Furnace 2026

Furnace! Always a high point in the convention year.

We began on Friday with the now traditional meal out. This time it was a trip to the Temple of Fun, an all-vegan restaurant owned by Oli Sykes from Bring Me The Horizon. The last time we went there it was almost unspeakably hip, but this time it seemed to have shifted a bit more goth/alternative and we weren't quite as conspicuous. Apart from being a group of thirteen people, anyway.

On my previous visit I'd struggled with ordering a drink, not wanting anything with alcohol, caffeine, kombucha or CBD. I'm glad to say the drinks menu has also shifted a bit, and while I think my peach iced tea lemonade technically had a bit of caffeine, I was happy with the choices available.

As we got stuck into our vegan burgers, conversation turned to the Channel Islands, and the island of Sark in particular, which turned out to be long and complex, involving WW2 and more recently the Barclay Brothers. Having been there on holiday I was able to share my own experiences. There then followed a round of competitive diabetes as the glucose monitors came out and numbers were shared.

For dessert I had sticky toffee pudding, and while I wasn't sold on the oat cream it came with, I can't fault the cake itself.

Game 1: Call of Cthulhu

Yes, it's Kane's Tone again. I spent money on that night light and I was damn well going to use it. Having managed to claim one of the jailhouse cells, I was able to also use the sound effects without making too much of a nuisance of myself. 

A great group once again, not quite as paranoid as the previous group, but certainly one of the most aggressive. Nevertheless they got to the end without causing any additional murders. This is a scenario that's good in itself but really comes alive when the players buy into it and they absolutely did.

Game 2: Thieves of the Tome

I'd never heard of Thieves of the Tome before, but when I saw the description that included using actual books to make your spells, I was intrigued enough to give it a go. And I'm glad I did.

We were asked to bring a book that was mostly text, with chapters. I looked at my bedside table, decided against House of Leaves, and brought along Asian Ghost Short Stories because it has a really nice cover. The others brought Magician by Raymond E. Feist, and Guilty by Definition by Susie Dent.

We each compiled a list of six spells based on the first six chapters of the books. This immediately revealed that I'd chosen the wrong book, as quite a few of them weren't in English, which was a bit of an issue when it came to coming up with spell effects. So I skipped them in favour of the English titles. Well, mostly.

With our spell lists complete, it was time to hand them to the GM and change books. Which meant none of us actually knew what any of our spells did! We then made characters based on our new book. Given that the first two pages of Magician are largely about rock pools, this meant that my character Raymond was cool, deep and wet, and had shown up to a heist armed with pocket sand and a sack of crabs.

Off we went into our scenario, which was of course also generated from a book: The Sisters Brothers by Patrick DeWitt.

We began well with Raymond coolly picking the lock of a safe with his crab claw lock picks, which netted us enough dynamite to make our escape once Susie had summoned a giant blue horse to hold back the guards. Team mastermind Luo Hui summoned various helpful ghosts, and while blanketing our final destination in snow (the one Japanese title I left in, hoping that the recipient would know the legend of Yuki-Onna) wasn't quite the intended result, it certainly made it easy to find.

Between our random personalities and unpredictable spells, this ended up being one of the funniest games I've played. And given how much I enjoyed book binding at Conspiracy, I might just have to print a copy and bind it into my very own tome.

Game 3: Call of Cthulhu

A Cthulhu by Gaslight game, in which our team of investigators were called in to investigate someone who'd been found cutting pages out of a medieval manuscript. Utterly horrifying. Later on there were also monsters, which were almost as horrifying as the vandalised book!

We were using the pre-gens from the book, and so I decided to play Mrs Emily Fairweather, research chemist, as I'd played her before. By this time I was flagging a bit, having had a horrible nightmare about generative AI on Friday night, so went for a familiar character to give me the best chance of keeping up. And I'm glad I did, as the GM had put together a wonderful tangle of books and magic for us to unravel, and then quickly bury and pretend never happened by the end.

Game 4: Pinebox Middle School

Once again I found myself faced with a familiar set of pre-gens, and picked the one I'd played before: Juno, tennis enthusiast and keen explorer. Fortunately the rest of the group included Chase the medium and Leeza the ghost hunter, as really things would have gone very badly without them as we investigated terrifying events and appropriate Lord of the Rings references at Wilson's Quarry, finishing with an extremely salty showdown.

Takeaway message: even if you're an immortal witch, it's still not a good idea to pick a fight with seven 12-year-olds.

During the lunch break we had the raffle, this time drawn by the Lord Mayor of Sheffield, a.k.a. Furnace regular Andy. He didn't show up in full regalia as some of us were hoping, but did wear the very impressive chain of office.

Game 5: Monster of the Week

It was the final game of the weekend and I was back in the GM's seat with Red Mask, a scenario set in Korea adapted from the K-drama inspired campaign I recently ran at MK-RPG.

