Crew of the Aliya, part 15: Deja Vu

We made our way down the tunnel, and it wasn't long before our first encounter with the machinists.  Karim was supposed to be taking the lead talking to them, but somehow most of the group ended up getting involved.  Most, but not Sayah, who was busy trying not to look at the dead body on the ground.  A victim of Lavim - or whatever was possessing him.

The stone with the flower design was still with us, and the machinists recognised it.  A node stone.  They wanted to know where we found it, and we described the asteroid.  The node itself was part of something much bigger.  Something that was both a tool and a weapon.

We were allowed to pass through the hall.  We were heading for the rift now.  Fortunately the machinists had exosuits we could borrow.  None were missing.  Had Lavim brought his own?

The tunnel we were following brought us to a deep trench in the asteroid.  Above us we could see stars.  Below was the bottom of the trench and a lot of floating rocks.  Remembering our previous efforts at crossing ravines in microgravity with a lot of floating rocks, most of us were in favour of walking (or at least, crawling) to the bottom and then up the other side to get to the mysterious black ruins on the other side.  Tahir, unsurprisingly disagreed.

The machinists had been kind enough to loan us a bolt gun, given that the only weapons most of us had on us were stun guns.  A little modification by Gurgeh turned one of the bolts into a piton, and after attatching some hyperrope to it, it was fired across the chasm to create a safety line.

We were only part way through getting everyone across when something started shooting at us.  Gurgeh, Karim and Sayah spread out to look for where the shots were coming from and relayed the information to Alqadi.  A shot from the bolt gun destroyed the target.  Lila collected up the pieces and soon identified them as ancient firstcome armour.  Alqadi was berated for destroying a priceless artifact - although in a decidedly appreciative fashion.

Up ahead was an airlock.  Behind it, we were confident, we would find Lavim.  But when Gurgeh sent his drone closer to take a look, he found an artificial gravity field that dragged the drone out of control, damaging it as it smashed into the rocks around the airlock door.

Alqadi offered a heartfelt prayer to the judge, aimed his vulcan pistol at the control panel by the door, and fired.  Gravity returned to normal.  Not, as it appeared, due to the incredible pistol shot, but due to his mystic powers allowing him to manipulate the controls from a distance.  Not that most of the crew knew that, of course.  We were merely incredibly impressed by his extraordinary shooting prowess.

Safely through the airlock we found Lavim, once again seriously injured, and some kind of console.  Lila and Sayah got to work to figure out what it was, what it was doing, and how to stop it.  It had been transmitting some kind of signal to an area of space we were quite familiar with - the one currently occupied by the Legion fleet.

Lavim needed medical help, and fast.  Treating him was challenging due to him still being in an exosuit and the lack of oxygen.  Gurgeh dumped out two oxygen canisters into the room to provide enough atmosphere to keep Lavim alive while he stabilised him.  Then we tied him up very thoroughly with hyperrope, and made a note to tell whatever doctor ended up treating him not to take the ropes off.

Once again, we were feeling ill, much like when we were returning from the asteroid, and Lila was getting a nosebleed again.  It was definitely time to leave.  Although, having been away for significantly longer than the hour the guards had allowed us, what was going to be waiting for us?

The Dudley Bug Ball 2020

When it comes to weekend events, I'm used to LARP, where everything kicks off around 8pm on a Friday.  Being able to eat dinner at home and pack at my leisure before heading off on Friday evening was a bit of a novelty.

All the same, I arrived at the Premier Inn at around 8.30 and decided to go looking for people.  Surely a few others would be there on Friday night?  Maybe we could get an extra game in?

When I finally found the way into the Station hotel, which involved doing almost a complete lap of the building looking for an open door, I found only two other people.  Still, we had a good chat about gaming, other conventions, and for some reason, bats.

Saturday morning I wandered back to the Station Hotel some time around 9am while everything was still being set up, and found some familiar faces at the guest tables.  Sign-up for RPGs was harder to track down.  Eventually sign-up sheets appeared, in no particular order, including what seemed to be games for the entire weekend.  I gave up trying to make sense of it, or even sign up for anything, in favour of chatting with some old friends, until it was past 10am and I decided I really should try to do something.  What I did was hang around the sign-up table until gravitational pull attracted enough people that we all agreed we had enough for a game and went to play one.

Game 1

I don't generally play games set in IP that I'm unfamiliar with (hence having never played The Expanse or Judge Dredd) and I'm also not keen on playing pre-existing characters from TV and movies.  So a game in the world of Blake's Seven wouldn't be my first choice of game.  Still, I was willing to give it a shot, and the character of Soolin seemed fairly uncomplicated - fearless, and shoots things.  I reckoned I could manage that.

Soolin was joined by Avon, Jenna, Gan and Vila, names which meant nothing to me but which seemed quite significant to those players who knew the setting.  We had an exciting sci-fi adventure, Soolin got to shoot lots of things, and we ended by mind-wiping Avon when he turned out to secretly be a Federation spy.

I'm now tempted to watch Blake's Seven, as the idea of a Firefly-like show but in the style of 1970s Doctor Who is pretty appealing.

I had lunch in the hotel bar, which took a while as there seemed to be only two people actually staffing the entire place.  All the same, my barbecue chicken wrap was pretty good and came with some nice hot chips.

