Spaghetti ConJunction 3b

Was I in time for Spaghetti ConJunction 3b?  As I approached the Geek Retreat I saw a small crowd of obvious gamers outside.  Clearly I had not missed anything.

I paid the incredibly reasonable entry fee of £3 and dug out my sign up sheet.  Another outing for my Scum and Villainy scenario.  Would I get players this time?  I had a browse of the other sheets in case not.

I needn't have worried.  My game filled up.  Maybe it was my new and improved sign up sheet with appropriate logos and a slightly improved blurb.  Maybe there were just more Firefly enthusiasts.  Either way, with a full set of character archetypes, the crew set out to acquire a space ship and begin their journey to independence.

What I love about running this scenario is that I never know how it's going to go.  Even the very start of the game has ended up being different each time, with each group taking a different approach.

It occurs to me that it wouldn't be hard to change this adventure from its current slightly dark space western feel to full blown horror.  With more descriptive language and going into a lot more detail about certain things I could do some very different stuff with it.  But at the same time, while I maintain there's nothing wrong with including horror content in a Firefly game, if people have signed up for Firefly they're probably expecting more action adventure than horror.

But I've just acquired a copy of Coriolis, which has a similar feel to Firefly, but with a different setting where it's possible I could make it work.  Something to think about for future scenarios.

Anyway, the adventure went entertainingly as always.  I think I could have handled the end better, as it wasn't particularly exciting and cinematic and could have used a bit more tension, but otherwise I'm happy.  I'm going to take the suggestion I've seen to set silent alarms to go off at certain points during the session to help me keep the pacing and make sure things wrap up nicely at the right time.

One nice thing about playing at the Geek Retreat is that you can order your lunch at the bar and go back to your game and they'll bring it up to you.  The food is mostly burger and chips type stuff.  I had a chicken and bacon toastie with chips, which tasted great and was decent value as well.  (I would have liked some salad with it, but appreciate they probably don't have a particularly salad-friendly clientele.)  The coffee is excellent, and while my current calorie counting efforts meant I avoided the milkshake this time, they certainly looked as good as they did last time, as did the waffles and ice cream I saw other people eating.

There is the option to get food elsewhere, but given that the very low price of this event is partly due to the venue making money on food and drink sales, I'd rather spend my money there and have the convenience of table service.  And the coffee really is excellent.

In the break I decided to check out the raffle prizes.  I hadn't bought tickets on the way in, in order to help speed through the queue, but seeing there were two copies of Zweihander up for grabs I decided it was worth buying a few tickets for a shot at getting hold of one of them.

Zweihander, incidentally, is a very appropriately named game.  The book is of a size that should definitely allow it to be used as a weapon, but you will absolutely need two hands to wield it.

With a fairly huge number of raffle prizes and a limited number of people after a few of the morning crowd went home, I wasn't entirely surprised when more than one of my tickets got pulled.  I didn't get a copy of Zweihander, but I did come away with some Lovecraftian fiction from Chaosium, a Call of Cthulhu sourcebook about Arkham, and some kind of virtual Cyberpunk adventure that may never get played but I've no doubt I will enjoy reading.

Raffles can be quite tedious, but with Simon Burley in charge and determined to set a new speed record, we got through about thirty raffle prizes in just over three minutes.  Probably the most enjoyable raffle I've entered.

Afternoon sign up.  With smaller numbers but still seven games on offer, I didn't bother using the 'go first for having run a game' option, and just signed up when my number was called since I already knew it would be near the start.  I chose the Starfinder game.  Unfortunately nobody else did, so I had to scramble to find a game.  Fortunately there was one space left in The Outhere: The Storm and the Tower.

While the game blurb is my primary factor in choosing a convention game, seeing the name Christopher Dean did help push me towards this game as I'd previously encountered him running '28 Trains Later', the Thomas the Tank Engine survival horror game that I'd been wanting for some time.  This time he was running a playtest of The Outhere from Braincrack Games.

He had a set of pregen characters, but had edited them all to make them non-gender-specific, which I really appreciated.  As someone who prefers to play female characters, when there are gendered pregens I feel pushed into choosing a female one.  With no specified genders, I could pick a character that seemed interesting, in this case an antelope person with a focus on light magic.

An interesting system.  D6 dice pools, but you add the results then divide by 5 rather than counting successes, thus avoiding the irritating part of dice pool systems where you've rolled a bunch of very nearly successes, but have still completely failed.  Also reminicent of tagging aspects in Fate, as you can get extra dice by invoking your character details or making use of narrative details.  We managed to provide some useful feedback at the end of the game.

I enjoyed the setting.  A variation on the normal fantasy setting, with the non-human races being the aforementioned antelope people, fennec fox people, rhino people and golems.  An emphasis on exploring desert ruins.  It's definitely got potential and I'll be interested to see where it goes from here.

By the time we finished, the cafe was close to closing, so I gathered my bag of books and went home.

I like the spontanaeity of being able to just show up on the day for these one day conventions rather than having everything booked in advance.  I also like the sign up system with the random order, meaning that I don't have to fight my way to the table to sign up for things.  It means I sometimes don't get into my first choice of games, but that doesn't mean I'm not going to have a good game.  I didn't get my first choice yesterday (thanks to nobody else wanting to play it) but I did get into an excellent game all the same.  At the last Concrete Cow I didn't get my first choice for the same reason, but that meant I had a fantastic game of Delta Green instead.

I've never had a bad game at Concrete Cow or Spaghetti ConJunction, but I have had some games I would never have considered signing up for in advance, and still had a great time.

Gender diversity remains poor.  There was one other woman there (and we did have a nice chat while waiting for sign up to start) out of around 30-35 people.  But both of us were offering games in the morning, which isn't bad.  I hope more female GMs will help attract more female players.

Transport-wise, I really appreciate being able to park practically right behind the venue.  The last thing I want as a woman alone with a heavy bag is to be wandering the streets of a strange city after dark.  The short walk to the well lit car park is definitely a selling point for me, and at £5 for 12 hours, the price is quite reasonable.

Overall, a great day out and worth braving the M6 for.  I hope to be back at 4a in February.