young man in embarking on a new career in the theatre.

I decided to actually take a break for the afternoon and went to browse the wares at All Rolled Up, coming back with some coasters, a bundle of zines, and a very lovely hand made dice bag from the tombola.

Regency Cthulhu

An atmospheric tale of five sisters (and a stable boy) left alone on Christmas Eve while strange activities were going on outside and everyone had a secret to keep. Somehow we all got through it alive, although there was a general feeling that none of us intended to still live in that house by the following Christmas.

Unusually for a game run by CJ, this one was comparatively normal, and involved actually getting on with the plot rather than engaging in extensive Regency nonsense. Well, mostly.

Saturday

Liminal

I decided to take my newest scenario, Blood, Sweat and Tears, for another outing. I originally had a table booked in the hall for this, but given that we now had a sufficiently large table in the lodge I decided to relocate.

This was an unusually efficient group, getting from place to place on a bare minimum of clues - which is encouraging as it means I've successfully designed an adventure with multiple paths to the solution.

East Texas University

I was considering another break, but when I saw ETU I had to give it a go. I wasn't quite sure what to expect, beyond Savage Worlds, but it turned out to be basically Buffy the Vampire Slayer with a dash of Scooby Doo.

I picked up Priscilla the goth witch and went off to a Christmas dinner that rapidly turned into a fight with the cutlery. And it wasn't long after that that we were breaking into an antique shop to steal taxidermy and things only got stranger from there.

I had a brilliant time with this one, tempered only by the fact that it appears to be damn near impossible to get hold of ETU in print these days. Does anyone happen to know if Pinnacle have any future plans for this line?

Plüsch, Power & Plunder

I'd seen this run at past conventions, but this was my first time getting into one of Chris Dieck's legendary plush games. I played Trevor, a cuddly tree frog with exceptional bouncing skills who also knew how to read.

We decided we were the cuddly toys in the Happy Stars daycare, which looked after the children of actors and film crew while they were on set. We spent our days avoiding being played with as much as possible, hanging out with our human friend Jeff, tormenting the security guard and avoiding detergent addiction, until we were forced into action by an invasion of plushies who were alive, but not properly alive! Fortunately movie nights with Jeff helped us make some sense of this.

The most notable incident in the whole game was probably when we needed to drive a car to get somewhere in a hurry. Trevor was assigned to steering, making sure to bounce at the proper times to turn the wheel. While navigation was a little shaky, the actual driving went remarkably well, and while we were technically not able to use the car again afterwards, it was a solid result for a team of six assorted cuddly toys. Trevor played his part in saving the day by doing some reading so that Great Cthulhu could do some magic and end the problem. Well, mostly. Call it a net improvement. Again, a solid result for a team of six assorted cuddly toys.

Sadly this game is even less available that East Texas University, being both very old and from Germany, but really the system isn't the important part here. What matters is that I got to play a cuddly frog.

Sunday

Rivers of London

I had just enough energy left for one more game, so it was off to Hunstanton for the residents of the Folly, to look into a matter of a haunted doll's house. Which turned out to be even more haunted than it appeared at first glance. Sadly what Morgan Omar had learned from watching The Wizard of Oz proved not to be correct, but we nevertheless got everyone out safely.

And then it was off to the carvery for lunch, where the Yorkshire puddings were excellent and really that's what matters, followed by the raffle, and then doing absolutely nothing for the rest of the day.

Reflections

Once again, a brilliant convention. Games and GMs both ranged from good to excellent. I got to try out four new games as well as playing some old favourites. We sold the majority of the items we put in the Bring and Buy, so once again there is space on my shelves ready for the incoming kickstarters.

I didn't pace myself as well this year as I did in 2024, and need to show a little more restraint early in the week if I want to keep going at the end. Nevertheless I managed to play 12 out of 14 slots, which is pretty good going.

With so many friends there, the hard part is actually catching up with everyone. Some people I didn't manage to speak to until Sunday or Monday morning. Must try harder next time. Really the only problem with ConTingency is that it isn't long enough. Roll on next year!

In which I compare fantasy TTRPGs to peanut butter

During a recent discussion about GMing at events, I was explaining that I don't run D&D, but will do Pathfinder 2. Which lead the other party to believe that what I like is a really solid crunchy ruleset as opposed to something lighter or more narrative. Which isn't the case, of course. Most of the games I run are rules-light and/or narrative focussed games. And that got me thinking about peanut butter.