Game 2

A friend of a friend had been looking for an old-school dungeon crawl, so I pointed him at an afternoon game: Spiderbite, an old White Dwarf adventure but using the d6 Hack.  And then decided to sign up myself, since it looked like that one would definitely happen.  Six people had signed up for that by the time we assembled to play, but only four of us showed up.  No worries.  Four adventurers is enough for a party.

I picked up a pre-gen warrior character rather than go to the effort of making one, and named her Crimson.  Along with a fellow warrior, a conjurer and a priest, we set out to make our way down the inside of a giant stone head.  We encountered an amorphous tentacle blob, a shiny crystal snake and a big spider, and manage to behave reasonably competantly.  It all went wrong when we were trying to leave.  There was a simple solution to the problem which we entirely failed to do, leaving things at a bit of a stalemate, until we hit on the idea of shoving the NPC who'd hired us for this job down a pit.  This did the job, and we quietly left, vowing never to speak of this again.

The adventure finished rather earlier than the slot allowed for, but that suited me fine as I had other places to be.

What possessed me to sign up to perform at a hafla (belly dance show) in the middle of the Dudley Bug Ball, I don't know, but I headed back to my hotel, collected up my costume and drove to the Cradley community centre for an evening of dance and charity fundraising.

I returned at around 11pm and decided to drop in on the event again to see who was around.  A game of Call of Cthulhu was ongoing.  The one game advertised before the event that I'd actually wanted to play should have been happening, but it seems the numbers weren't there.  So I hadn't missed it after all.  Another time, hopefully.

Unsurprisingly, numbers were lower on Sunday morning.  I entirely failed to locate a game to play, but headed back to the guest tables to chat with old friends.  That kept me happily occupied until lunchtime, when once again dance called me away, this time to a rehearsal with my troupe.

Reflections

Apparently around 70 people were there on the Saturday, which isn't at all bad.  A reasonable number of women too.

A nice venue.  The main hall was a decent size and well laid out for the demonstration games and traders.  RPGs happened in smaller rooms nearby.  I particularly liked the room where the two games I played were held, with a dresser holding a selection of vintage teapots.

I bought a full weekend ticket for £15 - reasonable for the length of the event as there was the potential to play five games if I'd played in every slot.

I initially planned to stay in the hotel, but something was wrong with their website and I was unable to book, so I stayed at the Premier Inn instead for the incredibly reasonable price of £33 per night.  This didn't include breakfast, although I could have had either the Premier Inn breakfast or gone next door to Costa, Burger King or The Harvester for their breakfast options.  In the end I just had the snack bars I'd brought with me and the free coffee in my hotel room.

Travel by car was easy enough - a straight run up the M1 and M6 most of the way, and free parking at both the Premier Inn and the Station Hotel.

What I'd really like to see at the next one of these events is more organisation of the RPG side of things.  There seemed to be an assumption that things would sort themselves out organically, and that doesn't really happen.  There was no call for sign-ups, no muster, no directions to rooms.  While the demo games happening in the main hall managed to pick up players, if I hadn't already known the GM of the two games I played, I'm not sure I'd have actually managed to get myself signed up to anything.

That said, I had a fun weekend, had two enjoyable games, and got to spend time with some friends I rarely get the chance to see.  And this is only the second year for the new Dudley Bug Ball, so I'm sure it will get bigger and better in future years.  It's one of the easiest and cheapest two days events for me to get to, and I intend to be back next year.

Cold and Dark Quickstart Reviewed.

Continuing through my collection of quickstarts, here's one I downloaded from Modiphius - Cold and Dark.

Content

At 76 pages, this is really stretching the definition of 'quickstart'.

We start with an explanation that this is in fact a slimmed down version of the original game.  We immediately learn that some character options have been condensed down, which I'm not sure I like, but at least this is explained.

Past the credits page is a glossary.  Literally a page and a half of this document is given over to explaining acronyms.

Next up we have six pages of timeline, telling us everything significant that's happened in this game setting.  One feature I like is that the dates aren't absolute - they're all given relative to the present day.  The first event happens at +12 years.  What I like less is six pages of something I personally find pretty dry when we haven't even been told what kind of game this is yet.

On page 12 we finally get to the introduction.  This is good stuff.  It gives a brief introduction to the setting, nailing down the genre we're dealing with here - dark and gritty sci-fi.  There's just enough information to let you know if this setting is your jam.  It's definitely mine.  Onwards!

The character creation system is introduced here.  While the explanation at the start says that character creation is not included, it nevertheless gives a list of attributes and skills.  For some reason it decides to call these aptitudes and abilities rather than attributes and skills, but I understand what they mean so I'll give them a pass on this one.  Less forgivable is their decision to rename the GM and player characters to AI and Avatars.  This is my hill and I will die on it.  I'm looking at you, Chaosium.

Next we have an explanation of actions and rolls, which looks like a pretty standard dice pool system, beyond the fact that it uses d8s rather than the more usual d10s or d6s.  Nevertheless it takes three pages to fully explain the dice pools and various edge cases, which seems like overkill for something that's supposed to be a condensed version of the game.  And even then we're not done, as it continues with some specific rules for using strength and for security systems.  Inexplicably, despite the dice rolls being introduced on page 14, it's not until page 18 that we're actually told what dice result actually counts as a success.

