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. 

Revelation 2026

I set out through the sleet to Revelation once again. Despite the sleet, it was a slightly quicker drive than usual, and I had time for a sit down before meeting up for the now traditional restaurant outing.

This time we were making a return visit to the local Italian restaurant, Mama Mia Pepe, whose owner is rapidly getting to know us. I was worried we might have to find somewhere a little less romantic this close to Valentine's Day, but he found us space. The other customers looked a little surprised when a party of eleven walked in.

Game 1: Monster of the Week

I decided to kick things off with more K-pop Demon Hunters, since I've had so much fun running it at previous conventions.

Sadly one of the signed up players was ill and couldn't make it, so this band ended up as a three-piece. The Misfits were a girl band, and followed the current popular trend of naming their band using English words that can't be directly written in Hangul. My pronunciation of 미스피츠 resulted in their band merch including a tie-in miso pizza as well as their own ramyeon.

The girls gave a solid performance at the finals of Busan's Got Talent but a disastrous fan meet made for a tricky time dealing with the demon incursion. Nevertheless they got it together, managed not to burn down any buildings, and with the aid of some free tickets to their park show, saved the Honmoon.

Great players, a great game that keeps on bringing out fun new expansions, and a great start to the weekend.

Game 2: Pasión de las Pasiones

My knowledge of telenovelas is limited to watching several episodes of Telenovelas Are Hell. So I wasn't sure if I really had it in me to play it. But this wasn't just any telenovela. This was The Rise and Fall of Sanctuary Moon!

By the end of this game, I was seriously questioning Murderbot's taste in media. Actually I was questioning it by the time we'd had the dramatic reading of the theme music at the start. But I digress.

This is the in-universe show from the Murderbot Diaries books, and the TV adaptation went a step further and actually showed us clips from the show. Thus providing a cast of characters that the GM mapped onto the playbooks. I picked up Nav Bot, a pure hearted navigation unit initially in love with the Captain, which lasted until shortly after he declared his love for Terraforming Surveyor Frost, and she ended up falling for Jan-Bot, a lowly cleaning robot, until Jan-Bot's untimely destruction at the hands of a sec unit, after which she finally found love with the colony solicitor.

Nav Bot 337 Alt 66

Which in no way expresses the absolute absurdity of this game as we discovered secret brothers, secret body doubles, secret constructs and secret clones. I heard later the GM was as confused about what was going on as we were, but nevertheless guided us through every new revelation until the season finale when the captain died in Frost's arms.

This was a double slot game, which was a great choice, giving us the opportunity to properly set up the opening scenario while providing plenty of time to get into things. The GM did a phenomenal job prepping for this, with standees with the character introductions and fully customised character sheets. If this was offered at LongCon I would absolutely sign up for a full weekend.

Game 3: Kult: Divinity Lost

I don't often run Gated at conventions, because it's too long even for a four hour slot, but with plenty of space in the schedule on Sunday, I decided to pitch it as a two-parter.

This one features four people, all moving into a condo in a gated community. I generally include a question on my Kult character sheets to allow a bit of personalisation. One character in this one is asked what job they're got in their new home, and the player picked Home Owner's Association entertainment coordinator. Which was lovely, because as the gated community concept might suggest, the HOA plays quite a significant role in the scenario.

I was particularly impressed by the players, as in all the times I've run this, no other group has hit on the idea of using their cars during the first encounter. Which meant I had to improvise a bit more than usual but apparently I wrote the scenario well enough that going this far off script was not an issue.

Not for the first time, Christmas lights and lawn flamingos were deployed in the final confrontation.

Thanks to the challenges of scheduling different length games, I had one player who only played the first part, having to go and run his own game in the afternoon. So I gave him the one character in this who is often very low on stability by the end of part 1, and the character spent most of the second half either sedated or doing origami.

Kult is 100% a horror game, but exactly what type of horror game it is does somewhat depend on the players as well as the scenario. This is one that can go proper dark, but can also be a lot more investigative, and with the players I had, I wasn't surprised that it ended up being an overall more optimistic run. Of course, the 'good' ending in Kult is the one where you all get shoved neatly back into your prison, never to see reality again.

Reflections 

I gave myself some suggestions last time so let's see if I actually followed them...

• I probably shouldn't run three games? Well, technically I only ran two, but given that one of them was double length, I'm not sure that actually counts as being less enthusiastic.
• I did manage to be GMing something energising in slot 5 so I didn't start flagging too early, so points to me there.
• Better breakfast choices were made, partly due to the Garrison's new menu. With the banana pancakes responsible for past sugar crashes now gone, I went for eggs florentine, a nice vegetarian meal with actual vegetables, which set me up much better for the day.

So 2/3 overall, not too bad. I was still absolutely exhausted when I got home. Totally worth it.

ConTingency 2026

Another trip with my husband to Sunny Snowy Rainy Hunny! We had plans to once again share a lodge with the friends we shared with in 2024, but thanks to an emergency they had to cancel, so with some very much appreciated assistance from the organisers we once again joined up with the friends from 2025.

Tuesday

The convention proper doesn't begin until Wednesday, but we'd arrived on Monday, meaning there was the option to fit in an extra game on Tuesday evening. So when my friend Esther requested a game, I was happy to oblige.

