ConTingency 2024

After a rather snap decision to go to ConTingency in 2023, this time I was more organised. And was also planning on bringing eight friends. As it turned out, two of them had to drop out at the last minute, which was very sad, but certainly made it easier to fit all of us into two three-bedroom holiday homes.

I arrived on Monday with my husband, giving us a couple of days to get settled in before everything kicked off properly on Wednesday. I'd been assigned the same lodge that I was in with CJ the previous year, which meant I already knew the place's niggles. Which did not stop me from getting stuck in the toilet twice.

Wednesday

Pathfinder - Sundered Waves

I don't normally play Pathfinder at conventions as it's usually Pathfinder Society which I'm not interested in joining, but there was a one-shot with pre-gens on offer - Sundered Waves - and it was about pirates, so I decided I'd give it a go.

I picked up Kaako Ashfeather, a Tengu rogue. I'd not played a rogue before in PF2, and thought it would probably be a little easier to deal with, especially as we were going in at level 5. This was not entirely correct, as the character sheets for some reason gave you all the feat names, but none of the feat descriptions. Undaunted, I pulled out my phone, loaded up Pathbuilder, and copied Kaako into it. With her feats now easily at hand, I prepared to sneak attack.

There were a couple of people in the group who I don't think had ever played PF2. One of them picked up the human fighter, probably the safest choice for a newcomer, but the other had to figure out cleric magic, without the aid of an app. Fortunately it's quite a short adventure, so even with a bit of time spent figuring out character abilities at the start, there was plenty of time for the adventure.

Looking back on the adventure it was a really nice five room dungeon type affair, with interesting fights, puzzles to solve, and plenty of flavour. Definitely the kind of thing I'd consider running as a one-shot - although I'd sort out those character sheets in advance.

Era: The Empowered - Career Day

There's not actually a rule that everyone has to play one Era game at ConTingency, but I did want to play at least one game with my husband, and since he'd enjoyed Era: The Empowered at Condensed, I thought I'd give it a go.

We were...not exactly the best group of superheroes out there. I'm not sure if this game is supposed to be a serious superhero game, but that's certainly not what we were playing. But given that our scenario involved having to go to a high school to do a career day, it made sense that we were perhaps not the brightest and best that the Empowered agency had to offer. Highjinks ensued.

Era as a system is the kind of thing that gets out of the way. I didn't find it to actively support a specific playstyle, which makes sense since it seems to be a generic system used for multiple settings and genres, but the rules didn't get in the way of doing cool stuff. I'd definitely play it again. Ideally I'd play it again with exactly the same group of people. They were all so much fun!

Thursday

Kult: Divinity Lost - Gated

One of the benefits of a five day convention is that I feel a lot more enthusiastic about pitching a two session game, as I don't feel like I'm taking up as much of people's time. My own scenario Gated normally takes two sessions to run, so I decided to give it a go.

I had a table assigned in the lounge, but decided to move it to the lodge. Kult goes better with suitable atmosphere, which is easier to achieve without other people close by, and it was also convenient, given that two of my own group were in the game.

I'd done a proper write-up of this scenario, for someone else who played it in the past and wanted to try running it, so I printed out my nicely formatted version rather than relying on my old rather messy notes. This was particularly useful as a test to see whether I'd actually put all the bits that need to be in the document into the document. The answer is no. Fortunately I could work around that by remembering the missing bits, but I do need to give this one another once over.

The game itself was great. I had an excellent group of players, who all leaned into their characters as the mystery unfolded. The convention was a really good opportunity to schedule something that is otherwise very difficult to schedule, and run one of my favourite scenarios.

Unnamed forest folk horror thing

One of my group had a new thing to try out, so a few of us gathered to tell a GMless story of how we went into a forest and bad things happened. As a work in progress it had some details to iron out, which we were able to highlight by getting confused at various points, but overall we had a fantastic time telling a story together. By the end I was already missing my character's fictional dog, the only entity in the game which actually got a name. I'm looking forward to seeing where this goes in future.

Friday

Matrons of Mystery - The Corpse in the Crypt

I got to play my own game! I thought about creating a new Matron, but ultimately decided to stick with Rosemary Braithwaite. I tend to end up changing her a little each time, as I can never remember all the details, so this time her contact was her niece who works in the art shop, but of course Pierre the giant bunny was there on his lead, wearing his little blue jacket.