We then get a few pages on the rules you really want to know - combat, damage and healing.

Despite the claim that character creation rules have not been included, we get six character archetypes described.  Apparently there are nineteen in the full game, although they're not listed.  The six we see are a pretty decent selection though, hitting most of the character types I'd expect in a dark scifi setting.

Page 30 kicks off a bunch of setting information.  Now I can see why we need that glossary.  The amount of acronyms here make it kind of hard to read, which is a shame, because when I do manage to find a low-acronym passage it's pretty well done, covering government, law, society and technology.  Really though, there's far too much stuff here.  Fifteen pages!

We're past the halfway point.  Page 45 introduces yet another acronym, but it turns out we're now into the gear section and about to learn about the power armour/space suits that everyone in this setting has.  There are some nice annotated images to go with them.

A few random images later, we have a page about The Dark, basically this game's version of a sanity mechanic.  A staple for any dark and gritty sci-fi setting.  Odd that there's only half a page on it.

Page 55 brings an introductory adventure.  This immediately links to a separate story on another PDF - odd choice, but with this document already being the size it is, I'm not going to fault them for keeping it separate.  Expecting me to read a separate story on top of this giant document before I can bring the game to the table is a bit much though.

We have a set of five pre-gen characters - the crew of a heavy freighter, the Valhalla.  Based on their names there's some racial diversity represented here, and two out of five are women.  They all come with a decent paragraph about their history and personality.  I'd be happy to play any of them.

There's one slight oddity in this adventure as the captain is not a playable character.  There are reasons why she's an NPC (or NPA, as the game insists on saying) but having recently dealt with the fun of hidden agendas in the Alien RPG, I'd be more inclined to make her playable and assign her to someone I trust to play her with an extensive briefing.

There's a full deck plan for the Valhalla included here.  This is really excellent, and could be used in a wide variety of situations.

The adventure itself is a solid example of a sci-fi horror adventure and I'm actually really keen to get this to the table.  It's got evocative scenes, and plenty of examples of appropriate rolls to make in different situations.  Most of it involves exploring a derelict ship, for which a schematic and location descriptions are provided.  I would have liked a deck plan for this part, as significantly more of the adventure will take place on this ship than on the Valhalla, but at the schematic gives some idea of the layout.

We finish with the character sheets for the five pre-gens.  These take only half a page each.  Finally something concise!

Presentation

This is a good looking PDF.  I wouldn't be surprised if it looks a lot like the original game, with attractive page borders full of hints of artwork.  There are three different credited artists, and it shows in that there's some variation in the art style.  Some I really like.  Some has gone a bit too cheesecake for my liking, but at least there's reasonably portrayed women as well.

There's no sign of bookmarking, which for a PDF of this size is pretty terrible.  The layout is two-column, which is fine for the print edition but not good for scrolling on a screen.  It's black text on white, so apart from the dark page borders it should be reasonably printer friendly.  The sample adventure is low on art beside the deck plan and schematic, so no hindrance to printing that section.

I don't like the ordering at all.  Stuff like the glossary and timeline have no business being at the start of the document.  This could be vastly improved by having a properly hyperlinked contents page at the start, then leading with the introduction, and shunting the glossary and timeline to appendices.

What can I do with it?

You can learn the entire history of this game's setting and a lot about its current situation.  If you really want to.

You can run a game.  While I haven't tried this one out yet, I'm confident the sample adventure has everything you need to get it to the table, and I fully intend to run it at upcoming events.

You can learn enough about the game to get a feel for whether you want to buy it.  At this point I'm honestly tending towards no.  While dark sci-fi is absolutely my jam, I'm not sure this is bringing anything to the table that I can't get from Coriolis or Alien, or even Mothership, and none of those require me to own multiple d8s to play.  But supplementary materials like more pre-written adventures?  That's definitely something that could interest me.  Even if I end up running them in Alien instead.

Conclusion

This isn't really a quickstart.  There's just too much stuff in it, and it's a slog to get through.  It's not sold the game to me at all, despite being totally on brand for my own taste in RPGs.  I would love to see a signficantly stripped down version of this document, well laid out and bookmarked, because despite the somewhat negative tone of this review, I think there's a game behind here that many people would enjoy, and a better quickstart would really help to get it out there.

Liminal Quickstart Reviewed

I've just downloaded a bunch of quickstarts, and it seems like these could do with reviewing.  The criteria are going to be different to reviewing a full game.  I'll start with Liminal, since I know this one pretty damn well by now.

Content

At 51 pages split into five chapters, this is a pretty substantial quickstart.

Chapter 1 is an introduction to the game.  We start out with an explanation of what kind of game this is, and an introduction to the setting with some of the key factions briefly described.  This is followed by a brief explanation of how characters work.  By this point you can probably tell if this is a game that's going to interest you.

Chapter 2 is a set of sample characters.  They cover a wide range of skills and special abilities, despite being almost entirely mortals, which goes some way to emphasise that playing regular humans in this game can be just as interesting as the more supernatural options.  They come with a bit of flavour text and a description of what their special traits do, so have all the information you need to play with them straight off the page.  They're also ethnically diverse, and three out of four are women, which is nice to see.  This is clearly not just a game about white men.