Slot 0: Kult: Divinity Lost

We gathered at Matt Sanderson's Eldritch Lodge, host to the largest array of teas I've seen outside of a London tea shop, and I began another session of Not for a Million Dollars. All the players were wonderful, although I feel the need for a shout-out to Steve for coming up with the name Chase Nightsoul for his online influencer character. This also lead to my favourite wound description yet, 'attack of the YouTube plaque'.

Wednesday

Slot 1: Matrons of Mystery

After some mild admonishment from last year's Matrons GM, I thought I'd better step up and run my own game this year. My scenario Chalet Grave, featuring a murder at Pearles Holiday Park, seemed like the obvious choice.

It rapidly became obvious that none of the resulting Matrons actually got on well together, so the first mystery to solve was why were they going on holiday together? We soon got to the bottom of it as the members of the Upper Apple Slaughter parish council realised the vicar might have been up to something when telling each of them individually that they'd won a holiday.

Fortunately their arguing was interrupted by the murder of a fellow holidaymaker, and in between aquaerobics and hot yoga classes they managed to track down the murderer, allowing the local police officer to get back to his bird watching. They mended their differences over some unusual baked goods, and prepared to gang up on the vicar when they got home.

 

The Matrons put it all together over a nice cup of tea. Caution: Spoilers!

Slot 2: Outgunned Superheroes

Being pretty keen on Outgunned as a system, I was keen to see it applied to superheroes. I picked up World Hopper, a femme fatale with teleportation powers.

One thing I immediately liked was that short range teleportation could be done at will. My small supply of power points only came into use when I was teleporting beyond line of sight, or taking someone else with me. This is one of those things that bugs me particularly in superhero games, when the rules stop the characters from actually doing superhero stuff because they can't waste limited power on using their powers most of the time. No problems with that here. There were some contrived circumstances in the adventure where we temporarily lost our powers, but that's fine - that kind of thing happens in superhero media all the time. We soon got them back.

These were beta rules, and are a little convoluted in places, but I fully expect it to be tidied up a little before the final product comes out. Should I find myself with a hankering to run a superhero adventure, I'll definitely check this one out.

I decided in the interests of not burning out too quick to take a break on Wednesday evening and hang out with my husband for a bit.

Thursday

Slot 4: Monster of the Week

Another outing for my K-Pop Demon Hunters inspired game. This time the group decided to be a boy band, and so the four members of CMYK went into battle with weapons and signed photocards to solve the mystery of what happened at Busan's Got Talent while still getting to their fan meet on time.

Once again I had players signed up who hadn't seen the movie, so I'm getting pretty adept at my high speed introduction to the setting where I explain why showing up to the fan meet is just as important as fighting the monsters. And they absolutely embraced it, creatively dealing with the various obstacles with a variety of magical and occasional fungal solutions.

Slot 5: Coriolis: The Third Horizon

A bit of a surprise to see this on offer, given that there's a new version of Coriolis (The Great Dark) out now, but I still like this version better so was delighted to get into a game.

I picked up Dr Wana, an archaeologist who'd really pushed the boundaries between archaeology and grave robbing, hence why she was now the captain of a mercenary crew. We were hired to investigate the murder of the designer of a military AI. We immediately suspected the AI, but had to do a thorough investigation to fully get to grips with what had happened.

Absolutely excellent game. The adventure was great, the GM was a familiar face from Concrete Cow who I already knew would do a great job, and the rest of the players were a really fun group. A highlight of the week.

Slot 6: Liminal

One of my favourite games, but not one I actually get to play in very often, so I immediately signed up when I saw this one on offer. This was the first in a series of Liminal Lincolnshire adventures, a concept I love since I'm writing my own Liminal Northamptonshire series. The GM was also one of the players from the Liminal game I ran last year, so hopefully that means I made a good impression.

I played Jordan, a journalist determined to get to the truth, alongside her two rather more supernatural companions. We began with three dead bodies that had all washed up on the bank of the Humber on three consecutive nights, and had to figure out what they'd been up to, who was likely to be next, and what this all had to do with a 16th century priest.

Great stuff, and I look forward to seeing the rest of the adventures. Liminal is at its best written by people who know and love the area they're writing about, and are ready to dive into the history and geography.

Friday

Slot 7: Vaesen

Another trip to the Eldritch Lodge to game with Matt Sanderson while sampling more of his incredible tea selection. I picked up the Academic character, figuring a Vaesen party can always use someone with a book, and off we went to Oulu to learn more about the massacre than destroyed the previous incarnation of the Society.

We discovered quite a lot of the past events by the simple, if moderately scary method of having our occultist perform a seance to summon the ghost of one of the dead society members. Then there was a long walk in the rain to recruit a useful ally before we dealt with the issue at the well, wells proving just as troublesome in Finnish mythology as they are in Britain and Japan.

As usual though, the true horror ended up being the inability to roll even a single six on ten or more dice.

I took another break on Friday afternoon and spent an hour or so at the pool. About time I actually used some muscles.

Slot 9: Kult: Divinity Lost

I'd initially planned to run this game in the lodge, but on discovering that my lodgemate was also planning to run a game in the lodge on Friday night, I contacted the players in advance and one of them kindly offered his own lodge.