I gave the group three options for team playbooks: a radio station, a podcast team, or high society people with double lives. They picked the latter, and became part of the family owning an unspecified chaebol. Three of them were actual family members - the Chosen, Expert and Spooky - while two were associates - the Divine and the Exile, the latter being the Crown Prince from somewhere in the 1800s who'd time travelled to the future due to the machinations of the chief minister, this being a common occupational hazard of being a crown prince based on the K-dramas I've watched.

After overhearing a mother at a corporate party lamenting that her daughter was telling silly stories about the supernatural and that wasn't going to help her become Seoul's youngest lawyer, the family decided to investigate further, discovering an urban legend in addition to various ghosts and spirits - although perhaps the most horrifying thing was the Korean school system.

And that was that for another fantastic Furnace. The expansion into the dining area to provide extra gaming space has been a very welcome addition. I got to meet a bunch of new people in addition to the regulars, and catch up with friends from other cons too.

Now to figure out which of you bastards gave me this cold. 

Conspiracy 2026

Conspiracy was a bit out of the ordinary. A convention not for playing games, but about writing them. Carol, the organiser, was looking for people to host events, and since it was in Cranfield, I decided to go along and help out.

Friday

Friday evening saw us gather in one of the smaller rooms at Cranfield, located conveniently next to the bar, where we were treated to an enthusiastic talk from John Dodd on the difference between writing RPG scenarios and writing stories. This is how I found out that as well as being a legend of the RPG convention scene, he's also written books.

Then it was time for dinner, a meal where the biggest challenge was narrowing down my choice of dessert to just one. Treacle tart won.

There were official introductions after that, but I didn't stay long, knowing that I had to be up the next morning ready to drive back to Cranfield for 9am. Poor planning on my part there.

Saturday Morning

I walked into the venue and immediately found Chris with a large box of bookbinding supplies, making it very easy to get to my workshop location. Bookbinding is something I've thought about trying out for a while, so jumped at the opportunity to give it a go. Soon Chris had me sewing sheets of paper together.

One of the workshops planned for Saturday was about writing horror scenarios, but the presenter had unfortunately had to drop out for family reasons. Carol asked if I could fill in, and I agreed on the understanding that it would not exactly be a well prepared session.

Conveniently the start of the workshop coincided with reaching the glue stage of bookbinding, so I left my book in the clamps and went to talk horror. Despite lack of prep time, I had managed to come up with a few specific things to talk about and some hopefully useful advice. The rest of the group had plenty of great questions and we easily filled the hour.

After an excellent lunch, it was back to my book to start assembling the book case, a.k.a. the hard cover. Turns out I'm very bad at cutting greyboard with a craft knife, so my covers weren't quite as symmetrical as they should be, but with that largely hidden away under the cover paper and cloth, I wasn't too worried. Soon my book was in its cover and waiting for glue to dry once again.

Saturday Afternoon 

In the afternoon I presented another workshop, this time on being published and self publishing. Having some experience of both, I've already made most of the mistakes, so was ready to help other people learn from them. I had a little too much material prepared for this one, and we ended up running over a bit, but with the next thing on the agenda being the refreshment break, this wasn't an issue, especially since we were sitting near the coffee machine. 

Suitably caffeinated, I went to the next workshop on narrative theory, presented by an English teacher. This involved a lot of diagrams and some technical words I didn't recognise, but ultimately proved entertaining as we sat down in small groups with a large sheet of paper to assemble a narrative based on the theory we were learning. Our group created the story of a young hero out to defeat the orange wizard, facing setbacks and plot twists along the way and finally coming to an understanding about the nature of magic and society.

 

This was followed by a workshop on designing multi-table games. I was hoping to get some ideas for how to make a scenario involving a mirror dungeon across two tables work, but since I got there a bit late, discussion was already in full flow on running a multi-table epic at the next Contingency convention. While not quite what I hoped for, I stuck around as it was still interesting stuff. 

Then it was time for dinner, where I failed the challenge and had the cheesecake and the chocolate mousse.

In the evening there was a play test for a Rivers of London game that I would love to have joined. However, before Conspiracy ever got scheduled I had already agreed to run a nalbinding workshop at my craft group. So I reluctantly said my goodbyes and went home. With my new handmade book!

 

Reflections

This was a really fun and encouraging weekend, which could only be improved by my being able to attend all of it. And it seems like it was enough of a success that it's going to be repeated. There's a possibility it might clash with one of my other regular conventions next year, but if it doesn't, I will absolutely be there.

(Oh, and the nalbinding workshop went great. We made dice bags drawstring pouches!)

 

Concrete Cow 26.5

I arrived at the Old Bath House in warm sunshine and a gentle breeze, a nice change from a lot of 2026's conventions, and unloaded a few books onto the Bring and Buy table. It was a smaller turn-out than usual, but I did still manage to sell one book.