Chapter 3 is game rules.  In a few short pages, all the key game rules are covered - core mechanic, combat, damage, healing, and a few specialist bits and pieces.  There's enough here to run a game.

Chapter 4 is setting information.  It focusses entirely on London, which makes sense.  Given that the game's primary inspiration is the Rivers of London series, you're going to want to have enough information to play a game in London.  It details how the hidden world and the mundane world interact and influence each other, piling up plot hooks as it goes.

Chapter 5 (which is mis-labelled as chapter 4) is a sample adventure.  The expansion of the HS2 terminal at Euston Station provides the hook here.  It's a pretty simple monster hunt in two parts, but manages to introduce a significant number of the setting's major players in a short space of time while giving the players plenty of room for roleplay.

Presentation

This quickstart is liberally ornamented with Jason Behnke's art, with both full page plates and half page chapter headings, making for a visually stunning document.  Worth taking a look just for this.

It's laid out in single column format, convenient for screen reading, and the PDF is fully bookmarked.  The only obvious flaw I've found is the mis-numbering of chapters.  With the exception of the art, it's also pretty printer-friendly.  I chose to print out the sample adventure for ease of running at the table, and was able to avoid printing any of the art.

The chapter ordering strikes me as odd.  I would have liked to swap the order of chapters 2 and 4, with chapter 4 immediately following the introduction to expand on the setting and the sample characters preceeding the sample adventure.  This would also put them straight after the explanation of what P-Division is, and since the sample characters work for P-Division, having that explanation first would make sense.

What can I do with it?

You can run a game.  Specifically you can run the sample adventure, and I've run it five times now.  While you might want to expand on it a bit by nailing down some of the details, it's got enough to run it straight off the document.

You can decide whether you want the buy the game.  The included setting information is enough to inspire a lot more adventures, and by the time you get to the end you should know whether you want more.

Conclusion

In short, this quickstart does exactly what a quickstart should do, introducing the game in an easily accessible fashion, and it's the standard against which I'll be comparing other quickstarts.

Home Made GM Screen

The Bundle of Holding that I bought for Delta Green included, amongst other things, PDFs of the GM screen.  I thought about buying a universal GM screen, of the kind you can slot pages into, but soon realised pretty much every one on sale was portrait, while the Delta Green screen is landscape.

I found one on DriveThruRPG, but with international postage costing as much as the screen itself, I wanted a cheaper option.  So I went DIY.

If you want to make a screen like this, you will need in addition to scissors and tape:

Thin card suitable for printing

Plastic ring binder envelopes

Some corrugated cardboard

• Print out the GM screen pages onto the card.
• Cut out pieces of cardboard the same size as the printed card.
• Insert into ring binder envelopes, making sure the open ends are not at the ends of the screen.
• Tape the envelopes together, ensuring the open ends are still open on one side.

Since I already had all these things, this effectively cost no money besides a bit of printer ink. It might not be the prettiest screen out there but it does the job.

First time running: Delta Green

I've previously played a couple of one-shots of Delta Green at Concrete Cow.  I find I enjoy Lovecraftian horror more when it's set in the present day than the classic 1920s setting, and combining it with The X-Files, one of the best TV shows of my teenage years, completely sold me on Delta Green.

Knowing what my group are like, I requested that they not make comedy characters, and they actually obliged.  Three of them have made characters based on actual people, two of which have their own wikipedia page, which has been the right kind of entertaining.  We have a CIA intelligence analyst who used to be assigned to a program investigating ESP, an engineer convinced he's built an alien spaceship, a security specialist and an archaeologist.  Already the security specialist has picked up the nickname 'Avocado' due to being decades younger than the rest of the party.

I ran them through 'Last Things Last', the adventure from the Need To Know document, as it looked like a nice introduction to the system.  Apart from some wobbles when I couldn't remember how criticals worked it all went pretty smoothly.  (I later located the relevant section of the GM screen.)  Asking for skill scores without rolling works well - necessary information could be put out there without depending on dice rolls.  A bit of a change for the players, who are used to rolling for everything, but we were starting to get the hang of it and it should get easier as we spend more time playing.  The adventure definitely helped me as a GM to make this happen.

Players were initially reluctant to use the leaning on bonds mechanic to reduce sanity loss, resulting in them spending a lot of time running away, but by the end of the first session we'd pretty much figured that one out.  I think I need to spend a little more time over the home scenes between missions and make sure the players are all clear on how that works.

Luck as a straight 50:50 was something I liked.  I used it when a PC wanted to find an archaic piece of technology, and decided success would mean he found one in an antique shop at a reasonable price.  Nice and easy for everyone to understand.


Combat was excellent.  Very smooth and uncomplicated.  The antagonist provided in the starter adventure is strong enough to be a real threat, but nothing a team of three agents with handguns (Avocado had run off at this point) couldn't handle.  The real threat here was the sanity loss - just as it should be.

I'm a little unclear on how some parts of the system work, particularly forming bonds with Delta Green, and how to deal with mental disorders (given that two players started with them and one gained another one in the first session this is quite important) but further reading the rules should sort that out.