I'm aware that there are two main types of peanut butter - crunchy and smooth - but I don't actually like peanut butter. As such, it was somewhat baffling for me to discover that there are people who are absolutely dedicated to one type of peanut butter. I've read stories of children all but disowned by their parents for liking the wrong peanut butter, and vile aspersions thrown at the romantic partners who tempted them into incorrect peanut butter loving ways.

Pathfinder 2

Legumes aside, Pathfinder 2 is a crunchy game. For pretty much anything you want to do, there's a rule that covers it. If you want to treat someone's wounds in PF2, the game will tell you what skill to roll, what level of training you need, what DC you need to hit to succeed, what equipment you need to do it, how many hit points it restores, what happens in the event of a critical or a fumble, how long it takes, and how much time has to pass before your subject can have wounds treated via this method again. Plus there are a variety of skills feats and magic items that can modify these details.

Whatever character class you're playing has a set of rules all of their own, which makes them mechanically unique, and makes for interesting combats where you can put your character's kit to use in a solid tactical game. Which means to get the most out of the game you're going to have to put some effort into learning what your character can do and how to effectively use their abilities.

But for the GM, that crunch actually makes it easy to run because there's almost no ambiguity in the rules. The base rules are clear and pretty simple and any complexity is normally coming from the player characters who should know what their abilities do. Online tools mean when I do need to look up a rule it's at my fingertips in seconds. Meaning I don't have to spend much brainpower on it beyond reading a monster's statblock, leaving me free to flex my creative muscles instead.

Dragonbane

Dragonbane is not a crunchy game. If you want to treat wounds, it tells you what skill to roll and how many hitpoints you get back and that's pretty much it because that's all you need, and that's one of the more detailed rules. There are no DCs or modifiers or feats or magic items involved.

Which means it's pretty smooth on the players' side. Pretty much everything comes down to rolling against a skill. All you have to deal with is your character's heroic abilities, which can largely be summed up in one sentence, and you don't have a lot of them.

But it's also smooth on the GM's side. There's not a lot of rules to worry about, and it's rare that something can't be dealt with just by picking a relevant skill to roll. When the monsters appear, all I really have to do is read their statblock and then roll to see what they do. Meaning that again I don't have to spend too much brainpower on mechanics and can focus on creativity.

While these two games are radically different in pretty much everything except genre and dice, my experience of running them has been fairly similar.

D&D

In peanut butter terms, D&D is neither crunchy nor smooth.

To my narrative-loving brain, it looks like it's claiming to be rules-light, focussed on the story, roleplay heavy kind of game, but as someone who actually plays and runs rules-light games, I can see that that's not true. It's full of lumps like DCs and spell slots and levels.

But then there's that other side of me who loves a bit of tactical combat, deciding how to move around the battle board and what abilities to deploy to help bring my team to victory. And from that point of view, D&D feels very bland and textureless, with nowhere near enough to get your teeth into. None of the characters I've played felt particularly interesting to play.

So D&D is neither smooth nor crunchy peanut butter, but lumpy. It's trying to do both things at once, and not doing either of them well, meaning that there's a tendency for house rules to either filter out the lumps or add back in the missing crunch. And typically, all of that ends up falling on the GM, which can lead to burnout.

Conclusion

I'm confident that there are plenty of people for whom D&D is exactly the right amount of lumpy. But I also know that there are people out there struggling with the complexity of the rules, and people frustrated with the combat, who could be having a much better time with a different kind of peanut butter, whatever type that might be. If you give it a try, you might find there's a whole new nutty experience waiting for you that's going to transform your gaming sandwiches. And if, like me, you don't actually like peanut butter, there might be a revelation waiting for you amongst the jam and chocolate spread.

Then again, perhaps it'll cause your in-laws to blame you for the destruction of the family and accuse you of using witchcraft to corrupt their child into incorrect fantasy gaming preferences?

I really don't understand why peanut butter is such a big deal.

Dragonbane: Shadow Over Gloomshire 2: Halls of the Blood King

I had such a good time running Shadow Over Gloomshire for MK-RPG that I wasn't ready to let go of it, despite the party having completed the main adventure. I'd dropped enough hints about who was behind everything that went down in the graveyard that I was pretty sure I could continue the adventure for another 8 week block.

