ConDensed 2022

I had a packed convention schedule planned for autumn 2022.  The Owlbear and Wizard's Staff in September, then a three-weekend run in October starting with Furnace...

Two days after Furnace I tested positive for covid.

I had to cancel my attendance at the following two events, and significantly scale back my participation in the online A Weekend With Good Friends.  By the time ConDensed rolled around again though, I was...well, still fairly ill, but well enough to run the two games I'd pitched and do a bit of setting up stuff, even if I was significantly less useful than I was last year.  If the venue wasn't conveniently less than ten minutes' drive from my house I'd probably have cancelled, but being able to go home and have a rest whenever I felt like it made everything easier.

Game 1: Abyss

If there's one thing I can be sure of at a convention it's that a game with James Mullen is worth a look.  In this case it was a game of supernatural action horror in which we would be a team of unique individuals with diverse powers fighting to protect the world from the supernatural.  Which sounded right up my street.

I picked up Paige Turner, a monster hunting librarian, who was joined by an immortal, an amazon, and an ogre.  We were dispatched to investigate a series of disappearances in a library, which turned out to have a lot more occult wossnames going on than it initially appeared.  We eventually located the culprit and defeated it, taking a brief detour via a dimension of things which didn't exist, but got home by realising that a portal back to our own world was firmly in the category of things that didn't exist so we just had to find it and step through.

It was an absolute blast, and definitely something I'd play again.  The book looked great too, with very distinctive red and black artwork.  One to look out for in future.

Game 2: Dungeon Crawl Classics

I hadn't signed up for anything on Saturday morning, but I figured I had time for a good long rest between then and the evening so I showed up to see what was on offer.  DCC at conventions tends to be funnels, which I've tried and don't particularly like, but this time someone was running a levelled game and that I was definitely up for.

I was the last to arrive at the table, being a last minute addition, and nobody had picked a thief character yet so I took that one.  As usual the challenge of thinking of a name presented itself, and the GM didn't think my choice of Alice was particularly fantasy themed - but if you're going to give me a character with an occupation of 'Cooper'...

So the four of us set off to participate in the biannual kobold cull, by whatever method we chose.  Alice initially demonstrated absolute incompetance, but fortunately Harold the cleric was rather more effective and we all survived the first encounter.  Things picked up after that though, and by the time we got to the kobold caves Alice actually managed to be useful.  Then a small child, who the entire party was already convinced was some kind of ancient wizard in disguise, disrupted our attempt at diplomacy with a magic missile.  At which point Alice pushed her off a cliff.  The magic ring and book of incantations we looted from her corpse in no way conflicted with our disguised wizard theory.

I'd like to see more levelled DCC at conventions.  It's a great game and there's so much more to it than funnels.

Game 3: Kult

After an afternoon spent resting, I was ready to run A Walk In The Park, my newest Kult scenario.  With so much depending on inter-character relationships, I was worried about numbers, but I had the four players that I wanted and I was ready to provide a suitably horrible time.

I'd prepared some handouts for this adventure.  The premise is that the characters are on a challenge hike, and have to find geocaches along the way with logbooks to record their arrival time and other items.  Being able to hand the prepared sandwich boxes to the players each time they reached a set point added an extra dimension which I thoroughly enjoyed and it looked like the players were having fun with them as well.

There's always an element of unpredictability in this scenario, largely because each character's backstory has a question for the player to answer themselves.  Sometimes those are just details for the player to know, but frequently they get worked into the scenario in new and exciting ways.  It's things like that that make Kult such a joy to run.

Game 4: Liminal

There was no way I could attend a convention at Billing Aquadrome and not run Sins of the Father, my Liminal scenario that begins with a body being found in the river at Billing Aquadrome.

I had the most efficient team of characters ever this time, bringing the adventure in at half an hour quicker than the previous offline group.  Part of that was the player who picked up the face character really knowing how to face.  That gave me an extra challenge in the form of spotlight management.  Not my best skill as a GM, as I tend more towards a 'throw the PCs into the scenario and let them sort it out' kind of approach, so I was having to put a lot of effort into making sure everyone got involved.  I don't think I entirely succeeded, and can certainly see things I could have done better.  At the same time, I did do a better job of it than I have on previous occasions, and under more difficult circumstances too.  There's room for improvement but I am improving.

Post-game

And that was that.  Finishing early wasn't entirely a bad thing, as for some reason the venue had decided we all had to be out by 6pm, despite the fact that there was still one more game slot in the evening and many people were staying on site until Monday.  Fortunately the nearby pub/carvery had been so impressed by the behaviour of those of us who'd had breakfast there that they offered us space to play the final game slot.

After eating a carvery meal though, I decided the best thing for me was to go home and rest some more.

Reflections

Venue issues aside, it was great.  I got to see old friends, meet new people, and generally have a fantastic time, despite my current health issues.  And anything that's been done twice is now a tradition, so that means we have to keep doing it every year.  Right?