The GM screen is very well put together.  I got the PDFs in the Bundle of Holding, so printed it out and constructed my own screen (see future post on that subject).  I referred to it quite a lot over the course of the game and it saved me a lot of searching through PDFs.  Being landscape rather than portrait, it's low enough for a short torsoed person like me to see over without any trouble, even though it did mean I had to construct my own screen rather than using one of the many generic screens available to buy online.

First impressions are that this game is a lot of fun to run.  With a bunch of adventures included in the bundle I bought, I've got enough to keep this going as long as we all want to play even without writing my own, but I also think I could have some fun writing my own adventures.  This is an excellent game and I can't wait for my hard copies to arrive.

Crew of the Aliya, part 14: Pursuit

The doctor had finished working on Lavim, and assured Alqadi that he would be asleep for the next couple of hours, and he might as well join us in the cafe for a bit.

We ordered some food, and watched a performance from a dancer with a snake in a basket.  Tahir was entranced, and asked the waiter if he could buy a drink for the dancer.  Sayah took the opportunity to steal his snacks.

We were interrupted by a call from the doctor, however.  Well before he should have been waking up, he had awoken, injected himself with enough stimulants to kill most people, caused a lot of property damage and run off.  We went to investigate.  The doctor wanted us to pay for the damage he had done.  Karim reiterated that we were not financially responsible for him.

We investigated the scene, finding out what drugs he'd taken and watching him behave strangely on the security cameras footage, cutting something out of his forehead before running away.  He had also been shouting as he went - the old name for the Judge that we'd seen before, and which according to the doctor was banned from being spoken in Djachroum under pain of having your tongue cut out.

Alqadi had a quiet word with Tahir, and then lead the way to follow Lavim away from the doctor and into the heart of Djachroum.

We found ourselves in the souk, and were almost delayed by encountering vendors offering some lovely soft furnishings, but assured them we would come back for tapestries and cushions later on.  Where would Lavim go?  Given his behaviour in the surgery it seemed likely he might be looking for more drugs.  We tried a pharmacy, but no luck.  Lila suggested we visit the arena.  This was more promising.  Sasaya's Arena played host to fights between lizard cats, which were being injected with stimulants to make them more aggressive before each fight.

The place was crowded.  Alqadi ploughed his way through the crowds while the rest of us followed in his wake, occasionally purchasing items from the local vendors when they got in the way.  Finally Alqadi and Tahir made it as far as Sasaya while the rest of the group went round to the trainers' entrance.

Lavim had been there, and recently.  We made chase, but as he bounded his way up walkways and bridges in a way that seemed almost superhuman, none of us could catch up.  Lila came closest, but not even the blessing of the Gambler was enough, and he slipped away.

Gurgeh asked Tahir if we could get a pet lizard cat for the ship, but he insisted we had other things to do.

Back on the trail we followed him across Djachroum, realising that he was heading into the machine hall, home of the station's life support system.  The idea of him causing damage down there was pretty horrific.  Purple guards blocked the entrance to the tunnel, but with some fast talk we managed to get ourselves allowed in for an hour.

We descended the tunnel until we reached a point where gravity was minimal and large floating rocks lay between us and the other side.  Tahir was immediately keen to jump across and show off his zero-g skills, but fortunately was made to tie a hyper rope to himself before he went.  After bouncing between rocks for a bit he was pulled back in.  Should he try again?

Then someone approached.  A man in a flowing purple kaftan, who floated effortly across the gap despite being blindfolded.  After we expressed our admiration for his smooth moves, he offered his help in exchange for a song.

Sayah offered, having been practicing, but between the odd circumstances and the rest of the crew insisting on being the backing track in the absence of her oud, the song of love and betrayal she performed didn't go down particularly well.

He was still willing to talk, however, and asked if we had any food.  Karim had a bottle of beer left over from our cargo run, plus some snacks he'd purchased at the arena, and the beer was enough to get the strange man on our side.  Our search could continue.

Spaghetti ConJunction 4a

Normally the part before I arrive at a convention isn't worth mentioning.  However, apparently the GM has a new random encounter table specifically for multi storey car parks, and was determined to use it.  Three times I had to stop on the up ramps - once due to a car suddenly deciding to reverse past the top of the ramp, once due to a car actually driving the wrong way round the car park, and once for the slightly less unreasonable person trying to reverse into a space near the top of the ramp.

Fortunately on the fourth floor I passed my spot check and found a space.  All this meant I was seven minutes late arriving at Geek Retreat, but since they were ten minutes late opening, that was fine, and I joined the crowd of loitering nerds until we got inside.

Geek Retreat has some new tables, and we soon had the room rearranged to our liking and were ready for sign-up.  Low on numbers though.  Where was everybody?

Game 1

I was offering Liminal again in the morning - the fifth time I've run the Fang Gang, which means I may have run it more than the actual writer.  It's a really solid adventure though, with plenty of room for GM creativity in the fine details.  Each time I run this it goes a little differently, and I've learned a lot from running it.

The group did a great job bringing the characters to life.  Once again I'm using my reworked character sheets with both male and female names on as people seem to like having the choice, so on this occasion it was Samir, Alistair, Dahlia and Tony who set out to fight vampire crime.  It's amazing how a few dice rolls can make the combat scenes turn out completely different each time.

I had fun and the feedback from the players was good, so I guess my next step is write some adventures of my own for the next round of conventions.