We were investigating a murder on the site of an archaeological dig being filmed for a TV show. Rather than just giving us the suspect names, the GM had looked up photos of a bunch of TV stars in their younger days to portray the various characters, which I thought really helped capture the spirit of Sunday night British TV - especially the very young Tony Robinson as the presenter of the TV show.

The only negative here was that with six Matrons plus GM and a very large table, I was so far away from some of the players they could barely hear me. Fortunately when we got onto the 'Put it all together' stage of the game, we were all up on our feet, moving ourselves and the clues around as we collectively assembled our theory. In true Poirot style we gathered everyone together in the drawing room and made our accusation, which turned out to be entirely correct. Another successful case for Rosemary and Pierre!

Kult: Divinity Lost - Disco Inferno

It was Friday night, and that meant Disco Inferno, a scenario which also takes place on a Friday night. I claimed the lodge again for this, and again had two of my own group happy to not have to go far for a game.

Being in the lodge meant I could also do a better job with atmosphere. I set my Disco Inferno youtube playlist to play on my phone and set up the disco lights, and soon everyone was bopping along to Donna Summer and Sylvester.

After one unusually bad run of this scenario I'd been a bit wary of it. But it went much better when I ran it at ConDucked so I decided it was worth one more shot. And I'm really glad I did, if only for one delightful moment when three out of four characters were in the toilets, two of them having sex with other club goers and one of them playing the violin. And then having to describe what happened next, which fortunately also happened to be taking place in the toilets.

This run was everything that I wanted Disco Inferno to be, and I'll also be writing this one up properly so one of the players can run it. It's going back in the box for a while now as I'm working on new material, so I'm very happy to be leaving it on such a high note.

Saturday

Liminal - The Crown of Winter

Back in the GM seat for a game of Liminal. Rather than the newer material which I've been rather thoroughly playtesting recently, I decided to go back to one of my older scenarios, The Crown of Winter, partly because it was the middle of winter and it felt thematically appropriate, and partly because I'd be able to run it directly from the Liminal Casebook.

We were assigned one of the giant tables in the main hall, but fortunately a much smaller table was available nearby. There was still noise around us, but we were close enough that I could make myself heard.

I have a specific set of pre-gens that I wrote for this scenario, but I wrote them back in 2020 so decided to give them a bit of an overhaul. While the backgrounds remained largely the same, a few abilities got swapped around, and some new limitations were added. Minor tweaks, but enough that I was happier with the end result.

It was really nice to get back to this older scenario and see what it was like to run from the book. While the layout in the casebook isn't quite how I do things in my own notes (I like to have the NPC stat blocks at the end rather than the beginning) it was otherwise very nicely done, and having had it properly edited was a definite improvement. Props to everyone involved.

There was some joking right before the game that I should roll a d6 and use that to determine which RPG called Liminal I should use to run this game of Liminal. I of course pointed out that I couldn't do that. Because I only own copies of two of the RPGs called Liminal. (Seriously, if you're planning on publishing a new RPG, take a few minutes to google your title! This one's been done.)

Call of Cthulhu - Shared House

Sometimes you barely need a mythos threat to make a Call of Cthulhu scenario horrifying, at least when CJ Romer is the GM. We were a group of students moving into a shared house in Brichester, which we all immediately took as an excuse to embody the very worst aspects of both student life and 1987.

I played the law student, who showed up in her own Citroen 2CV, wearing a lavender power suit with massive shoulder pads and with a blonde poodle perm. Unlike some of her housemates, she actually had a pretty exciting first couple of days at university, and while by the end of the scenario she did have to find a new place to live, she and her new pet mouse were both pretty happy with how things were going.

Cyberpunk Red

I specifically requested Cyberpunk Red for Saturday night, as I knew my husband was free and we'd have another chance to play a game together. Along with two more familiar faces and one new person, we dived into a mission to poison avocadoes on a container ship. Literally dived. We used a submarine.

I've now played Selene the netrunner enough times that the GM said he might have to start giving her XP. My husband picked up the solo he'd played at ConDensed and we once again argued about the 6th street gang and whether they were true American patriots or a bunch of complete arseholes who kept trying to kill me.