Which became a 7 week block when damn near everyone was ill on week 1, including me.

Mazikeen's player had to drop out, and so the mighty paladin was replaced by Luna Bane, wolfkin demon hunter and massive Viktor Drakos fangirl.

Week 1: Into The Mines

There were still a lot of ill people, but I was well enough to run and two players made it to the club so off we went. I decided that most of the party were incredibly hung over after celebrating their victory with Gloomshire ale, and only Kaine was well enough to get up and enjoy a breakfast of crow bacon. So he was the first person to get to meet Luna, and watch Viktor's desperate attempts to avoid her by hiding behind Maeve.

Then came the actual mission, based on one of the many handy hooks provided in the scenario - talk to the shopkeeper Greb and try to ease his troubles. Meaning Kaine and Luna got sent out to the silver mines to recover Greb's six dead friends and bring their bodies home for proper burial.

The two made good use of knowledge skills, meaning that they arrived in the mine covered in the entrails of the stygian wolves they'd killed on the way in, meaning the thralls merely shambled slowly towards them rather than immediately charging. By the end of the session they were back in Gloomshire with a cart full of dead dwarves.

Week 2: Rescue Mission

With most of the group now recovered, it was time for the main plot to start unfolding. Councilwoman Auda Voss, now convinced of the team's skills and courage, asked them for help recovering her son from the Van Walden mansion.

At this point I knew I was going to need a map. I'd previously asked around for suggestions for OSRish vampire mansion adventures, and Halls of the Blood King by Diogo Nogueira was the name that kept showing up. Reasonably priced at £5.95 and with cartography by the ever-reliable Glynn Seal I decided to give it a shot. While written for Old School Essentials, I was confident that I could swap out the monsters for Dragonbane creations. The plot would need a little tweaking to fit in with the scenario we were playing, but I knew what needed to change and how I was going to make it work.

The party arrived at the mansion and immediately ran into my absolute favourite NPC of the entire campaign: the gate. I absolutely loved playing that gate.

"I'm going to have to bite you now."
Luna jumps rapidly backwards, away from the gate.
"Curses! Foiled again."

Week 3: There might be a vampire

Auda Voss was delighted to have her son back and handed over the offered reward. But over a meal of turnips, he revealed that he thought there might be a vampire in the mansion. So Voss offered them another mission - dealing with the Van Waldens once and for all. This time the reward was a bit more concrete: if they could clear the mansion out, they could have it.

So back they went to the mansion, with a leg of pork for the gate, who chewed it up enthusiastically. This time rather than going straight to the basement they began a sweep of the ground floor, finding servants' quarters before unexpectedly running into some guests. Two vampires, an orc and a mallard, both looking for the dining room. It was becoming clear that there might be a few more vampires here than anticipated.

They next encountered Princess Cornelia, after some unexpectedly virtuoso piano playing from Grimduck opened the secret door to her room. A friendly chat revealed that she was also a vampire, and the guests were here to celebrate her being welcomed into the Van Walden family as a replacement for Konrad the disappointment. Except she was having second thoughts.

Week 4: The lay of the land

Luna's player was unavailable, so Luna remained deep in conversation with Princess Cornelia, while the others continued their search. Notable event included finding a very unpleasant chest of drawers lined with teeth, which they nevertheless made use of to make vampire disguises for the less toothy party members. They managed to unenthrall some of the guards and sent them home after getting a comprehensive list of the vampire guests present - besides those they'd already met there were a dwarf, a halfling, a human and a frog.

The adventure includes a list of vampire guests. They don't all work exactly as written for Dragonbane, but after I'd rolled a random selection of them and assigned them all different kin based on names and descriptions, we had a great cast of weird vampires ready for future encounters.

Week 5: There really are a lot of vampires

The six golden bathtubs in the bathroom were really selling the otherwise rather unpleasant mansion, but it wasn't long before Dr Crumb had something new to occupy his enormous mind: the different death animations of different vampire kin. None of that was in the adventure, but when shortly afterwards they staked the halfling vampire and I described him deflating like a punctured balloon, which then got interpreted as him zooming around the room, this became a whole thing.

With most of the human staff either dead or rescued, it was time to brave the dining room. And there they found Liss Van Walden, in conversation with two guests - the human and the frog.