One useful thing about the Geek Retreat is you can go and order lunch and they'll bring it to the table.  I had my usual chicken and bacon panini.  Some day I should actually try something else.

Between the game slots we had the raffle.  I don't know how they do it, but the raffle at SCJ is always spectacular.  I think pretty much everyone who entered got a prize.  I got a voucher for Modiphius, and given that they sell a bunch of my favourite games (including Liminal) I'm going to have a lot of fun with that.

Game 2

At some point since the start of the first game, several more people had shown up.  Nevertheless, the game I signed up for got only one other sign-up.  Fortunately, it could still run with only two players.

I'd never played an OSR game before, and since part of the reason I go to conventions is to try new things, I thought I'd give Dungeon Crawl Classics a try.  The adventure was Nebin Pendlebrook's Perilous Pantry, and I'm a sucker for alliteration.

What I didn't know was that this adventure is what's apparently known as a funnel.  Accordingly, the other player and me were handed twelve characters each, and played three of them at a time.

We were somewhat hindered by noise.  With the low numbers, we were only using about half of the top floor, and there were not only a couple of tables of people playing Magic, there was also a large group playing a console game (Smash Brothers, I think) at one end of the room.  Combined with the existing noise of the other games, the three of us were having trouble hearing each other, and the game dragged at times as a result.  But when we did all manage to communicate, the game was quite a laugh, with the GM using a large red stamp on each character as they met their sudden and embarrassing demise.

There were some odd moments I particularly liked, like when we were trying to reach something high up and the ten foot pole was not cutting it.  We remembered we had a rope, and used it to tie a staff to the ten foot pole for some extra reach.

Twenty-four characters entered.  Thirteen characters left.

This was a very different style of gaming to what I'm used to.  There wasn't much in the way of character development beyond a slight incredulity that one of my original three got out alive.  It lacked the social interaction between characters that I enjoy.  While it was fun, it felt more like board game fun than RPG fun.  Possibly I'd get more out of a level 1 adventure than the level 0 funnel, but it's not something I'm going to choose over something that's more my kind of game.

If that is your kind of game though, this looks very well put together.  There were some aspects I really did like, such as the critical fumble table, and the fact that the critical fumble table is also printed on the outside of the GM screen where I could read it, so I knew exactly how screwed my character was as soon as the number came up.  This table could easily be adapted for D&D or Pathfinder games and given the size of the rulebook I saw there's probably plenty of other interesting stuff in there.

I hung around for a bit after the game to talk to a few people (mostly to Simon about the Dudley Bug Ball) and went on my way.  Fortunately I made it out of the car park without any futher random encounters and passed my luck check to get home before Storm Ciara arrived.

Reflections

This event is the lowest price one day convention I've been to at only £3 entrance, and £5 for a full day's parking right behind the venue isn't bad either.  Food is reasonably priced, and while the drinks are a little more expensive, the coffee is good enough to justify it.  Plus there's the raffle - I probably won more in prizes than it cost me to attend.

Gender balance still isn't great, with I think only two of us there at the start, but a few more women showed up later on, which is encouraging.  I know I have it easy with not having to worry about childcare.

This convention is great, and needs more love.  Even with low numbers it was still an excellent day out.  I've only made it to three out of seven events and really hope to improve that ratio, so will be hoping like crazy that the autumn event doesn't clash with any larps.  I've got adventures to run.

Ylva Talks to the Faires, part 14: Endgame

Hello, little ones.  I'm back.  For good this time.

We had to stop the wendigo.  It was the only way.  So with some careful planning to make sure we didn't end up running away in the middle of things, we headed for the heart of the forest.

The hobgoblin settlement was devastated.  Most of the bodies we found were elderly or children, with expressions of terror on their faces, although some looked like they'd been stamped on with iron boots.  It wasn't long before we found the redcaps, now living inside the hobgoblins' old hall.

I went in first to talk to them.  Yes, I know they're horrible, but they're still fey, and we had quite a nice talk really.  Yes, they were eating hobgoblins, and before you ask, I didn't eat any.

They told us about something that had been going around sucking people's brains out, and showed us one of its victims.  It was horrible.  It was obvious we were going to have to deal with this before we could take on the wendigo.  Even if there wasn't the risk of surprise brain sucking in the middle of the fight, it wasn't right to leave it preying on the redcaps.

I don't know what it was.  I didn't even get a good look at it.  I just saw Vared fighting with something invisible.  I enlarged Turgut and summoned a unicorn, as it would be able to smell where the creature was, but it didn't help much in the end.  The others destroyed the creature - some kind of glabrous sloth - and I had the unicorn cast its healing magic on Vared and Aunold.

Then Aunold made a suggestion.  We'd cast several spells in that fight that were still working.  Should we take the fight to the wendigo now?

I climbed on the unicorn's back, after casting fly to make sure I wouldn't fall if I failed at riding, and we went into the cave.  It's strange, but I felt sorry for it, seeing it lying there.  So cold, and hungry, and alone.  I wish there had been another way.  But I'm sure that's just wishful thinking.

Aunold and I flew up to rain down fireballs while Turgut and Vared took the fight to it.  It summoned some kind of earth monsters while the unicorn charged in.  We had remembered its weaknesses, and between the fireballs and Turgut's axe, we were weakening it.  We lost the unicorn to one of the fireballs, and the earth monsters were proving hard to damage, but I was feeling optimistic.