The avocado poisoning went off reasonably smoothly, but we also found a weapons cache on the ship. We could have stolen them...but we could also sell the information that they were there, and then get paid to steal them. Why mess around fencing stolen goods when you could have someone else do the work and still get paid twice?

Sunday

Kult: Divinity Lost - The Murder Shack

I originally only pitched three games, but I had Sunday morning free and felt like doing something else, so pitched a game of The Murder Shack, a Call of Cthulhu scenario from the Blasphemous Tome. It's not a game that needs full CoC character sheets really, and even for Kult purposes I have it slimmed down to stats and one disadvantage, which ends up as far more of a roleplay prompt than anything mechanical most of the time anyway. I had two familiar faces (the same as the previous night's Cyberpunk) and one new person.

I ran this in the bar, but really should have arranged for a lodge. Kult needs atmosphere, more than most games, and the bar just didn't have it. All the same, The Murder Shack is such a fun scenario that it still went well, even if it did end with a remarkably low number of murders having occurred.

Casting the Runes - An Unwelcome Spectre - The Mysterious Haunting of the Bell Hotel, Thetford, Norfolk

Another game with CJ, and while I still don't care for Gumshoe, I knew CJ's somewhat Wodehousian take on Jamesian horror would be a good time, and two of my group also joined this game.

We were investigating a haunting at a hotel in Thetford, on behalf of a friend whose husband had seen a ghost there, and as a result had become religious, and thus acceptable to her family, and therefore no longer fun. We did indeed debunk the haunting, although given the vast amount of other stuff we found in the process, I'm not sure if it did any good.

Escape from Dino Island

There was no official slot on Sunday evening, but having had a chat with a friend who played my Thirsty Sword Lesbians game at ConDucked, I offered to run an extra game. He provided the lodge and one other player. I found two more, both from my Thursday Kult game, and off we went.

I had all the materials printed out, including the island map, and had brought one extra thing: a box of small plastic dinosaurs. This was great fun. If I needed a specific dinosaur to appear, there was generally something suitable in the box to put on the map. If I needed a dinosaur generally I could grab one at random.

Dinos in action

 A hunter, a survivor, a paleontologist and a kid made their way around the island looking for an escape route that didn't involved walking right through the middle of a herd of angry carnivores, meeting all kinds of dinosaurs and other strange things along the way, before finally finding themselves unexpectedly on the Yucatan peninsula right before the asteroid hit. A suitably cinematic ending, to both the game and the convention.

Reflections

I'm really glad I was able to introduce a few new people to this lovely convention. I really hope this will be an annual thing from now on. I managed to pace myself reasonably well so I wasn't exhausted by the end, and found time for going swimming and a walk along the beach. I picked up some books I really wanted in the bring and buy, while also offloading half the stuff we'd brought to sell. My group are lovely people and it was wonderful to spend time with them in addition to all the new friends I'm discovering at ConTingency. In short, I had a brilliant time

Wicker Valley, episode 26: Preventing A War

We regrouped at the junk yard for a sit down and a coffee, and to check on the current state of the various factions now the ward was down. Michael had a chat with the fae via his communication stone, and managed to convince them not to invade just now. Adam called James at the Foundation, with similar results. We had some breathing room, but not much.

I found myself checking for large open areas outside of town, just in case there did end up having to be a massive battle, in the hope that they could at least not have it on the Wicker Valley high street. Elizabeth said something about a scene in a movie, and I thought she meant the Battle of Five Armies from The Hobbit, but apparently it was something from Twilight. I wouldn't know. Some things are too much even for a demon.

After some careful consideration, and making sure that Robin was OK and well supplied with biscuits, we concluded that it would be a good idea if Agnes and Elsa were to retire to the south of France. A lot of people wanted Agnes dead, and for all we'd been through recently, I don't think any of us wanted that. She's still my aunt, after all.

So we met up with Mary for a nice friendly chat and to talk about what was going to happen next. We had some answers now. Mary was figuring out all the things she'd forgotten because of Agnes draining her, and it was now pretty clear that she was the one who'd called for a chosen one, resulting in the current state of Michael and me.