There is one character in this scenario who is a model. The players have some freedom with exactly how to interpret the characters, and this one tends to go one of two ways: goth or himbo. Tuesday's model was goth. Friday's was himbo. Both were a delight.

The strange thing about this scenario is that while it's got one of the scarier lists of content warnings, it's probably one of my less horrific scenarios. My favourite part, without giving away any spoilers, is the moment when the PCs have learned enough about what's going on in the house to realise something from right at the start of the game has way more significance than it might initially appear.

Not having access to the Sanderson tea bar for this game, I took my own, and then rather embarrasingly forgot to take it with me at the end. Thankfully our host tracked me down the next morning to give back the box.

Saturday

Slot 10: Fear Itself

I'm not much of a Gumshoe fan but I'll put up with it now and then for a game with CJ Romer. The content warnings did say that this was a very dark adult game which should not be played by anyone at all, but four of us decided to give it a shot all the same.

So four of Melissa's closest friends gathered to attempt to help her out with a mental health crisis, and in the process get rid of the psychic energy counsellor (or 'wizard' as my character described him) who Melissa's mum inexplicably thought would be helpful. Once we'd crushed him under a drinks cabinet and had him taken away by paramedics, we soon began diving into the horrifying world of creepypastas.

Overall I liked this scenario, and the pre-gen characters were a bunch of fun. While there was some genuinely dark stuff going on, it was lightened by the player interactions. Overall though, I find the constant gambling with metacurrencies aspect of this iteration of Gumshoe really pulls me out of the atmosphere. I'd consider a Quickshock version of the game but really for this style of horror I'm a lot happier with Kult.

Slot 11: Cosmic Dark

While I played one of Graham Walmsley's early test games of Cosmic Dark, this was the first time I was getting to play the completed game. The original scenario Stracsy's Adrenaline Station saw my medical officer Dr Mara Black join her old friends from the planet Revelation on a misson to a theme park where all we knew was that there had been an 'incident'.

I'm glad to say all four team members had a horrible time, although I think the guy from Legal probably had it the worst as he gradually realised just how non-compliant this park had become.

I was planning to run Cosmic Dark myself after getting home, but post-con illness got in the way. Nevertheless this game has made me even more keen to run it when I do get the chance. I also drew my own fan art of Stracsy.

Sunday

Slot 13: Matrons of Mystery

This time I was back as a player to investigate the mystery of the Six Sherlocks. Patience and her friends at the Thursday Murder Club (who meet on Wednesdays) in Walberswick had to investigate a murder at the Abbey Grange when Mr Rathbone was found dead in his room. Suspects included Mr Downey, Mr Brett and Mr Cumberbumberband, but we eventually settled on a convoluted solution involving blackmail, fraud and cover-ups, ending with a final confrontation at the not-actually-Reichenbach Falls.

This had a bunch of fun easter eggs for a Sherlock Holmes nerd like me, starting with the title itself. Brilliantly done.

And then I headed for the carvery, and after that all I was up for was a nice long sit down.

Reflections

Really the only problem with ConTingency is that it's just not possible to catch up with everyone you want to see. Maybe next year I need to try to arrange things a little better so I'm not dependent on random encounters (I had a lovely chat on Friday at the fish and chip shop). This time I didn't even make it to All Rolled Up (although I'm guaranteed to see them at plenty of other cons this year). But I did get my volunteer t-shirt in exchange for some reward tickets!

 

ConDensed 2025

ConDensed is a great little convention that could use more love. Unfortunately, being located on the south coast means it's a bit of a trek for most people to get to, including me. This time my husband and me decided to make an actual holiday of it if we were going to have to travel that far, and spent a few days in Portsmouth looking at ships before driving over to Worthing for the convention itself.

Game 1: Golden Heroes

Despite having known Simon Burley for many years now and played a bunch of his other games, I'd still never had a chance to try Golden Heroes, so when he asked if there was interest in a game at ConDensed I was suitably enthusiastic.

You can tell this is a game from the 80s. Unnecessary crunch, outdated language, tables that don't need to exist, dice rolls that should have been flat numbers... But I can see why people love it. We did character creation at the table, the slighly longer slots at ConDensed meaning we could spend a bit of time on it without worrying about whether we were going to have time for the actual scenario.

I decided to skip having an Advantageous Background, as per Thor or Tony Stark and go for the street level Spiderman type origin. My first two rolls were Martial Arts and Tough Skin, which seemed logical enough, but at the same time not all that exciting on their own. I decided to take one more random roll and got Magic. Perfect. I used the remaining slots to upgrade Martial Arts to level 2 and Magic to level 3. End result, Kira Kim, a.k.a. White Witch, who became a superhero when she was recruited by an ancient order of magicians while at a Taekwondo class.

With our team assembled, we met up on the mean streets of Dudley where some kind of power armour was causing havoc, before getting mixed up in some interplanetary politics. It soon became clear that there are some really interesting aspects to the game, such as the ratings after each mission which then give you your stats for things like detective work and public opinion in the next mission, while encouraging you to act in a superhero-like way.

