Having missed Concrete Cow 22.5 due to catching covid the week before, I was very keen to get back to it. I've somehow been recruited into helping with the organisation, but since my main role is keeping the website and social media up to date, I was able to leave setup in other hands and just show up at the start. I did arrive more or less on time for once though, and was able to park at the Old Bath House rather than having to search further afield. So overall a fairly relaxing start. Plus when I got inside I immediately found the two friends from Discord I've been looking forward to meeting for a long time - since the previous Concrete Cow, in fact, when it was supposed to happen.
Game 1: Call of Cthulhu
With my GM's golden ticket I knew I had a decent chance of getting into whatever I wanted in the morning. Two games of Call of Cthulhu were on the schedule, one with Matt Sanderson and one with Paul Fricker. Ultimately I decided on Paul's game for the pragmatic reason that I see Matt at other conventions but rarely run into Paul.
The scenario The Dreaming Ward saw us choosing characters who were about to enter a sleep study, for which they would be paid the fairly respectable (for 1926) sum of $5 per day. Then we had to decide what we were having nightmares about. My character's home town was Derry, which certainly gave me some inspiration. Then we all got to experience the rather unique form of therapy being offered in Dr Thorne's facility.
By chance my character managed to only lose one point of sanity in the whole scenario and was overall dealing a lot better with her sleep problems by the end. My only criticism of this one is that it was a bit of a rush fitting it into a 3.5 hour session - we could easily have played for another hour.
Game 2: Kult: Divinity Lost
I'd planned to run A Walk In The Park at the previous Concrete Cow, and since I particularly love the handouts I've made for this one, it felt like a good idea to bring this one out again. Once again there were enough fellow horror fans for a full party and I got to take another four hikers into my Kult version of a nice walk in the Peak District. For those who know, the handouts landed as well as always.
I'm going to be taking a break from this scenario for a bit, as I've run it a lot and I have new stuff in the works, so it was great to send it off on such a high note.
Game 3: Cthulhu Dark
My Jamesian scenario A Winter Haunting tends to be on the shorter side, generally coming in at just under three hours offline, so I thought this was a good choice for an evening game. And conveniently, there were just the number of players left to fill both evening games.
I remain entirely convinced that Cthulhu Dark, despite being written for a slightly different type of horror, is the best system for Jamesian horror. This scenario is a bunch of fun to run, and it's great not having to worry about bringing another set of character sheets - although I do bring my box of tiny skulls as a fun and tactile way of tracking fear levels.
Post-Con
Concrete Cow takes its name from the actual concrete cows less than two miles from the venue, so in the morning I met up with one of my fellow con-goers to pay them a visit.
They're really something. Particularly this small one at the back who seems to end up photobombing photos of the other cows, and is clearly ready to throw down at any moment.
Then we paid a visit to the National Film and Sci-Fi Museum where we ran into quite a few other con-goers. Photography isn't permitted in most of the museum, but there are a few designated selfie spots, so I decided to try out the Iron Throne.
Reflections
I was a little worried about numbers, given the rail strike that I knew had prevented several people from attended. I needn't have been; numbers were entirely reasonable and we had a good number of games happening in both morning and afternoon slots, plus enough people staying for the evening slot to have two games. I got to catch up with a few old friends while making new ones - and that and the gaming is what it's all about.
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