I wasn't really sure until a few days before that ConDensed was actually going to happen. Turns out I'm not the only one. This event was originally planned for November 2020 and booked well in advance, and the venue, Billing Aquadrome, has changed hands since then. At least four times. Most recently, six weeks ago. It's only thanks to one of the organisers doing a site visit between then and the event that we actually had the use of the indoor venue and didn't have to share with a children's disco.
But by the time I arrived on Friday morning, we had a venue, and if the staff were a little surprised to see us, at least they were there to sell us coffee. Since my house is about 10 minutes from site, I decided to volunteer to help with the set up, and soon found myself setting up the board game library and sanitising the gaming tables. Then I spent some time on the reception desk checking people in and selling them game tickets, which was also a useful way of hearing a lot of people's names. Some of which I even remembered.
The problem with RPG conventions, of course, particularly for someone with mild face blindness, is that there's an awful lot of middle aged balding white men with beards and glasses and it's really hard for me to tell them all apart.
Game 1 - Matrons of Mystery
I decided to kick things off with a game of Matrons of Mystery. Four people signed up to be old ladies solving murders, and soon the death of a bellringer was escalating into utter chaos, ultimately resulting in the crime being pinned on one of two co-conspirators while the other got away due to the machinations of one of the Matrons. Certainly an ending I didn't expect.
This was the first opportunity I'd had to run the game in person, without the aid of a virtual whiteboard. I used wipe-clean cards from All Rolled Up and dry wipe pens in a variety of colours to display suspects, clues and secrets, and while it does mean you need a reasonable amount of table space, it works well. The different colour pens really helped, making it easy to quickly count up how many of each type of thing were on the table.
Game 2 - Matrons of Mystery
I have a scenario that's set early in the morning at a roleplay convention, so of course I had to run it in the 9am slot on Saturday. I had four players signed up again, but one person wasn't well so we played with three. Since he'd been a player in the previous night's game, at least I knew he wasn't missing out completely.
Mystery solving went rather quicker this time, and I suspect the number of players is a factor here. Three player games do seem to wrap up faster than four player games, possibly due to needing less time to give everyone the spotlight, and possibly because there are fewer people coming up with solutions at the end. None of which is bad, of course, but it is interesting to note.
It seems like people had a lot of fun with the two sessions, so hopefully there'll be some interest once I get it onto DriveThruRPG.
Game 3 - Black Code
I had originally planned to play Casting the Runes with CJ Romer on Saturday afternoon, but since nobody else had signed up and there was no sign of CJ either, I jumped into a game of Black Code since there was still a space. Probably a good thing I did, since one of the signed up players seemed to be missing too.
Black Code is a game I'd been wanting to try out for quite a long time. A cyberpunk game that's focused more on the transhumanism side of cyberpunk than the hacking side. I was dubious of the system, which seemed complicated from what I'd read, but in practice turned out to be very easy to get my head around. The archetypes were appropriate to the genre and the setting was imaginative, with some variations on the standard cyberpunk city that I wasn't expecting.
All in all I was thoroughly impressed, and will most likely pick this up at the next convention I go to. The biggest trap most cyberpunk games fall into is taking too much influence from Cyberpunk 2020 and Shadowrun, and this one's pitched it just right. Whether I can persuade my home group to play it, I don't know, but it's worth a try.
Game 4 - Call of Cthulhu
When I saw there was a space left in Matt Sanderson's game, The Blue, on Saturday night, I jumped in. People have been talking about how great it is online, and I've played with Matt enough times to be sure of a good time. Even if this was the first time in person.
The venue was pretty full on Saturday night, and with a group of six players plus GM, we were spread out enough that it was difficult to hear each other. So we decamped to the static caravan that two of the group were staying in, and played there. I'd never been in one of the static caravans before, so didn't really know what to expect, but there was a roomy lounge with plenty of space for the seven of us to sit comfortably. Cups of tea and coffee were provided, and the game resumed.
We were a team of divers, surveying a newly appeared blue hole to find out if it was suitable to be marketed as a tourist attraction. It won't be a surprise to any Call of Cthulhu fans that the answer was an emphatic no, but I certainly wasn't expecting the reason why. As always, a great game, and worth staying up significantly past the official end time for.
Game 5 - Starfinder
After the late night on Saturday, and given that there was nothing on Sunday morning that I felt desperate to join, I decided to have a bit of extra sleep and arrived just in time to observe the silence for Remembrance Sunday. It took me a long time to decide on a game for the afternoon, but I finally settled on Starfinder.
I don't have much of an interest in organised play, so ignored most of the Pathfinder Society and D&D Adventurer's League games on offer, but this particular game not only offered pre-gens, but also had one of my favourite PC party concepts: a band.
The other two players had already sat down at the table, knowing where they were going, and had picked the lead singer and drummer for their characters. I had a choice between an Ysoki technomancer keyboard player and a human engineer bass player. I took the engineer, because it's that long since I last played Starfinder that I have no memory of how magic works, but figured I could probably manage the engineer.
We were on our way to a concert, where we were going to perform and finally make it big, when our ship broke down and we had to land at the space motorway services and figure out a new way to get to the show. With a guiding principle of 'what is the most metal thing we can do here?' we somehow made our way to the stage and into fame and fortune.
While there was another game slot in the evening, I had my own online campaign to run on Sunday night, so headed home to get ready.
Reflections
This is a convention I really wanted to succeed. While this was the first event, it was run by the same team as ConTingency, so they've had a lot of practice in this kind of thing. Numbers were apparantly around 150, which is excellent for a first event, especially given that we're still in a global pandemic and a lot of people still aren't doing face to face conventions. The last I heard before I left was that we'd raised £1000 for charity as well.
Diversity looked pretty good, at least by the standards of RPG conventions. With the convention organisers all being women, I could be confident that I wouldn't be the only one there, which is always reassuring. Despite the usual dominance of middle aged balding white men with beards and glasses, three of my five games had other women in, and in Matt's game we actually outnumbered the men. There's still a long way to go but things are getting better.
Despite some issues with the other people using the site hanging around in the venue, it was pretty well suited to gaming with plentiful tables of a suitable size to sit a group around and use a battlemap where required. Free wifi and a bar available at all times were an additional bonus. The staff were very friendly, and I got the impression they enjoyed having us there. While the static vans apparently weren't quite up to the standards of the park used for ConTingency, they seemed pretty nice to me. While a little more choice of food would have been nice (I ate far too many chips) it was very convenient not having to go anywhere, and there were other options for people who didn't mind leaving the building.
Going back to a face to face convention was exhausting. I wasn't sure I was going to make it to the Saturday night game, and I'm glad I cut down a bit on Sunday. With ConTingency being significantly longer than ConDensed, I'm going to have to be careful to pace myself and not overdo it.
But ultimately, I had a wonderful time, got to play some amazing games, talked to old friends and new, and really hope we'll be doing it all again next year.
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