And then it suddenly leapt into the air, flew outside, and turned into something so monstrously huge we could see nothing but its face through the mouth of the cave.  As we continued to battle the earth monsters, a sudden wave of necromancy swept across us, draining the moisture out of us.  Poor Mittens.  Aunold's little bird died too.  Another attack like that would have killed us all.

I knew we'd hurt it badly, and I wondered if another fireball might be enough to stop it.  But before I could try, Aunold flew up to it holding his staff of power and broke it over his head.

For a few moments I was blinded by the sudden flash of light.  And when it cleared, the wendigo was gone.  So was Aunold.  When I looked back to the others I saw Turgut collapse, his obligation now complete.

We didn't fail.  But that's not a price I wanted to pay.

I summoned another unicorn to heal Vared and myself, and then hugged it until it had to leave.  Vared collected up all the valuables from the cave, and then we came home.  Everything seems to be settling down.  The hobgoblin leader lost his powers when the wendigo died, so the Gallians have defeated his army and gone home.  With Turgut gone, I've been made Khan.  I've asked Tonk to write some songs about Aunold and Turgut so everyone will remember what they did.  And I've heard from Taint that there is chaos in the heavens but that Aunold has taken his place amongst the gods.

All I ever wanted was my home in the Greenwood.  But I was born from the blood of the bear and the blood of the forest, and this is where my path has been leading me.  This is where I belong.

Eating While Gaming

It's quite common for people to eat while gaming, but what are the best things to eat?  After 13 years of regular tabletop gaming I've got some opinions on that subject.

Key points to consider are:
Footprint.  How much room does it take up on the table?
Convenience.  Are things like plates and cutlery required?
Mess Potential.  Nobody wants sticky dice.
Environmental.  How much waste is produced?
Health. It's not like we're getting much exercise, after all.

My home group mostly go straight from work to the host's house, and normally order takeaways to eat during the game.  Here's my analysis of some of the options out there.

Pizza

• Footprint: 1/5  Massive boxes that take up half the table.
• Convenience: 5/5  Can be eaten with hands straight out of the box.
• Mess Potential:  4/5  Potential for rogue tomato sauce or cheese grease but generally keeps to itself.
• Environmental: 3/5 Large cardboard boxes that can't be recycled due to grease, but are compostable if you have the facilities.
• Health: 2/5 Not actually that bad in moderation, but who eats pizza on game night in moderation?  Could be a source of vitamins if you go for lots of vegetable toppings, but again everyone is ordering double pepperoni.

The quintessential gaming food with wide appeal, pizza gets 15/25.

Kebabs

• Footprint: 5/5  Compact boxes that don't take up too much room.
• Convenience: 3/5 Cutlery is required, plates optional.
• Mess Potential:  3/5  Garlic sauce spillage is possible but generally well contained.
• Environmental: 1/5 Unless you've ordered something fancy (generally identifiable by being described as gyros or schwarma rather than donor or shish) kebabs normally arrive in a single use polystyrene box.
• Health: 1/5 - 5/5 Depends on exactly what you order.  Lamb donor with chips is pretty bad, but chicken shish with pitta and salad is a pretty healthy meal if you don't drown it in mayonaise.

Be careful to check food hygiene ratings before ordering.  Much more than the purview of drunk morons, kebabs get 13/25 for an unhealthy choice, and 17/25 for a lighter selection.

Burgers and chips

• Footprint: 5/5  Compact boxes that don't take up too much room.
• Convenience: 4/5 Generally handheld but some may prefer a fork for the chips.
• Mess Potential:  2/5  Small risk of ketchup leaks.
• Environmental: 1/5 The same polystyrene boxes as kebabs.
• Health: 1/5 Deep fried chips, fatty meat, and usually a load of cheese as well.

Another meal where food hygiene ratings are important if you don't enjoy being poisoned, burgers get 13/25.

Chinese

• Footprint: 3/5  Small boxes but there's a lot of them and they tend to spread out.
• Convenience: 1/5 Cutlery and plates are both required.
• Mess Potential:  2/5  High sauce levels make spillages a real risk.
• Environmental: 3/5 Plastic tubs can be recycled, and can also be washed out and reused.  Excellent for transporting miniatures or storing leftovers in the fridge.
• Health: 3/5 Again depends on exactly what you order, but stay away from the deep fried stuff and you generally get a decent portion of vegetables.

Another choice with wide appeal, Chinese gets 12/25.

Curry

• Footprint: 3/5  Not a huge number of boxes, but the naan bread will inevitable end up taking up table space.
• Convenience: 1/5 Cutlery and plates are both required.
• Mess Potential:  1/5  You will get curry sauce on your character sheet.  No exceptions.  I barely eat curry, and am not a messy eater, and yet every one of my character sheets seems to have a curry stain somewhere.
• Environmental: 2/5 Foil containers might be recyclable, but let's face it, they're going straight in the bin.
• Health: 3/5 Not as healthy as it looks with all those coconut based sauces.

Tasty but messy, curry gets 10/25.