All in all, while it's a bit clunky in places, I didn't mind that because the character creation was really fun, the ratings are great, and the rules get the job done. I will definitely be checking out Simon's follow-up game, Squadron UK.

Game 2: Space 1889

Another trip to the 1980s with Space 1889, a game based on Victorian sci-fi, which would have been called steampunk if the word steampunk had been invented in 1988.

Lady Constance, adventuress, set off on a race through Egypt and Sudan, alongside her dear friend Emily from Cheltenham Ladies' College, her fiance Archie, and Emily's mechanic Stebbins. We lasted about 45 seconds into the game before starting to plan how to sabotage the other contestants, with Stebbins and Emily taking a stealthy and mechanical approach while Constance and Archie set about socialising with their fellow elites, spreading rumours and 'accidentally' causing minor injuries.

The end result is how I imagine the Wacky Races would have looked if written by Jules Verne.

The system has some issues, the primary one being that there are multiple different ways of doing skill resolution, so if I were to run this myself I'd be looking for the Savage Worlds version from 2010, but it's still playable and the setting is really good fun. Definitely one to look out for if you enjoy being terribly British and doing silly posh accents.

Game 3: Escape from Dino Island / This House Is F***ing Haunted

I originally pitched Kult in this slot, as I thought it would be a good fit for my haunted house scenario which could use a slightly longer slot. But Kult is not everyone's jam, and at a convention this small, there just weren't enough fans of its specific type of horror to fill a game. So I scrapped that and offered Escape from Dino Island instead, a game where you know exactly what you're going to get.

I once again went with the destination wedding concept as the reason for everyone being on the island, and we soon established that we had a professor here to represent the university that the bride donated to, the bride's ex husband, the bride's ex boyfriend, and the groom's son. 

We played Dino Island! @savagespiel.bsky.social brought little dinosaurs.

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— Graham Walmsley (@grahamwalmsley.bsky.social) November 15, 2025 at 5:51 PM

They dealt with a variety of dinosaur-based obstacles, descended into the secret underground base, uncovered the devious plot to create supersoldiers by combining human DNA with dinosaurs, and finally went through a time portal to back before the wedding and got everyone out. A successful escape.

Then, because it turned out to have been rather a fast escape, I pulled out This House Is F***ing Haunted as a follow-up. Two players left for dinner, but the remaining two dived in, becoming two contractors refitting a Canadian ski lodge that turned out to just have an absolute ton of ghosts in it, none of which were as terrifying as the taxidermy.

Game 4: Age of Vikings

This game used the same pre-gens as the game I played at Concrete Cow, so I quickly chose Hrund the Uninspired again, determined to get her a new nickname by the end of the session.

This was excellent. There was a brief history talk at the start to get us all on the same Icelandic page, and then off we went to investigate strange events that went down at a funeral. We got to see a lot more of the mechanics of rune magic this time, plus a better understanding of how devotions work. The scenario itself made good use of Viking mythology and history without being confusing to someone without a comprehensive knowledge of the subject, which is what you want in an RPG.

Also, by the end, after a couple of particularly good rolls in combat, Hrund had become Hrund Shin Splitter and was a lot happier about things.

And that was it for another ConDensed, except for the drive home. No accidents on the M25 this time. No, this time the accident was on the M1, and it once again took 5 hours to get home. Fortunately we had a new Strange Times audiobook to keep us company. 

Furnace XX

Off to Furnace again, along with my husband who remembered to register this time. This was set to be the biggest Furnace yet, and excitingly for me, a few friends were coming for the first time, including one guy I'd never seen in person before, allowing me to confirm that he does in fact have legs.

Last year's outing to the Italian restaurant was seven people. This year, probably due to the increased numbers as well as greater awareness, there were seventeen of us. Which meant it was a bit of a long meal as they had so many people to serve (it's a small restaurant and we took up about half of it) but did make for good conversation. If we get numbers like this again next time though, it might be worth splitting the Friday meal across more than one venue.

Saturday kicked off earlier than usual, as breakfast was ending earlier so they could kick everyone out of the breakfast room and reset it as an additional gaming space. This room provided an additional eight tables, allowing for the biggest Furnace yet. It also meant a bigger area for All Rolled Up and Patriot Games to set up their stalls, and for the Bring and Buy table, all of which were very welcome.

The traditional opening speech was followed up by collecting the bag I'd pre-ordered, and also a commemorative dice tray. I decided not to use the bag during the weekend (foreseeing chaos with everyone having the same bag) but did use the extremely nice dice tray which is now a permanent resident in my gaming bag.

Game 1: Pendragon

The luck of the draw meant I hadn't got into any of my game picks in the morning session. Fortunately there was a space left in a Pendragon game, and since people had previously told me that they thought I'd like Pendragon, I decided to give it a go.

Well I do like Pendragon. The skill lists were a reasonable length, with a clear split between combat and everything else, much like Dragonbane. The traits meant I had a solid idea of how Dame Tamura was going to behave, and gave the option of making rolls to see if she was going to make poor choices as a result. Whether I'd actually want to play an entire Great Pendragon Campaign, I don't know, as I'm not sure how much doing knight things would appear long term, but I'd be willing to give it a try.

By the end of the session, Tamura had got lost in London, had mild religious disagreements, watched fellow knights vie for a lady's favour, and performed an emergency knighthood. Good times all round.