Mary had a less France-based suggestion though. One that would resolve our current problems, most of which were a result of Agnes' abnormally long lifespan. She could send us back into the past again, to undo repairing her heart.

We really didn't like that. Yet another death didn't sit right, especially one that we could - and did - prevent. But we had another idea. How about if instead of killing her, we did something to protect her from Agnes' magic, so that both of them would live out their natural lifespans?

It's amazing, just how big rats look when you're a spider, even when you're quite a big spider. It took me a while to get all my legs sorted out too, and as for producing silk, that was just downright weird. Still, we had a job to do, and that started with finding our way through a house full of magic doors based on a map that one of us had stored in their memory, since we couldn't bring anything back.

After some rather embarrassing efforts at silk production, or butt string as we all ended up calling it, we got out into the garden. Elizabeth located the herbs we needed, and having finally got my spinnarets under control, I wove them together into a charm. Then we had to find Mary, and convince her of what was going on, who we were, and so forth, which was all rather complicated, although simplified considerably when it turned out Mary could use magic to speak to rats.

It was looking like it might work. Just so long as we all managed to hold onto our own minds. I was getting dangerously close to fully embracing spiderhood.

Character Creation Challenge 7: MÖRK BORG

After the stress of vintage D&D, I wanted something a bit simpler. So off to Scvmbirther for a MÖRK BORG character....

Name: Merkari

Class: Occult Herbmaster

HP:2/2

Omens:1 (d2)

You are Merkari

Raised in calm isolation in the Sarkash dark.

Born of the mushroom, raised in the glade, watched by the eye of the moon in a silverblack pool.

Shrewd and Nihilistic. Lost three toes, limps. Obsessively collects small sharp stones.

Occult Herbmaster

Portable Laboratory

You carry a portable laboratory and continually search for frequently expended ingredients. Daily you have the materials to create two randomly determined decoctions and can brew a total of d4 doses. If unused they lose vitality after 24 hours.

List of Decoctions

1. Red Poison Toughness DR12 or -d10 HP.
2. Ezumiel's Vapor Pass a DR14 test or severe hallucinations for d4 hours.
3. Southern Frog Stew Vomit for d4 hours, pass a DR14 test or you can do nothing else.
4. Elixir Vitalis Heals d6 HP and stops infection. Can be habit-forming.
5. Spider-Owl Soup See in darkness, climb on walls for 30 minutes.
6. Fernor’s Philtre Translucent oil, must be dabbed right into the eye. Heals infection and gives +2 on Presence tests for d4 hours.
7. Hyphos’ Enervating Snuff Berserk! Two attacks per round but defend with DR14. Lasts one fight. Must be snorted, causes sneezing.
8. Black Poison Toughness DR14 or -d6 HP and blinded for one hour.

Abilities

• Strength+1
• Agility-1
• Presence±0
• Toughness±0

Equipment

• Waterskin and 1 day's worth of food
• Staff d4 damage
• Leather armor -d2 damage, tier 1
• Sackcloth bag, and 12 small sharp stones
• Rope, 30 feet
• Shield (-1 HP damage or have the shield break to ignore one attack)
• 106 silver

No interesting animals on this one, sadly. I have fond memories of Captain Beaky the Wonder Hawk and he wasn't even part of my character's equipment. But this one's pretty well equipped and the random decoctions look fun. Let's have a go. Dice say we're getting Ezumiel's Vapor and Black Poison. Merkari is ready to mess people up.

 

I think I could have a lot of fun with Merkari and their collection of sharp rocks. I used my new sharp dice to roll those decoctions, so I find them pretty relatable.

Character Creation Challenge 6: Liminal Horror

Liminal Horror is a game of modern cosmic horror, and is nothing to do with the Liminal RPG. Let's roll some dice.

Alex Carter

Background: Garbage Collector

STR 10

DEX 12

CTRL 10

5 HP

Gear: Smartphone, cut resistant gloves (+1 Armor), hi-vis vest, reach extender, safety glasses, $600

Aesthetic: Grunge minimalist

First encounter with the unknown: You read something not meant for mortal minds.

Ideology: Morality is black and white.

Appearance: small, with an elongated face and blunt speech patterns.

Personality: cautious, but vengeful, and disowned by her family.

Significant person: her cousin Mike, the one family member who still talks to her.