Game 1: Call of Cthulhu

Having sorted out all the handouts and props for Kane's Tone for previous events, I was determined to make the most of them. I was lucky enough to get the small meeting room, meaning that I was able to deploy both sound and light effects.

This was by far the most paranoid group I've had for this scenario, and I did wonder if we were going to get into a PVP situation (not unreasonable given the events of the story) but ultimately the need to prevent the end of the world prevailed, and with some very good dice rolls, disaster was prevented.

Game 2: Shiver

It was a tough choice for the afternoon games, and I was tempted by Pirate Borg, but ultimately I picked Shiver as the scenario promised the horror of working at the bottom level of a corporation.

I picked Bobby Briers, a new intern and eager to please her managers. Soon she was teaming up with the janitor, security guard, and health and safety officer, as an outbreak in the labs caused everything to go a bit Resident Evil. By the end we'd implemented good workplace health and safety standards, along with some highly effective mop skills, and escaped the facility with most of our body parts intact. Although we were all going to need to find new jobs now, and the chance of getting references from our previous employer was looking pretty slim.

Then it was off to the takeaway for dinner, and while we did have an evening game on the schedule, not many people were sticking around and it was ultimately decided to call it. My fellow Concrete Cowncil member, Amy, handed over responsibility for the venue and we closed up, collected our bread, and headed home.

...Bread. Once again the MK Community Fridge found themselves a little over-supplied, this time in the bread department, so quite a few of us ended up going home with a loaf or two. I got a stonebaked white boule and a tiger baguette.

A smaller cow than usual, which I know is partly due to clashing with the Innsmouth Literary Festival, which I would otherwise have been attending, amongst other events. So if you're reading this and know someone who might enjoy Concrete Cow, tell them about us! As I said on Facebook recently, we're small, but perfectly formed.

The Owlbear and Wizard's Staff 2026

While in previous years I've commuted in to The Owlbear and Wizard's Staff, thanks to Leamington Spa only being an hour away, in 2025 I decided to treat myself to a hotel room and join in for the Friday night as well. And I had a great time, so decided to do the same in 2026, particularly since this time I was bringing my husband, a.k.a. Mr Sue.

This time there were extra gaming slots on offer, starting on Friday afternoon. With a limited number of tables available, I initially didn't have a game - but then a GM had to drop out, and since I'd volunteered as a reserve GM...

Game 1: CY_BORG

The cancelled game was Ronin, so when deciding what to run in its place, I thought I'd better pick a Borg system, and I happened to have a few one-page CY_BORG adventures I hadn't run yet meaning that my husband could play too. I went with Johnny Bubonic, and fired up Punkmaker to print out a bunch of pre-gens.

The room was crowded and loud, and this was a more challenging game running environment than I'm used to. Fortunately CY_BORG is not a complicated system and JKW's one page heists are pretty simple to run. The team made it into Club Mint, picked up on the hints I was dropping, and successfully abducted the lead singer without anyone getting killed - although if I hadn't given some of the pre-gens a small hit point bonus, that might not have been the case.

It was also nice to run CY_BORG for, for want of a better word, normal people. I've previously only run it for my home group, who as I've mentioned before, can be a bit wacky. And for this specific game, this meant actually having to deploy our group's equivalent of the X-card: a firm no. But my Owlbear group were a lovely bunch, and despite the noise, I had a great time.

With a limited amount of time between games for those of us gaming in both Friday slots, food looked likely to be a challenge, but Matthew solved that by deploying an additional round of this convention's secret weapon: samosas.

Game 2: Lovecraftesque

I backed the Kickstarter for Lovecraftesque, but haven't managed to actually get it to the table yet. So I was excited to get the chance to try it out. We picked out a scenario about an old house being turned into a hotel, and soon Emma was setting out to investigate the strange goings on.

I enjoyed the structure of the rotating protagonist and GM roles. It's a bit of a challenge to get your head round at first, but we all picked it up after a couple of scenes. The only thing that didn't quite work for me is the 'jumping to conclusions' part resulting in us to some extent trying to push the story in different directions, so that's something I'll probably de-emphasise when I finally get it to the table.

With Matthew not at the venue in the evening, I was assigned to be co-responsible person, charged with turning off the lights and letting the staff know we were going. But we finished quite a bit early, so I passed my responsibilities onto another group (who then passed it on to yet another group when they finished) and went back to the hotel.

Game 3: Call of Cthulhu

I've seen the scenario Deadfellas recommended a few times, so signed up immediately. This scenario takes place mostly in a car, so the GM took advantage of the venue's somewhat flexible layout and used two chairs and the bench seating to construct our car. Off we drove to dispose of the body of a dead drug supplier, which did not go at all as planned.

This scenario is just as good as I'd been told, super atmospheric and full of drama as our various secrets started to emerge. The GM did plan to supply us with some toy guns, but with the venue not keen on the idea, that didn't happen. I did offer my collection of phasers instead, but I don't think it would have given quite the right tone.