Game 2: Pinebox Middle School

So long term blog readers have probably noticed that I like Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Pinebox Middle School is a slightly younger age range than Buffy but still firmly in that general area, so this was obviously a must-play.

I picked out the Athlete character, noticed a degree of resemblance to the Williams sisters, and accordingly named her Juno. Juno and friends set out on a camping trip with the local not-actually-scouts group, where things naturally went very wrong. Juno's athletic skills served her well in most situations, but things did get a little hairy towards the end when she was forced to play the flute, an upsetting experience for everyone involved.

Overall this had pretty similar vibes to Tales from the Loop, with the additional benefit of being Savage Worlds, where the dice just aren't as dickish as they tend to be in Year Zero Engine. Overall I have a slight preferences for the older teens in East Texas University (also based in Pinebox) but this is a great game nonetheless.

Game 3: Dragonbane

Time to take up the GM mantle and run a game. Having claimed one of the Jailhouse tables rather than a cell, I felt I should offer something where I could manage five players, and decided to try writing a Dragonbane adventure. Knowing I'd need miniatures, and somewhat inspired by an all duck game I played at a previous con, I decided on an all cat person game.

Prepping for this game, I discovered that while writing monsters for Dragonbane is pretty fun, I don't like making characters at all - at least, not the assigning skills part. And I'd signed up to provide five of them. But eventually I got them done, and Coco, Felix, Smoky, Marmalade and Stripes were ready to discover what catastrophe had befallen their home village of Meowington.

Running Dragonbane, particularly stuff I wrote myself, is still a weird experience for me because it's quite a long way away from the kind of thing I normally do. It's hard for me to judge how things actually went. Still, nobody looked bored or acted disengaged, so it clearly wasn't terrible. The biggest hiccup was when I couldn't remember the villain's motivation, which was really rather important to the story. Fortunately I remembered in time, but I should probably write that one down a little more clearly in future.

Nerves and insecurity aside, it was a lot of fun getting to bring out some of my collection of cat adventurer miniatures and make use of the Tom Cartos battle map books.

Game 4: SLA Industries

SLA is usually good for a laugh at a convention, and this was no exception. Offered the usual set of pregens, I decided to try something new and picked out the Neophron, a bird person with good social skills, making me the de facto party leader, although leader is a strong word for a party of SLA characters especially when there's a Stormer and a Frother in the group.

Our mission was simple: get a kebab. For which we needed money. For which we needed a job. For which we needed to replace the paper in the job printer so that it would print properly and we could read what the job was. And so began a sequence of bizarre events as we set out to clear a paper jam and ultimately get something to eat.

The GM was playing a little fast and loose with the system, which I appreciated as it gave me a chance to get more to grips with the basics of how it works, without having to worry about oddities like the reverse declaration initiative system. Also a welcome opportunity to pull out my bag of d10s. He also had the feats printed out on cards, which was a more convenient way to read them than all being printed on one sheet.

This was probably the highlight of the convention for me. Funny, gory, well GMed and with an enthusiastic group of players.

Before the final slot we had the raffle. Thanks to Chaosium sponsoring basically every convention I've been to this year, most of the prizes were Chaosium books and I walked away with a brand new copy of BRP.

Game 5: Monster of the Week

A second outing for my K-Pop Demon Hunters inspired game. With only three players this time, it was the Celebrity, Changeling and Forged who set out to protect Busan from demons. Based on what happened last time, I provided bulldog clips to attach the photos to the name cards, although I'm wondering if separate standees for the cards might also be a good idea. It may come down to how much lamination I can face doing.

With only one player being familiar with the movie, I had to work a little harder to bring the setting details, not helped by my tendency to forget that we were in Busan, not Seoul, and I don't think overall that it was as good as the game at Concrete Cow. But it still works as an adventure and it's going in my regular convention rotation for a while. As I learn more about Korean mythology, it may even get a sequel.

And that was that. Furnace remains an absolute delight. I got to catch up with old friends and meet some lovely new people across all the games. I really hope our first timers will join the rest of us again next year.

Concrete Cow 25.5

While I'm part of the organising team for Concrete Cow, my job ends a day or two beforehand when I make the final updates to the schedule and close down the game submission form. On the day, all I had to do was show up and join in. Which I began with a trip to Leisure Games, since I'd been meaning to buy a copy of Outgunned, and there it was in the box. Perfect. I handed over my sign-up sheets and caught up with some old friends until it was time for the games to begin. We'd remembered from last time about the room divider, so there was a bit of table shifting and the sliding wall sections were pulled into place.

Game 1: Monster of the Week

K-Pop Demon Hunters seems to have done things to me (although to be fair my husband's enthusiasm for K-dramas has also been a factor) and with the movie having a certain amount of Buffy energy, I was pretty sure I could run it with Monster of the Week. Rather than Huntr/x themselves, I pitched a game where you play a junior band, relatively new to both the music and demon hunting business, based in Busan. Korea is around the same size as England, and to get from Seoul to Busan takes about six hours on the train (or more if there's a zombie outbreak.) So the juniors handle demon outbreaks that Huntr/x just can't get to in time.

