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.

Concrete Cow 25

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

By the time I took this photo, very little remained

Game 1: The Wildsea

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

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

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

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

The Wildsea crew

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

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

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

Ten games on offer!

Game 2: Monster of the Week

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

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

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

Game 3: Darkness of the Demimonde

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

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

Sunday

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

The Concrete Cows

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

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

This one was probably the GM

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

Reflections

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

I love running games here.

Revelation 2025

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

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

The whole place was like this

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

black cutlery

Vegan chicken and bacon burger and fries

Vegan black forest cheesecake with chocolate ice cream

Game 1: Monster of the Week

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

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

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

Matrons tote bag

Game 2: Monster of the Week

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

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

Game 3: Kult: Divinity Lost

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

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

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

Game 4: Escape from Dino Island

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

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

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

Dinosaurs!

Game 5: Threadbare

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

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

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

Millicent Mouse's character sheet

Reflections

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

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

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