We finished fairly early, this not being a very long scenario, so it was time for more samosas. Lovely.

Game 4: Call of Cthulhu 

I was back GMing for the afternoon with another outing for Kane's Tone. My group very efficiently got to grips with what had happened, figured out who they were, and set out to save the world.

Since I was in a large room with multiple other games rather than the small room I had at ChaosiumCon, I decided not to do the sound effects this time, and instead bought a nightlight with multiple colour settings and a remote control. Of course the players were so focussed that the first time I activated the light it took them a while to notice, but overall I think it went well. And I was amused to later read the author's blog post about writing it which included a mention of having recently acquired a similar light.

And that was it for Saturday's games, so off we went to the pub for a meal.

Game 5: Star Wars

I love FFG Star Wars, and was very happy that my husband got into this one too. We were playing a starter adventure, so slightly simplified rules and characters, which is definitely the right choice for a game when some players have never encountered the Star Wars funky dice before. I picked up Oskara, a Twi'lek bounty hunter who I'd actually played once before in a one-shot with the home group. Off we went to steal a ship before the Hutt caught up with us. Technically we did not actually steal the ship in the end, although by the end we did inherit it after the owner was dismembered by Wookies.

Still my favourite Star Wars game system, so long as nobody tries to make me play a Jedi.

Game 6: Darkness of the Demimonde

And now it was time for the final 'taster' slot with games running up to two hours. After a particularly efficient outing at North Star, I felt confident I could bring my own scenario, Crisis at Crystal Palace, in within the required time. Then I ran it for my regular DotD group, who managed to take two sessions...

I offered the usual set of pre-gens and the group selected Mirike Visser the Dutch werewolf, Hank Webb the American explorer, Archibald Baird the Scottish detective, and Ezekiel, who is just Ezekiel. Off they went to investigate a missing dog and a case of food poisoning, which unsurprisingly turned out to have related causes. And I did bring it in at just under 2 hours, largely by omitting the extensive conversation with Arthur Conan Doyle that the regular group had.

And that was it. Time to put the tables away and put the Owlbear to bed for another year. A lovely convention that I always look forward to. 

Continuum 2026

I had a good time at Continuum last year, so decided to book the entire weekend this time. No costume parties this time, just games. I booked a half day off work. My plan was to finish work at 12:30pm and get in the shower before driving over, which should give me enough time to sign up for an afternoon game and eat lunch before things started at 2pm. And my husband was free for the weekend so I was going to bring him along with me.

At 12:20pm my husband called out that he was having a quick shower. That was fine; he'd be out in about 10 minutes and I could still have my shower. Then there came a housewide thump as the electricity tripped.

By the time I'd managed to shut down my work laptop (still running off its battery, unlike the monitors and other peripherals), washed those parts I considered essential for going amongst other humans in cold water and filled my hair with dry shampoo, it was rather later than I planned. I left my husband at home to call the electrician and made it to Cranfield just in time to buy a sandwich and sign up for a game.

Game 1: Dragonbane

With only a short time to peruse the available games, I spotted a game of Dragonbane with space for one more and went for it. This turned out to be The Magistrate’s Gambit, the Free RPG Day scenario from Free League, a 2 hour tournament game with a timer. I enjoyed the last one of these I played, The Sinking Tower, but this one I liked even more, with more puzzles (and fairer puzzles) and less combat focus.

Technically we did complete all our objectives except the one about being discrete. The person who we were supposed to be keeping our activities hidden from was, shall we say, extremely aware of our presence by the end. I'm not sure how many points that would be worth - but at least we did finish on time.

With the game finishing early I had plenty of time to buy a meal ticket for that night's barbecue. The sausages weren't quite as good as the ones at ChaosiumCon but still a decent meal. I made some new friends over dinner, but unfortunately since they were standard convention gamers, I absolutely could not recognise them again.

Game 2: Call of Cthulhu

There's Call of Cthulhu...and then there's Call of Cthulhu with CJ Romer. Moonwashed College Halls is a scenario I've been looking forward to getting to play in, as it features students in the 1980s, and his last 1980s students scenario, Shared House, was an absolute hoot.

I played Laura, a pretty student whose four male best friends all had a crush on her, so while we did investigate the mystery of the haunted dorm room (and rather unexpectedly dealt with everything rather effectively) the most important thing was of course, who managed to pull at the Halloween disco.

This was one player's first ever game of Call of Cthulhu. Was this a typical experience? Well, it was a typical CJ experience!

---

I decided to skip Saturday morning games. The previous night's game had gone on fairly late, and I decided I'd rather have the sleep. So I woke up at 10am, dry shampooed my hair again, left my husband at home to deal with the boiler engineer (for it was the boiler which had tripped the electrics) and headed back to Cranfield.