The newest expansion for MOTW includes some new playbooks, some of which seemed like a great fit for this game. So in addition to the Chosen, Initiate and Divine from the original book, I offered the Celebrity, Changeling and Forged from the new book. All three new options, plus the Chosen, ended up in play.

They decided to be a girl band, so I offered a set of photos of one of my favourite K-pop bands, Dreamcatcher, to choose from. With a bit of help from Fantasy Name Generators, everyone picked a name, and the Ji-Socks were ready to perform. Rather than use the history section from the playbook, given that in most cases the history would be 'you went to an audition', I instead created some new moves based on roles within a band. And so the band comprised of the inspiring Leader, the gorgeous Visual, the intimidating Main Rapper and the golden voiced Main Vocalist. They also each decided on an insecurity, something that could cause problems on a failed roll.

And so the Ji-Socks set off to make a series of public appearances, with various levels of success, in between dealing with a demonic outbreak threatening Busan, saving countless lives and also scraping through with their reputation just about intact.

Normally I run an online playtest before taking a new scenario to a playtest, but couldn't fit it in this time. All the same, I was confident I knew MOTW well enough to make it happen. The band roles and the insecurities all worked out just as I was hoping and the players did a wonderful job creating their band members. I'm offering this again at future conventions and I'm really looking forward to running it again. Just one change: bring bulldog clips so people can attach their photo to their name card.

During this game we heard from the people running the community fridge in the same venue that they had way too much food and we were welcome to take some to save it from being thrown out. So we take a short break to see what was on offer. I came back with ciabatta rolls, ham, and custard doughnuts, which made an excellent lunch, and some mince pies. I certainly wasn't the only convention attendee somewhat baffled to see mince pies about to go out of date at the beginning of October.

Game 2: Girl By Moonlight

 I wasn't the only person running a K-Pop Demon Hunters inspired game at this con (and in fact the GM for this game had been in my morning game.) This time we were playing with Girl By Moonlight, a Forged in the Dark game about magical girls. Not being much of a fan of magical girl anime, I'd not looked at this one before, but it did seem like a logical fit for the movie.

This time we were playing Huntr/x, but an alternative version of the band in which there were four members instead of three. Like me, the GM had brought photos of real K-pop stars, this time four members of Twice. I picked Momo, the ballad singer, who certainly had some stuff going on.

We kicked off with a mission to rescue our manager Bobby who was being abducted by demons, interrupted somewhat by the sudden appearance of an incredibly attractive demon boy band. Inevitably things immediately started going wrong, with Bobby rescued but traumatised, and Sana suffering from demonic corruption from contact with the Saja Boys.

Like more FITD games, this one has a pretty rigid structure, and the next item on the list was Obligations. This turned out to be really fun, as Jihyo had to endure an epic signing and photography session, Sana was followed around by the camera team from The Only Way Is Seoul, and Momo had a truly disastrous time when the band had to take on the Saja Boys at the Korean equivalent of Ninja Warrior.

Then it was time for downtime, and an attempt to reduce some of the absolutely massive amount of stress we'd picked up during the mission and the obligations by connecting with each other. I say an attempt. Despite Jihyo and Momo spending some quality time in the dance studio together working on the new routine, and Momo taking Nayeon out to a bar for soju and kareoke, the band was still on the edge of falling apart when we were due to appear at the Idol Awards, with Sana set to perform with the Saja Boys instead of Huntr/x. It took a demonstration of just how band the rest of us were at rapping compared with her to snap her out of it and get her back on side.

Then it was time to take to the stage and throw everything we had into this performance. Incredibly, Sana's trick worked perfectly, deceiving the Saja Boys into a performance that strengthened the honmoon instead of breaking it, but now it all came down to one last song to seal the honmoon. Which almost went perfectly. Almost. And so the sequel to this alternative version of the movie will be The Search for Jihyo as the rest of the band have to venture into the demon realm to rescue her from the wrong side of the honmoon.

Comparing the two games was interesting. MOTW puts more focus on the monster hunting aspects. GBM has more about the connections between characters, encouraging emotional conversations. Overall I prefer MOTW, partly because I find standard PBTA as a system is not quite as prone to that situation where someone has come up with a brilliant idea, is doing the thing they're theoretically best at and has stacked up all available bonuses and the dice still say no. It's also less prone to the constant escalation of FITD, where every partial success leads to complications, injuries and stress. Partial success results are laid out in each move, with the partial result on moves like Investigate A Mystery being that you get fewer questions to ask rather than an immediate escalation, which from the GM side of the table I find puts a lot less pressure on me to constantly come up with ideas for complications.

I really did like the Obligations part of GBM though, and while I wouldn't want to use the same mission/obligation/downtime structure in my own games, incorporating some aspects of it in a more freeform way could be a good addition to my MOTW games. There's always room for new ideas in PBTA.

I'd planned on a trip to a local takeaway for dinner, but I still had a bag full of ham, ciabatta and doughnuts. It was certainly one of my cheaper trips to Concrete Cow.

Game 3: Age of Vikings

I'd planned to run Wraithound in the evening slot, but with a record number of evening games on offer, it didn't get sign-ups, so me and the other GM with no players jumped into other games. I'd been hoping to try out Age of Vikings for a while, and the game on offer was The Cursed Farm, a shorter demo game which should see us finished in plenty of time to get home at a reasonable time.