Fish and Chips

• Footprint: 4/5  Initially looks compact but spreads out when you unwrap the paper.
• Convenience: 3/5  Technically can be eaten with just a wooden chip fork, but most people prefer real cutlery to tackle the fish.
• Mess Potential:  2/5  Grease may escape.
• Environmental: 4/5  Non-recyclable but compostable paper and boxes.
• Health: 2/5 A lot of deep fried stuff.

The British classic, fish and chips get 15/25.

Waffles

• Footprint: 4/5  Single boxes similar to pizza, but much smaller.
• Convenience: 3/5 Cutlery required, plates optional.
• Mess Potential:  4/5  A risk of rogue sauce, but generally keeps to itself.
• Environmental: 3/5 Much like pizza, boxes are non-recyclable but can be composted.
• Health: 1/5 Very very sugary.

Maybe not the first thing you'd think of for a takeaway, but nevertheless an interesting choice, waffles get 15/25.

Samosas

• Footprint: 5/5  Takes up very little space.
• Convenience: 5/5 Can be eaten by hand
• Mess Potential:  5/5  Providing you aren't dipping them in sauce, samosas are very tidy.
• Environmental: 5/5 Paper bags use significantly less material than cardboard boxes.  About the minimum amount of waste a takeaway can produce
• Health: 2/5 Usually deep fried, but normally some vegetables on the inside.

Dependent on access to a suitable Indian savouries shop, but increasing in popularity nonetheless, samosas get 22/25.

Conclusion

Samosas are the best gaming food.

Ramos Reportage, episode 10: Going Underground

Marlon's player was absent again, but after last week's getting blown up after kicking a car we assumed he was probably in the hospital. We left the team trying to figure out what to do about Trinity...

Virtue was dubious of the team's ability to actually get into Trinity, given the vast amount of cyberwear we were using, but did feel reasonably confident of her ability to hack into their network using Angeline's tracker. Quinton drugged her (which took some work, given the amount of anti-poisoning cyberwear she had) and we went for a drive. Unfortunately Virtue wasn't able to get in. Apparently after she'd stolen several million eb from them they'd tightened up security against her a bit.

We dropped Angeline back at the hotel and began working on an alternative plan: directly access their net cables. Quinton looked into city plans around the area of Trinity's radio station to find where their data cable was likely to run and located a sewer system.

The black market was more than happy to sell us city worker hazmat suits, and despite some bitter complaining about how they weren't as well armoured as our normal fashionable streetwear, we all donned them and descended through a manhole.

Insert many jokes about man holes at this point.

For once we were attempting a stealth mission, and remarkably we were actually successful in being quiet. There was a slight hairy moment when Requiem failed to notice a trip wire (due to being distracted looking at the thief sign higher up on the walls) but fortunately Rolando spotted it and stopped everyone in time. Some careful balance was needed to get through some unpleasantly slippery bits of sewer, but everyone remained upright.

Finally the cable was located (a thick yellow coax, naturally) and Virtue got to work installing a vampire tap while the others kept a lookout. Nemo spotted someone lurking in the darkness and said over silent comms that he was going to throw a grenade at it. Requiem reminded everyone that they were supposed to be being quiet, pointed out that knives are quiet, popped her wolvers and went to track down the intruder.

The intruder stabbed her in the leg and she passed out.

Nemo discovered a sword that he'd forgotten he had. ("So that's why I've been carrying this walking stick!") Quinton decided that what Aikido really needed was more kicks. More weird underground sewer people arrived. The fight continued on fairly balanced terms until Requiem woke up again, cut one intruder's arm off and reduced another to bloody ribbons in one perfectly executed slash of her mono power wolvers.

"What happened here?" Virtue asked, seeing the carnage as she finished her own work.

"Sushi!" Requiem enthusiastically replied.

They left the sewers, remembering to avoid the tripwire again on the way out, and quickly found a fire hydrant to hose themselves down. They briefly went back to the house to get changed and make sure they hadn't been followed, before returning to Angeline and Mandy at the hotel.

Angeline's commitment to Trinity was starting to waver, and with a few hard truths about how they would remove her cyberwear, make her wear unfashionable clothes and then use her as a warrior until she was killed, she was finally persuaded that maybe Trinity wasn't for her after all. Unfortunately, Trinity weren't really the type to abandon potential converts.

Angeline wanted to go to a ranch and herd cows.

"What's a cow?"

"What's a ranch?"

It turned out that tourist ranch trips for the extremely wealthy were a thing, and the team headed out of Night City to spend some time learning to ride horses in the wilderness. They were having a pretty good time until one bright sunny day...

"Why is the sky blue? The light! I'm burning!"

And if their first experience with sunburn wasn't enough, then Trinity arrived in an AV.

Requiem fired a few rounds from her Arnos. Nemo let loose with his auto shotgun. And then a minigun began turning to face them. Requiem threw herself into melee combat, removing an arm from one man and driving the blades into the face of another. Nemo got out his plastic explosive, set the timer and threw it into the AV. Rolando, who'd been practicing his martial arts skills, went to grapple one of Trinity and instead grabbed Nemo's arm and ripped it off. And another Trinity member, armed with a mono knife, went for Requiem and neatly decapitated her.

Quinton concluded that this was a good time to leave. He grabbed Nemo's remains and Requiem's head and ran.

And so Ramos Reportage was no more.  Although perhaps, somewhere in Night City, is an unusual new gang of borgs - Quinton and the Motorbikes.