The vampires from Shadow Over Gloomshire are terrifying opponents, so I decided to use the frog kin from the bestiary for the frog vampire, and drop ferocity to 1 for the two humans. Even so it was a very close fight. I rolled for Liss's seduction attempt rather than having it auto succeed, which added some comedy when I rolled a demon and Liss was instead smitten by the intense fluffiness of Felis the cat person. Which didn't stop him almost getting bitten to death.

This did provide more data for Dr Crumb. Human vampires disintegrated into dust; frog vampires exploded, showering everyone in frog bits.

The party decided to rest after that, and having just discovered the games room (and given the games master free choice as to what she wanted to play with them), this took the form of an entire shift playing Twilight Imperium.

Week 6: Sexy people

After noping out of the library at the sight of the blood red spider webs, the party was ready to head upstairs. But not before the return of Luna, who was now convinced that Princess Cornelia was absolutely wonderful and they should do anything she wanted.

The upper floor soon brought them to a room full of very attractive people of various kin, lounging on cushions and inviting the party to join them. Fortunately some of the party passed their will rolls, found their way past the illusory wall, and dragged the others with them. So they'd done some comprehensive looting before Ernst Van Walden showed up.

Ernst was very rapidly taken down before he could bite anyone, and his guards ultimately proved more of a challenge. Once again they managed to unenthrall one of them, and then moved on to the final confrontation: Konrad Van Walden. Who turned out not to be a vampire at all, but a demon summoner, who'd summoned his own pet blood demon with the intention of demonstrating to his parents just how much of a disappointment he really was.

Which was all happening in a room full of fabulously valuable porcelain dolls, which Grimduck was frantically attempting to remove from the room before any potentially damaging fighting kicked off.

Week 7: Finale

Konrad's monologuing didn't go exactly as planned, and being a fairly weak human rather than a powerful vampire, he didn't last long. His demon proved rather tougher, but a phenomenal display of magical power from Halvelda finished it off.

Now there was just a bit of tidying to do. A planetary display turned out to have the lock fitting the key they'd found in the basement earlier, which turned off the house's evil decor, allowing them to use the stairs as normal. The orc vampire confided in them that he was working for Princess Cornelia. An earlier attempt at poisoning the blood soup with holy water had finally paid off, taking out the dwarf vampire. And the mallard was convinced to leave. But as he stepped outside, they saw the first rays of the rising sun, heard a shout of "Oh quack!", and were now in possession of a rather nice statue.

Princess Cornelia rewarded them for rescuing her beloved porcelain dolls and went on her way, reminding them about the spiders in the basement. And so they finally went back to the library, pushed the webs aside, and descended into the court of the blood spiders. The party immediately decided they didn't want to fight them, and attempted to persuade them to leave. It took a few attempts, but they were eventually convinced to relocate to the old temple in the graveyard. So under cover of darkness and some very large skirts, the blood spiders were escorted to the graveyard to meet their new friend: Bones, the gravedigger and MVP of the previous adventure.

Finally the party were able to enjoy their new property. While now largely bare boards, they did still have the six gold bathtubs. And most importantly, the gate.

Conclusions

Translating an adventure from OSE to Dragonbane had its challenges, and took more effort than running the original Shadow Over Gloomshire adventure as I had to make a number of changes to fit in with the ongoing story. That said, it's a really solidly written location with a great map, meaning I only had to worry about details like the location of the major NPCs rather than everything about the story.

If, like me, you don't care for most OSR systems but would like to try some of the adventures, give them a shot with Dragonbane. This one in particular is well worth the effort. Levels aren't much of a concern as you'll be swapping out the monsters for similar creatures from the Dragonbane Bestiary. The one important thing to change is treasure - the gold amounts in Halls of the Blood King are wildly over the top for Dragonbane so I replaced them with random draws from the treasure deck, specific treasure deck items, and rolls on the Shadow Over Gloomshire treasure table.

I'm wrapping up the campaign for now, as we've managed to tie off all the loose ends from the previous block and I'm keen to run some Pathfinder 2, but I'm not ruling out a return to Gloomshire some day. The adventure includes enough hooks to potentially introduce more adventures. I've also spotted that  Robin Fjärem has published another adventure and that looks perfect for a short block. The campaign might be over, but I'm far from done with Dragonbane.

Gift Ideas For Gamers

That time of year is approaching again, and even if you're reading this at some other time, birthdays still happen. Your gamer friend or family member is probably as susceptible to Kickstarter/Backerkit campaigns as I am so game books are a risky prospect, but here's a few ideas that might prove helpful for people trying to find a gift.