The system was BRP, so not far off Call of Cthulhu, although it seems it takes more inspiration from Runequest overall. One nice feature was the ability to pray to your favoured deities where appropriate and get a bonus to your next roll. Alas, despite Thor hearing my call, I still managed to shoot an arrow in entirely the wrong direction.

I played Hrund, nicknamed the Uninspired, and with plans to team up with Njall the Beardless to have serious words with whoever was handing out nicknames in our settlement. We headed off to the titular cursed farm to find out what had happened to Bjorg's redcurrants. There was overall less concern about what had happened to the kale. We did actually set the kale patch on fire at the end, but it seemed like a good idea at the time.

Overall this was a fun time. I'm not sold on the giant skill lists (Rivers of London remains my favourite version of BRP) and I'm not sure I make a particularly convincing Viking, but it's definitely one I'd be happy to play again.

With the game finishing early, I decided to stick around for a bit and chat with the convention's co-organisers. Despite all being at the MK-RPG club every week, we're all GMing different games so don't actually get much of a chance to talk, so it was really nice to catch up.

And so that was it for Concrete Cow 25.5. I've already seen a couple of other blog posts about the event - Groundhoggoth wrote about the Pico game he ran about wrestling bugs and Simon Burley wrote about his first trip back to Concrete Cow since before Covid.

Concrete Cow 26 is booked for 7th March 2026, and based on what I've found in the MK-RPG wiki archives it's our 20th anniversary! I'm looking forward to it already. 

Continuum 2025

 Continuum is a con that seems to have been running for quite a long time. It was previously held in Leicester, but last year suddenly found themselves in need of a new venue and moved to the University of Cranfield's conference centre. So having enjoyed the venue at ChaosiumCon, I decided to give this one a shot as well.

I decided to skip the Friday. I was planning on driving in and out each day, and that would mean an extra round trip (40 minutes each way). Also there was a costume party on the Friday night, and while I do love dressing up, I felt I wanted greater familiarity with the con before getting involved in that kind of thing. So it was Saturday morning when I arrived in Cranfield. Check in was very simple. My name was crossed off the list and I was handed my badge and a choice of lanyards, depending on my willingness to be photographed. I love this idea. Many people like taking photos of their groups at cons, and being able to see at a glance that someone doesn't want to be in the picture made for a much simpler time getting photos done.

With sign-up for morning games having happened already when I arrived, there wasn't much left. I signed up for the one game I could find with space. Then unexpectedly ran into one of my friends from Concrete Cow, also there for the first time, and we had time for a chat before the games started.

Game 1: Fallen London

I was vaguely aware of Fallen London as a browser based video game, and knew there was an RPG in the works because I'm on the Magpie Games discord, but other than that knew nothing.

The setting was a stand-out part of the game, and it's inspired me to give the browser game a go. There was quite a long description at the start, as I wasn't the only person who hadn't played the browser game and needed getting up to speed. I particularly like the rubbery men; squishy boneless people with squid-like heads attempting to live alongside humans.

I was expecting PBTA given Magpie's involvement, but with the browser game already having its own system, a lot of that clearly had to translate over to the RPG. At the core was a fairly simple dice pool system, rather like YZE but with 5 and 6 both counting as success. Things got more complicated when we got into skill levels, with Adept in particular foxing a lot of the group. I think I had it figured out by the end, but I'm still not sure. Hopefully that's something that the full game will make a bit clearer.

The group was all unfamiliar faces but I felt like I was in good company already. An excellent start to the gaming.

The convention was advertising build your own burritos for lunch, but at £12 I felt it was rather more than I wanted to either eat or pay. Instead I walked round to the Co-op, where I got a reduced to clear sandwich for the excellent price of £1.99. Then I ran into another friend, and had another nice chat which included some excellent tips on how to mount a particularly finicky miniature in a way that would prevent its spindly legs from collapsing again.

Game 2: Liminal

I wasn't going to go to a con and not pitch any games, and given that my newest Liminal scenario, Blood, Sweat and Tears, all takes place within a few miles of Cranfield, I decided to give it a shot. By lunchtime the sign-up sheet had filled up, and another group took on the mystery of why a P-division detective had been found dead when she was supposed to be on holiday.

I've run this enough times that it should all run smoothly, and apart from the fact that I am terrible at naming my NPCs and still had one unnamed character in this scenario, it did. In fact, we were done in 3 hours, rather less than the assigned slot time, but I'd always rather underrun than overrun. A lovely group of players who all brought their own energy to the pre-gens, including one old friend who spends enough time GMing that it's an absolute privilege to get him as a player.

Evening game sign-up happened at 6.30pm. Apparently there'd been a bit of a scrum on the Friday, but on Saturday we formed an orderly queue. By now any readers won't be surprised to hear that I ran into another old friend and had a nice chat. Except this time it was two old friends. And £17 for the evening meal was a rather more appealing prospect than lunch, so I had an enjoyable meal of lasagne, chicken in some kind of white sauce, potato wedges, garlic bread and some really nice green beans.