Game 3: Matrons of Mystery

It was tough deciding what to pitch, particularly since I don't know this con well enough yet to really know what goes down well, but since Simon Burley periodically reminds me I'm supposed to promote my own stuff, I decided to run Matrons of Mystery, specifically my holiday park themed scenario Chalet Grave, originally written to run at ConTingency.

This scenario requires determining why the Matrons are all at a holiday park together. On this occasion, after Gladys, Violet, Doris and Nettie had introduced themselves, it was clear what had happened. Their various children and other relatives had teamed up to send Mum/Aunty away to the seaside for a few days in the hope that getting them out of their village would stop them getting mixed up in murders. Which of course it did not.

Game 4: Call of Cthulhu

There were quite a few appealing games on Saturday night, but on arriving at the sign-up board I decided on There is no ‘I’ in Cthulhu, a modern day scenario about a group of people going on a management retreat. It turned out to be GMed by one of the people I met at the Friday barbecue, so as long as he's wearing a name badge the next time I see him, there's a chance I might remember him.

I picked up the extremely stressed Mara Kline, there to learn about work/life balance after multiple attempts to get out of going. While initially sceptical, she started warming to at least some of her fellow delegates as the retreat went on - and sure, she might have been dead at the end (we ended on a cliffhanger) - but overall I think it was a positive experience for her.

The highlight of this was absolutely the other players for completely leaning in on the corporate horror of training and team building events. Great stuff. 

---

The next morning dawned. More dry shampoo. By this time my hair was probably more powder than hair. My husband stayed at home in case the boiler engineer was able to get the necessary part that day. Once again I was skipping morning games but this time I had other plans.

Seminar: War Helms and Weapon Dancers

I'm something of an archaeology enthusiast (part of my first degree is archaeology) so I was excited to see a seminar on the imagery of the Sutton Hoo helmet. This was fascinating stuff, educational and funny, and accompanied by some of the coolest props I've ever seen at a convention: museum grade replicas of the Sutton Hoo helmet and a variety of other artefacts.

During my degree I gave a seminar on Saxon garnet jewellery for the archaeomaterials course, and some of these replicas were of the artefacts I discussed in that seminar. I can only imagine the amount of work that went into reproducing these works of art.

Game 5: Call of Cthulhu

Once again there were quite a few options for the afternoon games, but spotting two of my friends signed up for a game of classic era Cthulhu I decided to give that one a go. We were the members of the Miskatonic University Astronomy Society, off on a field trip to a remote area with the opportunity to use a proper reflecting telescope in an observatory. Naturally it turned out that our host had observed a bit more than anticipated. A classic scenario in both era and ending, since by the end we had all either gone mad or exploded.

Game 6: Call of Cthulhu: Campfire Tales

I wasn't sure if I was going to stick around for the final session. If the boiler had been fixed by then, I might not have. But it hadn't, and there was another CJ Romer game with space: Jennings and the Ghost.

It's been a while since I'd read a Jennings book (I think I might have borrowed one from my dad) but I figured I knew the British boarding school story genre overall well enough to get by without the specifics. Jennings and Darbishire themselves were played by two players who actually did remember them well, while I picked up Venables. Along with Atkinson, Temple and Bromwich Major, we investigated strange noises, attempted murders and ghastly visions in the playing fields, although naturally the most horrific part was when we had to talk to a girl. Credit must go to Atkinson for his decision to create an overpowered cattle prod for self defence purposes, which came in remarkably useful in the denouement.

All in all, everything I could have hoped for and a fantastic conclusion to the convention.

---

So once again I had a good time, and will book again next year, and possibly run more than one game as well - but obviously if you've got this far, what you really want to know is that the boiler got fixed on Monday and I finally got to wash my hair. 

ChaosiumCon UK 2026

With ChaosiumCon UK returning for a second year, I decided to once again take advantage of my geographical proximity to the Cranfield Management Development Centre, and commute in.

Game 1: Call of Cthulhu - Kane's Tone

I don't normally run Call of Cthulhu, and I don't normally run scenarios written by other people, but this being ChaosiumCon, if you want to run a game, you have to run a Chaosium game. So I went through my collection and picked out Kane's Tone, a modern day scenario that had been recommended to me as 'my kind of thing'. It certainly is my kind of thing, a fun amnesia-based scenario with plenty of scope to inject my own personal brand of whimsy and nightmare.

My four players dived enthusiastically into trying to figure out what the hell happened, and ultimately managed to survive the horrors, although the PCs will certainly have some issues to deal with. 

I prepared quite a few handouts for this one, including cardboard standees for each PC with their character picture on one side and starting equipment on the other, which worked very nicely. Since we had a gaming room to ourselves, I was also able to break out the sound effects. I would have included some lights, but unfortunately my disco light doesn't have yellow and I wasn't organised enough to get a new light in time.

Still, I had enough fun running this that I've decided to pitch it again for The Owlbear and Wizard's Staff. I may not run other people's scenarios much, but there's so much fun stuff out there for Call of Cthulhu, I can make the occasional exception.