Contact: Mike's husband, a software engineer.

Looks like Alex had a pretty rough life up until this point, what with her parents throwing her out, and given that this is a horror game, it's probably about to get even worse. I wonder what that strange book she rescued from the garbage truck was?

Character Creation Challenge 5: Basic D&D

I picked up an old D&D set in an antique shop back in 2001 or so. I think it's what people called Moldvay, since his name is in it. I used the d6 that came in the box to roll the stats.

Name: Opal Proudfoot

STR 13 - +1 to hit, damage and opening doors
INT 12  - Reads and writes native languages
WIS 13 - +1 on magic saving throws
DEX 16 - +2 on "to hit" rolls, -2 bonus on AC, +1 initiative
CON 11 - No adjustment to hit points
CHA 9 - No adjustment to reactions, 4 max retainers, 7 retainer morale

(lowered INT to improve DEX, +10% XP for having 13+ in both STR and DEX)

Class: Halfling

Hit points: 6

Special abilities:
+1 bonus with missile weapons
-2 AC when attacked by creatures larger than man sized.
+1 initiative
10% chance of being detected when hiding in woods or underbrush
1/3 chance they will not be seen in normal light if the character finds cover and remains quiet and still

Saving throws:
Death ray or poison: 10
Magic wands: 11
Paralysis or Turn to Stone: 12
Dragon Breath: 13
Rods, Staves or Spells: 14

Alignment: Neutral

Money: 0gp

Equipment:
Chain mail armour
Shortbow
Quiver with 20 arrows
Short sword
Backpack
Flask of oil
Lantern
Iron rations

No, I'm not going to work all the armour class wossnames. You can't make me. Do your own maths, nerds.

Character Creation Challenge 4: Matrons of Mystery

I'm going to do my own character for my own game because why not?

Personal Details

Name: Rosemary Braithwaite
Village: Lyme Bay
Personal Style: Hippy/Bohemian
Hobby: Rabbit Keeping
Past Career: Hotel Manager
Past Relationship: Husband George, deceased, hotel chef
Children/family: None.
Contacts: Lizzie at the farm shop that sells rabbit food.

Investigation Styles

Physical +0
Logical +1
Intuitive -1
Gregarious +2

Rosemary had a happy marriage to her husband George, working together at a south coast hotel. When George died she moved to Lyme Bay to retire. She has no children, but has instead devoted herself to rabbit keeping. Her favourite is a brown Flemish Giant called Pierre, who she often takes for walks on a lead. She's struck up a close friendship with Lizzie at the farm shop, after using her management skills to help her make the case for getting a pay rise at work. Lizzie knows all the local farmers and has inside info on all animal related matters. She also thinks Pierre is absolutely adorable.

Character Creation Challenge 3: Don't Rest Your Head

Don't Rest Your Head is a game about insomniacs who have failed to sleep for so long that they have become Awake. They can see reality. And reality can see them. Yes, it's a horror game.

Jenny Walsh

What's Been Keeping You Awake?

The cold. My parents threw me out in the middle of winter and I've got nowhere to go. It's so cold that I'm afraid if I fall asleep I'll freeze to death. So I haven't slept.

What Just Happened To You?

I saw something in the snow, and it wasn't human. I was sitting on a park bench, resting for a minute, and saw it go up to the next bench. There was someone sitting there, and it sort of wrapped itself around them, and then they were gone. That's when I started running.

What's On The Surface?

Average height, short blonde hair which I haven't been able to brush recently, hidden under a bobble hat, wrapped up in a ton of layers with a big coat on top. I tend to try to make myself look small and inconspicuous.

What Lies Beneath?

Rage. It's like I've spent my entire life bottling up rage, but being too afraid to let it out.

What's Your Path?

 I need to figure out who I really am, now I'm outside of the box my parents tried to force me into.

Choose Responses

Fight 2, Flight 1

Determine Talents

Exhaustion talent: breaking things. When I let out the rage, nothing stands in my way.

Madness talent: shrinking. I can make myself so small that I can fit through any space and go unnoticed anywhere.

Character Creation Challenge 2: Monster of the Week

I play Monster of the Week on Tuesdays at the moment, so let's have one of those.

Sandra Bellows

Playbook: The Spooky

Look: Woman, burning eyes, nerdy clothing.