Game 3: Shiver

I picked this game for three reasons: the GM, who I always enjoy gaming with, the premise, which involved dinosaurs in a park, possibly of the Jurassic variety, and because I'd heard of Shiver plenty of times but never played it.

The custom d6s have symbols on each side corresponding to the characters' skill, and the system is a dice pool where you roll a number of custom dice equal to the skill level and aim to get the symbol for that skill. Naturally, like all dice pool systems, the dice are absolute bastards, but it is slightly mitigated by bonus talent dice which have some extra chances to succeed on them.

One thing I did like is that the skill you use often depends what equipment you're using. While unarmed combat is done with Grit, my character's worst skill, she became a lot more effective when picking up a weapon that used Smarts.

One thing I didn't like is that combat was a bit of a slog. Most weapons did 2 damage while my big two handed Smarts weapon did 4. While I don't know the monsters' exact stats, I do know we fought a group of four monsters where three of them had over 10 hit points and one had over 15. In theory we could have rolled criticals (two extra successes on top of the challenge rating for the monster) and done a bunch of extra damage, which would have speeded it up a lot, but in practice, see above about dice being bastards. Add in that each monster had the potential to do a reaction each time it got hit, meaning an extra dice roll any time we didn't fail, and we ended up with a fight which did not have the cinematic feel that the game aims to create.

The scenario was a fun one, very obviously based on a certain dinosaur franchise but soon diverging to a whole different kind of totally preventable disaster. It's the scenario for the game's Blockbuster starter set, and I think it's well worth a go. However, it does claim that it takes 2-4 hours to run. This is a lie. The GM had already cut out a whole chapter, and we ended up having to skim over some more to get to the end before our four hour slot was over and we had to leave.

Overall I liked Shiver as a system and would play it again, but between it requiring its own custom dice and my reservations with the combat, it's not going to be my first pick for cinematic action when Savage Worlds exists.

I decided not to play a game on the Sunday morning, in favour of getting more sleep, and take my chances with what was left for the afternoon games. I considered the seminars that were on offer, but not being a Runequest enthusiast, I wasn't sure there was anything there that would interest me, so had a look around the trade hall instead.

I took another walk to the Co-op for lunch, but was less lucky with the meal deals this time. All the sandwiches were gone, as were all the pasties in the flavours I like. But I did manage to get a sausage roll and a pain au raisin, and sat out in the sunshine to eat them before heading back in for the afternoon game.

Game 4: Rivers of London

What was left was Rivers of London, rather to my surprise as I'm used to that game booking up rather fast. It remains my favourite version of BRP, cutting out giant skill lists in favour of a slimmed down set of general skills and specialist expert skills. While I still think Liminal is a better urban fantasy game, this is still something I consider a reliable con pick.

This was a brilliant scenario, incorporating the multicultural nature of London, current events, history, the magic of the book series, and a classic children's book, to tell a strange story that began with a simple witness statement and escalated drastically. Probably the best RoL scenario I've played, which is saying a lot given how good all the others were.

One thing the GM did which I really liked was to give us two copies of every handout. With five players there was still a certain amount of reading over shoulders going on, but it really helped speed things up. Something I should try myself in future.

Then we had the closing ceremony, despite the fact that the con still had a whole game slot to go.

Sunday evening's dinner was a Sunday roast. Not quite what I was hoping for, given that the chicken was for some reason spicy, but you can't go wrong with a roast potato.

Game 5: The Walking Dead

With many people heading off early so as to not have to take time off on Monday, Sunday night's offerings were rather more sparse. I'd never watched The Walking Dead, but figured Free League games tend to be well put together and the basic zombie apocalypse concept was easy enough to grasp.

Mechanically it turned out to be very similar to Alien, except that instead of panic rolls, 1s on the stress dice caused walker-related events such as increased threat level, larger swarms or individual attacks. I was thoroughly impressed by how the game handles walker swarms, presenting them as a group challenge rather than individual combats. Hopefully the new version of Alien will incorporate this mechanic, as I can see it proving useful there as well. While I obviously can't compare it to the source material, as a zombie apocalypse game in general it's very well done.

We all had a background giving us connections to the other PCs, which resulted in some entertaining dialogue as another player repeatedly suggested using my character as bait to distract the walkers and I complained bitterly about having to rescue him when the rest of the party weren't ready to abandon him.

By the end we'd successfully dealt with the threat, rescued two people, and survived two trips to the critical injury table, despite the dice being, as previous noted re: YZE games, bastards. We were all done by 11pm, but with the drive home ahead of me, that suited me just fine.

Reflections

I had a great time. I was worried that I wouldn't know anyone (or would only know a very small number of people) but obviously this was not an issue - there were familiar faces everywhere. And even if there hadn't been, all the new people I met in my games were great.

There were a bunch of freeform larps running at the same time as the tabletop games. I have no idea how these work, but there are apparently some shorter ones that can be played in an hour, so maybe if I find myself with time to spare next time I'll see if I can try one out and see what it's like. Obviously I'm an experienced larper, but with my experience being primarily camping and foam swords larp, I don't really know what to expect beyond what one person told me - like tabletop except walking around the room.

I plan to be back next year. And in the interests of avoiding any scrums, I'll aim to pitch a game in the first slot.