For the older gamer: large print dice

Or for that matter, anyone whose eyesight isn't the best. Save them the trouble of having to pick the d20 up after every roll to try to read it, and get them something easier to see. Roll4Initiative sell oversized dice with nice big numbers in well contrasting inks. They also have lots of pretty designs. I didn't think a pink sparkly d20 would end up being my favourite, but here we are. Now I have to resist the falling snow d6s with little snowflakes inside and a snowflake on the 6. Adorable.

(I've linked to their US site but you'll want to buy them from a local reseller to avoid massive shipping costs.)

For the travelling gamer: molle backpack

There's a bunch of specialist backpacks and bags made for RPGs and board games, and they look lovely, but they're also super pricy. Molle, or Modular Lightweight Load-Carrying Equipment is military gear designed as a durable system for carrying equipment, but the consumer version is a range of backpacks in various sizes and a range of pouches and other accessories that can be attached like water bottle holders. They're strong, easy to carry, and pleasingly square when you're trying to put a lot of books in them.

I'm currently using one of the smaller ones, which easily holds the Dragonbane core box, plus rulebook and bestiary and a few accessories. My present this year is going to be an upgrade to a large model, which should be able to hold everything I need for running Pathfinder, and quite possibly a change of clothes for a weekend away at a con as well.

For that person who never has a pencil: All Rolled Up dice roll and dice tray

Well these are just great. Nice big velcro pocket that holds lots of dice, even if you've got for the extra large ones above. Slots for holding pencils and a pocket to put a card deck in. And folding dice trays that you can roll up in the dice roll. Everything you need to take to the convention/club/friend's house all in one bundle.

For the book-using GM: cookbook stand

As a home baker I can confirm that recipe books are just as prone to inconveniently closing and losing your place as RPG manuals. There are a ton of handy book holders out there, made of everything from bamboo to cast iron. Probably want to go heavy duty on this as RPG books can be pretty weighty. Of course many of them also make good tablet stands.

For that other person who never has a pencil: stationery set

Look, I've always got plenty of pencils in my All Rolled Up, but does that mean they're sharp? Do they all have functioning eraser tips? Of course not. A set of good quality pencils that won't snap all the time, a nice pencil case, an eraser and a pencil sharpener (ideally with the attached bin for when you don't have anywhere to sharpen into) is always good to have as a gamer. Add in a notebook so they don't have to make notes on their character sheet and some fun paperclips because sometimes you just need those. Remember that we're adults and can have a Batman pencil case or dinosaur stationery if we want to.

For the regular convention GM: laminator

There comes a point in any convention GM's life when they will start feeling the need to laminate things. Help them make it happen. Throw in some laminating pouches and maybe a guillotine for when they want A5 stuff.

For accessory enthusiasts: wipeables

There are lots of handy wipe clean things gamers can use, including cards, standing signs, counters and markers and that's before we even get onto battle maps. Team them up with a set of dry erase markers and some microfibre cloths for wiping them.

For everyone it's socially appropriate to buy it for: refillable deodorant

Obviously you need to exercise caution when buying deodorant for someone, but if you're ever been to a convention, you know why deodorant is an RPG related product. Wild is very effective (as good or better than the Mitchum I used before), and comes in a range of fragrances that aren't too overpowering and include options beyond generic man. The refills are available from Tesco, although I get mine posted via a subscription.

For gamers who like atmosphere: lights

I've had a lot of fun with these mini disco lights for my disco themed game. Electric candles are great for a game of Ten Candles in places where the smoke alarms make real ones an issue, or just for a bit of atmosphere generally. The remote controls for changing the light colours are also good fun.

On the other end of the scale, this camping lantern is great for venues where the lighting isn't great. Like the Garrison cells.

Hopefully there's some useful ideas in there. Any more suggestions?

ConDensed 2024

I don't know if it was luck, or just getting the vaccine done early enough, but by the time this year's ConDensed rolled around, I still hadn't had covid. What I also didn't have was my husband, who had to drop out for childcare reasons.

This was a much smaller ConDensed than the previous year, with quite a lot of people who I'd normally expect to see unable to attend. This meant a much smaller choice of games, but not so small that I couldn't find something interesting in each slot.