Evening Outing

There was a Chaosium mixer being held at the venue, with food of some kind, but I didn't much fancy it and neither did a bunch of my friends. So instead I organised a meal out. Eight of us headed out to Milton Keynes to visit the Sumac Room.

 The food was lovely, and I hope I can convince people to go back again next year.

Game 2: Horror on the Orient Express Board Game

I'd managed to resist the kickstarter for this board game, but was still pretty keen to give it a go. Thanks to commuting I'd avoided booking anything starting at 9am, but 10am for this was a lot more reasonable.

As a cooperative board game enthusiast, I loved this one.

The physical set up itself is great, with the train and carriages, the track, and the landscape tiles. The individual character boards are really nicely set up too, with cut-outs so you can lift swappable tiles out by pressing on a corner without having to get your nails underneath and risk damaging the board. Different shaped bases are used for player characters and suspects so they're easy to tell apart. The symbol language on the cards and other tokens is clear and easy to understand.

Gameplay was great too. Each character had different skills, which made for some careful tactical moves to allow each of us to make the best use of them. There was resource management, as we spent stamina on activities and made sure not to overdo the sanity loss. Push your luck mechanics, each time we talked to a passenger to try to learn more about our suspects, and logical deduction as the clues got uncovered. Plus a rather entertaining conversation with a parrot.

And we won! It was a close thing towards the end, with the vampire having eaten a worrying amount of passengers and things looking very dicey in the eldritch portal department, but we made it to Constantinople with all of us alive, adequately sane, and able to identify all the cultists.

The only reason I won't be buying this as soon as it's available is that I saw the size of the box. It's going to have to wait until we've moved house. The wallet is willing, but the shelves are full.

Game 3: Call of Cthulhu - The Death of Doc Brown

Despite my brain's ongoing insistence that this was something to do with Back to the Future, this was actually a modern day murder mystery. I picked up the forensic technician character, my theory being much like in The Necropolis when I played the archaeologists, this would avoid accidentally knowing more about stuff than my character should. Along with the great detective Hercule Porter, we attempted to discover what had happened to Doc Brown. This turned out to be quite complicated, and at one point involved some creative use of catnip on my part which proved entirely ineffective but still pretty funny.

By the end we'd not only solved the murder, but got some kids into foster care, started a new podcast, cleaned up a gym, and possibly started two romances between the PCs. Great stuff, would absolutely play with this GM again, especially since I realised she's also the author of The Eternal Grind.

Game 4: Call of Cthulhu - The Murder Shack

I carefully pitched my games in slots where all the existing games were pretty much full, for the best chances of getting a full table, and once again I had four players sitting down to experience The Murder Shack.

This scenario is from edition 4B of the Blasphemous Tome, the fanzine produced by the Good Friends of Jackson Elias podcast, and is written by Scott Dorward. The group seemed largely aware of this last fact, and as such prepared for what kind of thing was to come.

While I have run this scenario before, I ran it using the Kult: Divinity Lost rules, so this was going to be a slightly different experience. While I overall like the Kult rules better for horror games, it doesn't handle PVP very well, so having the more trad Call of Cthulhu rules ready for when things started getting murdery was helpful for this scenario. While not quite as murdery as when I played it (I got very murdery) there were definite attempts, and things came pretty close at the end.

The players for this were great, really leaning into the grief support group concept, and I hope to encounter them again at future cons.

Seminar: Running Thrilling Chaosium One-Shots!

Once again I avoided the 9am start, and arrived at 10am for a seminar from familar faces Guy Milner and Gaz Bowerbank of Unconventional GMs. They ran through the spectrum of Chaosium games, giving a bunch of great tips for each of them. My favourite was the advice to run Pendragon as a fantasy game, not a historical one, which by itself has upped my interest in playing the game, as while I quite like the idea of playing a knight, a knight who's just shown up at a castle that's overrun with fairies and where I have to go and make convincing arguments to a tree to make it stop sounds far more fun that doing historical stuff.

Also some good tips for Runequest, largely about not trying to shove too much Glorantha lore in there, and not expecting people to play the stereotyped version of whatever character they pick. Because nothing puts me off trying out Runequest at a con like the possibility that I'm going to sit down with 4-5 Gloranthaphiles who've memorised the entire history of the planet while I'm like 'I think there's ducks in it'. A GM following their tips might just get me to try it out.

Game 5: Call of Cthulhu - The Last Ball of the Season

There were quite a few interesting sounding seminars on Saturday, but nothing was going to stop me playing Regency Cthulhu with CJ Romer. Our group of six ended up splitting neatly down the middle into the upper class (two aristocrats and a lawyer) and the lower class (a button maker, a housemaid and the son of the man who maintains the ballroom dance floor).

