I've been attending the MK RPG club's Concrete Cow games day for years, so I was pretty excited to find out someone was organising a similar event practically on my doorstep. I signed up immediately. And for the first time, I decided to offer two games.
The venue was Manascrew, a shop whose main focus is Magic: The Gathering and other collectible card games but has started to branch out into board games and TTRPGs. It's a little hard to find, as it lack external signage beyond window posters and shares its entrance with a family law office. However, once you've rung the bell and been let in, it couldn't be more welcoming. The owner was there to greet people and show us the facilities, and I instantly felt at home.
Then I was further welcomed by Graham, the organiser. Conveniently he was wearing a Northants Board And Card Gamers Collective shirt, as despite a long email conversation before the event, I'd never actually seen him before. I'd already paid my £4 entrance fee so I handed over my morning sign-up sheet and some flyers for BuzzardCon, collected a playing card, and went in search of coffee. Result! The shop sells really nice coffee for only £1.50.
Morning sign-up began, using the suits on the playing cards to determine order. As usual, we had too many GMs and not enough players, so a couple of games didn't run, but I think we had four games running in the end - not bad for the very first event. I would estimate there were about 25 people there, and at least two other women besides me.
The tables were narrow and set up for card games, with chairs down each side of the table and gaming mats covering the surface. I immediately moved a chair to the end so I could get a better view of the table. The only negative is that with five players in my game, the person at the far end of the table was a bit far away and I had trouble engaging with them as well as the people sitting closer to me.
I had brought my Firely adventure, 'On The Drift', using the Scum and Villany rules. It's the fifth time I've run it now, and every time the players manage to do something new. This was probably the group that managed to figure out the most about what happened on the ship, and probably the group who ended things with the most money and assets. Remembering that I wasn't quite happy with the conclusion when I ran this adventure at Spaghetti ConJunction, I made sure to have some conflict and drama ready to wrap things up properly.
For those who've played this game before, the two items in the game that tend to get given names were on this occasion named 'Globetrotter' and 'Wilbur'. To call the players 'the usual bunch of reprobates' would do a disservice to the creativity of everyone who's played this game with me - they produced yet another unique group of dubious space cowboys. I might reuse this one once more if I go to North Star, but otherwise that's probably its final outing. Now it's time to write the sequel.
Having hung around chatting for a bit after my slot I was pushed for time for lunch, but fortunately Boots was just a few minutes walk away and were selling their short dated sandwiches for 50p. In the interests of eco-friendliness, when I went for a second coffee at Manascrew I took the disposable cup with me to reuse, and discovered that the coffee is 50p cheaper if you bring your own cup!
Afternoon signup was called in reverse order from the morning. I was offering Liminal, specifically the Fang Gang adventure from the quickstart. Liminal is a new enough game I'm confident that very few people would have encountered this adventure before. I had printouts of key areas based on how the online games I ran had gone, so the players had maps, photos and floorplans to work with. The one hassle was redoing the character sheets, as I don't like fixed genders on pre-gens. As someone who strongly prefers to play female characters, I'd prefer not to feel limited in what I choose to play by the characters' gender. Accordingly I had both male and female names on the sheets, and the players told me which name they were using.
I was a little worried about timing, as this adventure had taken quite a lot more than the 3.5 hour slot I had available when I ran it online, but things went a lot faster at the tabletop and the whole thing wrapped up well within time. And with only four characters, it was easy to engage with all the players.
I didn't get to see what was going on at the other tables, but from the noises I heard it sounds like they were having as much fun as I was. I know Symbaroum and A Town Called Malice were amongst the other games being played, and I would have happily got in on either of those if my own games hadn't run.
I chatted some more with Graham (and returned my unused playing card), then headed home. Which, for once, took under half an hour.
Overall I don't think this could have gone better. There was a great mix of people, with both experienced gamers and people who'd never played an RPG before. The price was very reasonable, especially when combined with the bargain coffee and Sunday free parking. I could not have felt more welcome, and I hope this is going to be a regular event in the gaming calendar.
Thanks for the write up. Much appreciate it :)
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