After switching to online play for last year's Owlbear over ongoing covid concerns, I decided this year I was going to go for it and show up in person. There was a new venue this year - St Patrick's Irish Club in Leamington Spa - and it looked like an easy drive.
Things kicked off on the Friday night with curry and the pub, but feeling a bit socialised out after larping the previous weekend I decided to skip that part, save myself the extra drive, and show up on Saturday morning. With the venue only an hour's drive away, staying over didn't seem necessary.
I might have slightly reconsidered my stance on that when waking up unnecessarily early on Saturday morning.
Game 1: Things from the Flood
I've played Tales from the Loop a few times now, but this was my first time playing Things from the Flood. The game world is the same, but several years later and after the explosion of the Loop. This worked perfectly for me. While I don't remember the 80s all that well, I was a teenager in the 90s, so playing a group of 16-18 year olds in 1996 is spot on for me. The kid archetypes of the original game have been updated to ones more suited to 90s teens, with things like Motorhead, Party Animal and Snob.
The premise for the game, however, was that we were a band trying to make it big by winning the Battle of the Bands, so we began by deciding what instruments we played, and suggesting names for the band, eventually agreeing on Supergods.
Everything I like about Tales from the Loop is there in Things from the Flood, except in the 90s. So basically I'm going to have to buy this one.
Game 2: Kult
Having done the work of getting Called to Account ready to run in person at Concrete Cow 22, I wanted to give it a few more outings. This game never ceases to surprise me, starting from the beginning when the characters were all immensely suspicious of each other in a way they've never been before, to the end when one of them actually walked away relatively unscathed.
One thing that made me happy was the amount of laughter this game caused. There's nothing like a horror game for a good giggle.
There was an evening visit to the pub, but I decided to head home while it was still light and get a good night's sleep. Given how absolutely exhausted I was in the evening, this was the right choice.
Game 3: Liminal
Fortunately I checked Warhorn before going to bed, so knew that Sunday's morning games started at 9.30am instead of 10am. Unfortunately that meant getting up half an hour earlier than what I already considered an unreasonable time on Saturday. Maybe next time I'll stay over.
Sunday morning's game was one last outing for The Reid Legacy before my first few scenarios get temporarily retired in favour of playtesting the new material. The P-Division MTAC squad, much envied for having a team name that actually sounds cool, went hunting for a stolen book and dug up some of London's dark history in the process.
This time in addition to the character sheets I'd also printed out my 'how to play Liminal' rules summary that I normally include on the character sheet document when playing online. I think this was useful, as it meant it was there for new players to refer to throughout the game rather than having to remember what I said at the beginning. I'll definitely use these in future games, and might write something similar for other games I run.
Reflections
The Owlbear and Wizard's Staff is to some extent the reason I joined Twitter back in 2019, having heard that the organiser was looking for female GMs, and it was wonderful to finally get there in person. I got to meet a lot of people I'd previously only seen as faces on a computer screen, or as names on a Twitter post. Which certainly made figuring out who I was talking to more difficult. Name badges, preferably including Twitter handles and icons, would be the one improvement I would suggest for this event. Roll on next year...