Charm +2
Cool +0
Sharp -1
Tough -1
Weird +2

Moves

Premonitions: At the start of each mystery, roll +Weird. On a 10+, you get a detailed vision of something bad that is yet to happen. You take +1 forward to prevent it coming true, and mark experience if you stop it. On a 7-9+ you get clouded images of something bad that is yet to happen: mark experience if you stop it. On a miss, you get a vision of something bad happening to you and the Keeper holds 3, to be spent one-for-one as penalties to rolls you make.

The Sight: You can see the invisible, especially spirits and magical influences. You may communicate with (maybe even make deals with) the spirits you see, and they give you more opportunities to spot clues when you investigate a mystery.

The Big Whammy: You can use your powers to kick some ass: roll +Weird instead of +Tough. The attack has 2-harm close obvious ignore-armour. On a miss, you’ll get a magical backlash.

Gear

Shotgun (3-harm close messy)
Big knife (1-harm hand)

The Dark Side

Hallucinations
Pain
Paranoia

Personal

Archaeology's not supposed to be a dangerous profession, despite what happens in certain movies that I'm sure I don't have to name, and for most of my career, my life has been free of giant boulders, Nazis, and suchlike. Most of it.

The dig site was the remains of an old manor house. It had burned down some time in the 16th Century, but the foundations got uncovered during road building, so in we went. There was a whole sub basement still pretty much intact. Incredible stuff! The funny thing is, I don't actually remember what it was I saw in there. I just remember the trip to hospital after they pulled me out of there. I'm not sure I want to remember.

So now I can see things that are invisible, which would be great if I couldn't also see things that just plain aren't there. I can see glimpses of the future, which has given me raging paranoia. And I can hurt people with magic, although there seems to be one of those cosmic balance things going on any time I do.

I've got a whole new profession now. Monster hunting.

Character Creation Challenge 1: CY_BORG

The goal of the Character Creation Challenge is to create 31 new characters in the month of January. I don't know if I'll actually do them all (not least because I'm away at ConTingency for several days in the middle of it) but I'm going to pull random books off my shelf and create characters when I have time.

So I'm kicking it off with CY_BORG, where character creation means going to PUNKMAKER and seeing what I get:

YOU ARE DUZI

@math_duzi_571655

A gutterscum Burned Hacker; holomorphed face, fiddles with jewelry, and geeking out over explosives. You desire change. On a deep dive of the Cyber Cosmos, you’ve found a terrible truth: Nanobacteria is seeping into the Net. What does that even mean? Who’s covering it up?

You have a 39,000¤ debt to a death cult run by a board member from a powerful corp.

 

Strength ±0

Agility -3

Presence ±0

Toughness ±0

Knowledge +2

HP 6/6

Glitches 2 (d2)

 

BURNED HACKER

You were one of the sharpest deckers in Cy. No one could use tech or warp the world with an App like you could. You don’t know what went wrong. You messed up. Maybe you were tricked; maybe you got sloppy.You glimpsed a terrible truth, and now you’re burnt. No collective, no fallback, nothing.

MerzApp
Assaults every sense with noise. Test Toughness DR16 or be blind, deaf and unable to act for d3 rounds.

 

GEAR

• 100¤
• Custom cyberdeck covered in glue, with 6 slots
• Coupon for 10% off 4 doses of your favourite drug
• Crowbar, d4 damage
• Small but jailbroken Robo-K9 (5 HP, bite d4, only obeys you)
• Monosword, d8 damage
• StyleGuard, -d2 damage (Looks just like clothes!)

APPS

• MerzApp
  Assaults every sense with noise. Test Toughness DR16 or be blind, deaf and unable to act for d3 rounds.
• CTechAttak
  d3 nearby cybered targets lose a total of 4d10 HP.

That bit about discovering nanobacteria seeping into the net sounds like the reason Duzi got burned. Somewhat ironically, the debt to the death cult is probably something to do with Duzi still being alive. They've fallen foul of some very dangerous people, which required a complete change of identity. The death cult are very good at making people disappear, and people don't tend to ask a lot of questions afterwards, which is just what Duzi needed. Of course they now live in fear of missing a payment. Nobody wants to have their life repossessed.