Lady Jasmine was the same character I'd played in a previous CJ game, and it was nice to have her back. Another player picked up her husband, Lord Stowmarket, and we soon found ourselves embroiled in an absurd feud between Sarah Villiers, Countess of Jersey, and the Austrian Countess Esterhazy, which involved attempting to pass off the lower class PCs as foreign nobility.

While we did have to deal with an actual terrifying threat, and Jasmine nearly died, the true horror of that situation was obviously finding ourselves the playthings of the rich and extremely powerful. Great stuff. Everything I hope for in a CJ scenario.

Game 6: Rivers of London - You Can't Make Me

For the second time I found myself investigating a murder that involved a slightly dodgy gym as we dived into a new Falcon case where someone had been strangled in a distinctly unconventional way. This was great, full of subtle clues, some of which only really fit together right at the end, making for a satisfying conclusion as we located the culprit and then had to decide what to actually do about it.

Some extra fun came from one of the players, a retired Metropolitan Police officer, who was able to assure us that Ben Aaronovitch has pretty much nailed the policing in London aspects of the book series.

Game 7: Age of Vikings - Predictions of Woe

I decided to take Sunday morning off entirely so I could have a bit of a lie in, but was back in plenty of time for my afternoon, giving me the opportunity to visit the traders, and hang out and chat with a few more people I hadn't managed to catch up with before.

That's how I learned that the scenario I was about to play was the same one my friends had described as melting their brains the previous day. Accordingly, I was prepared for us to need the whiteboard as we attempted to unravel a very complicated Viking murder mystery.

This is, of course, entirely my fault for writing Matrons of Mystery, which the GM confirmed was something of an inspiration for the scenario.

I don't think I can honestly say we did a skilled investigation, but it was a determined one, and we finally identified the killer. We should probably have paid more attention to some things the GM said early on in the game - but still, we got there with our brains only slightly melted, the GM having had the chance to improve things based on the previous session.

And that was it. Time for the closing ceremony, and while I could have stayed for an evening game, I'd decided to go home 

Reflections

CMDC is rapidly becoming one of my favourite convention venues. While it's not the cheapest option out there, having the individual gaming rooms is fantastic, as is the endless supply of coffee. 

Last year's ChaosiumCon was a somewhat chaotic affair, organisation-wise. Several issues remained this time, with the main difference being that with some experience, most GMs now knew to put the game system in the title field when submitting the game, and people already knew the answer to questions like 'why do I need to buy a badge?' Tabletop Events remains bad and should feel bad.

That said, feedback in other areas had definitely been taken into account, with the artist's alley now in a brightly lit and high traffic area so we could all see what was on offer. The hotel bar had a decent range of sandwiches for lunch, and while a walk to the Co-op would probably have been cheaper, with the massive heatwave that had dumped itself on us for the weekend, not having to go outside was a definite bonus. Next year should be even better.

North Star 2026

Another exciting journey to North Star! Unfortunately neither my husband nor my usual roommate could make it this time, but that did mean I was going to get a hotel room all to myself.

I kicked things off with the usual pre-convention outing, this time to Envers, the local Turkish restaurant. We had some first-timers joining us, who asked about the menu, and what we recommended. As it turned out, basically everything, unless you don't like aubergines, in which case everything that isn't made of aubergines. By cunningly not having a starter, I had enough room left at the end for some baklava and Turkish tea.

I'd planned on an early night, but between the disco in the pub and the people in the next room who were still talking loudly even after the music had shut down, that didn't happen. Nevertheless I was up and about in time for breakfast and made it upstairs just in time to catch the opening speech. I put out the items I'd brought for the bring and buy, and headed for my first game.

Game 1: Those Dark Places

A rules-light game that clearly takes some inspiration from the Alien movies. Given that we only had three players, the GM gave us two characters each. I had a ranged combat and piloting specialist, Blackbird, and a leader/medic, Ibis. We sat down for a session of industrial space horror as our crew of salvage operators made our way into a mysteriously silent space station. At least, that was the idea. The dice disagreed. The dice had other ideas. And those ideas were Red Dwarf.

My favourite part was the first combat with the loader with attached skeleton. By the time we got to Ibis's turn, all that had happened is that some of the others had thrown themselves at its feet, and Blackbird had shown it that her gun was unloaded. So rather than attempt to use her terrible combat skills, Ibis instead assured it that we were not in any way hostile and told it to stand down, which under the circumstances seemed pretty plausible.

Other dice ideas included an absolute determination to kill one particular characters, Tom, with the vast majority of attacks going his way. Tom was the only one who didn't make it back alive, and none of us were at all surprised.

Despite the dice's best efforts to turn things to slapstick, I overall thought this was a pretty great game. I don't like it as much as the Alien RPG, but if Alien isn't quite to your tastes I would absolutely check this one out.

Game 2: Alien

Straight back into space horror for the afternoon, and a scenario based on William Gibson's unfilmed Alien 3 script. I picked up Yelena, a roughneck working for the U.P.P. and off we went to dock with a space station, only to find something very strange had happened there. And then the xenomorphs showed up.