Game 1: Rivers of London

I wanted to play all the games on offer for Friday, but when some space opened up in Rivers of London, I jumped in. The scenario was The Font of All Evil by Paul Baldowski. Last time I played Rivers of London I played Morgan Omans, non-binary police wizard, and with the same characters on offer for this game, I decided to play them again. We were investigating the death of Edgar Marsh, also a they, which was quite emotional for Morgan (explaining why they failed every roll at the morgue.)

Rivers of London is by far my favourite version of the BRP system, with a much shorter skill list to deal with than Call of Cthulhu, and it's a fun setting to play in. Paul did a great job with this scenario, pulling in some fun details about London and its history. (We also enjoyed the notes to Americans in the book, where the more UK specific terms are explained, which the GM shared for our entertainment.) While Liminal remains my go-to system for urban fantasy in general, I'll still sign up for this, given the chance.

Game 2: SLA Industries

I've been interested in SLA for a while, but never actually got the chance to play before. Turns out the setting is everything I hoped it would be - a dystopian alien-filled televised fever dream.

We picked characters, and I went for Hassen the Wraithen scout. A purple vaguely feline alien with a big sniper rifle and a fondness for food that's still moving. Once she'd been joined by a frother, stormer and ebonite, we were ready for violence! And immediately got sent on a PR job to promote some consumer-grade weaponry. Despite having absolutely no social skills, as the only person with a charisma above average, Hassen was elected group leader.

Nevertheless, Hassen threw herself into things with gusto, doing combat demonstrations with the crappy guns, where her skill helped balance out the inferior weapons. This didn't prevent her feeling very relieved when an actual combat job came along.

Despite SLA Industries 2nd edition being kickstarted in 2019, it has an initiative system that feels like it comes from the late 90s/early 2000s when initiative systems got a bit weird. This particular one has you act in order of initiative, but first everyone has to declare intentions in reverse order. I get the point - fast characters can react to what the slower ones are doing - and it's certainly not the worst example of the concept I've come across. All the same, it feels like a lot of bookkeeping. The dice rolls are fine, and gave me a rare opportunity to use my collection of d10s, but I do wonder if the initiative system would survive contact with my home group.

That said, it's a great setting, and I would definitely play it again.

Game 3: Kult: Divinity Lost

With the game slots at ConDensed being a lot longer than usual (6 hours with a break for meals) and with a specific request from a fellow attendee for a Kult game, I broke out Gated. Normally a two session game, I was confident I could fit it in this slot, particularly since I wasn't likely to get the full 4 player group I normally run this for. I got 3 in the end, which I've done before so I knew which character to miss out and what changes to make to allow for their absence.

And so another group arrived in Rutherford Heights to discover the many and varied horrors in store. To avoid spoilers I'll just say that they managed to conclude things with creative use of lawn flamingos.

Game 4: Shadowdark

Another game I'd heard of but not had the chance to play before. Shadowdark is a classic dungeon crawling game that's very reminiscent of the old D&D box set I have on my shelf while also incorporating a lot of modern game development knowledge into something that runs very smoothly. The gimmick is that no PCs have darkvision while all monsters do, making torches and lanterns extremely important, leading to inevitable comparisons with the video game Darkest Dungeon.

The GM put a bunch of pregens on the table. I glanced over them and remembered my standard approach: when in doubt, play a ranger. So I picked up Kixime the human ranger, and we prepared for our journey to the dungeon. Except the halfling witch managed to start a bar fight, which delayed things slightly, and there was a further hold-up in the woods on the way, but we did get there eventually and with some information as to what we might find there, including some spiders with highly flammable webs.

We did roll rather a lot of 1s.

I think it's a good system and I can see why it's popular, but unfortunately it did nothing for me. The game is a reaction to D&D, but what it's reacting to isn't the part of D&D I have a problem with. The game was fun, but it was fun because I was with a good GM and a really fun group of players. My pick for dungeon crawling adventures like this remains Dragonbane.

And that was that, except for a three hour journey home, which became a five hour journey thanks to a road closure on the M25. Fortunately I had a good audiobook to keep me company. It's further than I'd normally go for a weekend convention, and I was sorry not to see a lot of the people who were there last year, but I'm glad I went. I got to try out new games, play with people I don't always get to play with because their games fill up so fast, and run one of my longer games that doesn't normally see convention play. I hope next year it'll be back to full strength.