ConDensed 2024

I don't know if it was luck, or just getting the vaccine done early enough, but by the time this year's ConDensed rolled around, I still hadn't had covid. What I also didn't have was my husband, who had to drop out for childcare reasons.

This was a much smaller ConDensed than the previous year, with quite a lot of people who I'd normally expect to see unable to attend. This meant a much smaller choice of games, but not so small that I couldn't find something interesting in each slot.

Game 1: Rivers of London

I wanted to play all the games on offer for Friday, but when some space opened up in Rivers of London, I jumped in. The scenario was The Font of All Evil by Paul Baldowski. Last time I played Rivers of London I played Morgan Omans, non-binary police wizard, and with the same characters on offer for this game, I decided to play them again. We were investigating the death of Edgar Marsh, also a they, which was quite emotional for Morgan (explaining why they failed every roll at the morgue.)

Rivers of London is by far my favourite version of the BRP system, with a much shorter skill list to deal with than Call of Cthulhu, and it's a fun setting to play in. Paul did a great job with this scenario, pulling in some fun details about London and its history. (We also enjoyed the notes to Americans in the book, where the more UK specific terms are explained, which the GM shared for our entertainment.) While Liminal remains my go-to system for urban fantasy in general, I'll still sign up for this, given the chance.

Game 2: SLA Industries

I've been interested in SLA for a while, but never actually got the chance to play before. Turns out the setting is everything I hoped it would be - a dystopian alien-filled televised fever dream.

We picked characters, and I went for Hassen the Wraithen scout. A purple vaguely feline alien with a big sniper rifle and a fondness for food that's still moving. Once she'd been joined by a frother, stormer and ebonite, we were ready for violence! And immediately got sent on a PR job to promote some consumer-grade weaponry. Despite having absolutely no social skills, as the only person with a charisma above average, Hassen was elected group leader.

Nevertheless, Hassen threw herself into things with gusto, doing combat demonstrations with the crappy guns, where her skill helped balance out the inferior weapons. This didn't prevent her feeling very relieved when an actual combat job came along.

Despite SLA Industries 2nd edition being kickstarted in 2019, it has an initiative system that feels like it comes from the late 90s/early 2000s when initiative systems got a bit weird. This particular one has you act in order of initiative, but first everyone has to declare intentions in reverse order. I get the point - fast characters can react to what the slower ones are doing - and it's certainly not the worst example of the concept I've come across. All the same, it feels like a lot of bookkeeping. The dice rolls are fine, and gave me a rare opportunity to use my collection of d10s, but I do wonder if the initiative system would survive contact with my home group.

That said, it's a great setting, and I would definitely play it again.

Game 3: Kult: Divinity Lost

With the game slots at ConDensed being a lot longer than usual (6 hours with a break for meals) and with a specific request from a fellow attendee for a Kult game, I broke out Gated. Normally a two session game, I was confident I could fit it in this slot, particularly since I wasn't likely to get the full 4 player group I normally run this for. I got 3 in the end, which I've done before so I knew which character to miss out and what changes to make to allow for their absence.

And so another group arrived in Rutherford Heights to discover the many and varied horrors in store. To avoid spoilers I'll just say that they managed to conclude things with creative use of lawn flamingos.

Game 4: Shadowdark

Another game I'd heard of but not had the chance to play before. Shadowdark is a classic dungeon crawling game that's very reminiscent of the old D&D box set I have on my shelf while also incorporating a lot of modern game development knowledge into something that runs very smoothly. The gimmick is that no PCs have darkvision while all monsters do, making torches and lanterns extremely important, leading to inevitable comparisons with the video game Darkest Dungeon.

The GM put a bunch of pregens on the table. I glanced over them and remembered my standard approach: when in doubt, play a ranger. So I picked up Kixime the human ranger, and we prepared for our journey to the dungeon. Except the halfling witch managed to start a bar fight, which delayed things slightly, and there was a further hold-up in the woods on the way, but we did get there eventually and with some information as to what we might find there, including some spiders with highly flammable webs.

Shadowdark. "The bad news is that the ranger's on fire. The good news is it illuminates more of the area." I'm playing the ranger.

— Savage Spiel (@savagespiel.bsky.social) November 17, 2024 at 1:58 PM

We did roll rather a lot of 1s.

I think it's a good system and I can see why it's popular, but unfortunately it did nothing for me. The game is a reaction to D&D, but what it's reacting to isn't the part of D&D I have a problem with. The game was fun, but it was fun because I was with a good GM and a really fun group of players. My pick for dungeon crawling adventures like this remains Dragonbane.

And that was that, except for a three hour journey home, which became a five hour journey thanks to a road closure on the M25. Fortunately I had a good audiobook to keep me company. It's further than I'd normally go for a weekend convention, and I was sorry not to see a lot of the people who were there last year, but I'm glad I went. I got to try out new games, play with people I don't always get to play with because their games fill up so fast, and run one of my longer games that doesn't normally see convention play. I hope next year it'll be back to full strength.