The secret agendas aspect of Alien was working very well here. Yelena had her own plans, and I had a lovely time acting on them. The other players were all clearly up to something, and by the end we had effectively split into factions, which could loosely be termed the ones trying to abandon the others to get killed by xenomorphs, and the ones trying to avoid that happening. We had some dramatic near death experiences, really leaning into the cinematic aspect of the game where it looked like one character was dead but then came back unexpectedly as Yelena was on the point of death, causing her to shout out some vital information just in case she didn't make it.

Most of my time playing Alien has been from the other side of the table. It was an absolute delight to get to play it myself, especially with such a great group of players.

Game 3: Darkness of the Demimonde

Victorian pulp horror might not be the obvious thing to run at a sci-fi themed convention, but when you look at the gothic and adventure novels that provide inspiration for this game, there's plenty of sci-fi to be found in the works of Mary Shelley, Jules Verne and H. G. Wells. Accordingly I picked out the most sciencey of the adventures I've written for this game and pitched them both.

I started with Panic at the Palace (title subject to revision), in which our supernatural detective agency set out to solve the mystery of why a previously respectable butcher was selling tainted meat, and more lucratively, what had happened to Mrs Winfield's prize Pomeranian. I handed out the usual set of pregens, and the players did a brilliant job as the detective, alienist, werewolf and psychic.

Normally I like to have a trial run of a scenario before running it at a convention, and this one should have been played by my regular online DotD group, but for various reasons we only got halfway through it. Meaning I didn't really know how the second half was going to go. It ended up being a bit quicker than I intended, but given that it was the evening game and some of us were a bit tired, that wasn't really all that bad. And if I trim it down a little more, it'll work in the 2 hour taster session at Owlbear and Wizard's Staff. So that was all useful, and gave me good pointers for the final version.

I thought the early finish would let me have an early night, but once again I was kept awake by the disco (a wedding this time) followed by loud people in the courtyard outside my room.

Game 4: The Code of the Spacelanes

This was a Star Trek game, where after a quick prologue where we played TOS characters to get used to the rules, we created our own characters: Starfleet Academy cadets.

It's times like this I realise I just don't have the comprehensive Trek knowledge of some of my fellow nerds. We were told we could play aliens from TOS, but with my original Trek being TNG and favourite Trek being Lower Decks, I didn't have much grasp of what that included. But the GM was happy for me to play an Orion, and K'Reen being a disappointment to her species due to being somewhat defective in the Orion wiles department gave me a good reason for her being the first Orion Starfleet engineer cadet rather than staying at home.

One part of Code games that I always enjoy, even though I struggle to think of something to write every time, is where we all write down a plot point on an index card, which are then shuffled and handed out. I put in 'you are being blackmailed by a Ferengi', a bit of a stretch given that I don't think Ferengis showed up until a later show, but we could just read that as a mysterious unknown alien. In return I got 'you have smuggled an alien pet on board and it's escaped', meaning I spent some of the adventure serruptitiously dropping pet treats on the floor until I got my tribble back. And a few more tribbles, of course.

The downside of these cards is that they can occasionally derail things a bit, with one player identifying our academy instructor as a secret Klingon spy and tackling him to the floor, but ultimately there was no way our mentor was going to be around much past the first scene so that was OK.

While generally I'm happy with theatre of the mind for everything except games that actually need battle grids, this was a game where we actually could have used a map, just to keep track of which spaceship was inside which other spaceship, and who was where at any given time. One of the other players ended up sketching it out on a spare index card, which did help.

While in Those Dark Places the dice were determined to make things Red Dwarf, in this one they just kept on pulling out doubles, which resulted in people's special talents activating remarkably often. Which meant in addition to regular engineering stuff, K'Reen was able to pull off a number of amazing pirate stunts.

Overall a fun game, despite getting a bit lost in the middle. I still prefer Star Trek Adventures as a system for Star Trek games, although I feel like for an academy game there might be a better option out there. I have no idea what it is though.

Game 5: Darkness of the Demimonde

A different scenario this time, Brides of Brixton, which I've run several times now, and which I was confident would come in at 3 hours. Which it did.

With two of the same players back again, I offered them the same characters, so the werewolf and alienist were back again. The detective was chosen again, along with the criminal and the magician. Given the events of the previous game, we concluded that the psychic had been sent to rehab.

And so off they went to discover why Mr Barnabas Sprout had seen the ghost of his dead wife outside his kitchen window. At least, once certain party members had stopped laughing about the name Barnabas Sprout. And how the poor man was in hot water.

It's not the first time that's happened, and I absolutely will be keeping that character's name.

My goal is to publish my DotD scenarios as a set of five (which means I have to write one more) and it's great fun seeing how a different group of characters takes on each challenge. 

A lovely conclusion to a lovely convention.