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.

Furnace XIX

Once again it was touch and go whether I would make it to Furnace. Two weeks earlier I'd picked up a very nasty cold, and then on the Monday before I had covid and flu vaccines which knocked me out for a couple of days. But by Friday morning I was feeling well enough to make the drive.

In theory it takes a little over two hours to drive to the Garrison. In practice it seems to be getting longer and longer. This time I allowed three hours to get me there by 6pm as planned and still ended up arriving half an hour late. Fortunately dinner was booked for quite a bit later than that. A group of seven of us went out to a nearby Italian restaurant for a bit of pre-convention socialising. By the time we got back it was 11pm and we pretty much all went straight to bed.

Saturday began with breakfast at the Garrison, and then a trip to the car to retrieve the bring and buy bag which I'd been too tired to bring in the night before. Games are heavy. I had a quick browse of other people's books and then headed to the cells for my first game.

Game 1: Star Trek Adventures

Lower Decks is amongst my favourite Star Trek, so seeing a STA game in that setting, I had to sign up. I quickly found the character based on D'Vana Tendi and claimed her as my own. Along with Marcus (engineering), Jack (medical) and Seleya (command) we began our mission: to make sure the group of diplomats visiting the ship were not alerted to any of the usual nonsense that goes on in Lower Decks.

I began by making some adjustments to the alarm system, so that in the event that an alarm went off, instead of the klaxon there would be a sudden burst of Orien space shanties. Which didn't quite happen, as I'd got the wrong data chip and when something strange happened with the transporters, we got a sudden burst of Klingon acid punk. Seleya demonstrated great diplomatic ability by convincing the diplomats that it was in fact a welcoming fanfare.

Then of course we had to find the surprise tagalongs from the transporter, involving the traditional crawl through the Jeffries tubes, an attempt to communicate with a Tamarian, and creative use of the transporter beam. I could picture every scene. Wonderful stuff.

Game 2: Liminal

After a number of attempts to get to play the scenario The Edge of Reality, I finally got lucky here (or rather used my GM pick to get in.) I picked up a rather dubious antiques dealer/werewolf and we got to work looking into a mysterious death accompanied by some suspiciously helpful horoscopes. The scenario involved a little more sci-fi than the average game of Liminal, and was a thoroughly good time.

Then it was down to the bar for dinner. The hotel had utterly confused us by actually changing the menu for the first time in years. I went for the confit chicken breast with chorizo, potatoes, wilted spinach and saffron mayonnaise, and was rather impressed. Having eaten everything to my taste on the previous menu a number of times before, it was great to have something new.

Game 3: Liminal

I was in the GM seat for the evening game, running my newest Liminal scenario, Blood, Sweat and Tears. This one started out as part of a campaign I ran, and didn't go too well as I wrote it for a crew with a necromancer and then the necromancer's player was ill and couldn't make it. I've now substantially reworked it (to the point where events happen in almost reverse order) and it now runs a lot smoother and is no longer necromancer dependent. I'd run the new version twice before, and now had it polished into a version that's close to being publishable.

One fun part of running this one is that it's set in a very small area and incorporates significant amounts of local history. To the point where I could tell the players to feel free to google any named locations - anything they found was most likely true.

I also came up with a new set of pre-gens for this one - a touring band who alternate playing gigs and solving mysteries. The players did a great job embracing the unusual crew, and by 11pm the mystery was solved and they were ready to get to the next gig.

Game 4: Cthulhu Dark

Sunday morning I was GMing again, this time with my newest Jamesian horror scenario, The Temple of Artemis. Originally written for a game season on the Raspy Raven discord, this one had also had two previous runs and is coming close to its final form. Which meant I was scribbling notes on my notes as we went, and the whole thing needs a thorough rewrite to match the game I actually run.

Once again the players did a great job embodying the characters as Miss Williams took them to visit the creepy old mansion she'd just inherited and unsurprisingly discovered supernatural goings on in between some very substantial Edwardian meals. All survived with their minds intact, although it was a close thing, particularly for Miss Renfrew, and they all had to play a lot of golf to recover their nerves.

I didn't have a game booked for slot 5, having been unlucky in the raffle, and while I did offer to run a game for gameless people, not enough were interested to make it viable. And in any case, I was still pretty tired. So I stuck around for the raffle, just in case I won anything (I didn't) and then headed home.

Another lovely weekend at the Garrison. Here's hoping none of us caught covid this time!

Dragonbane: Shadow Over Gloomshire

I pitched Shadow Over Gloomshire for a long block at MK-RPG and immediately saw an issue. This adventure supposedly lasts 3-4 sessions, and I'd pitched it for an 8 week long block. What was I going to do in the other four weeks?

As it turned out, that wasn't an issue. I'd booked a holiday for week 8, and week 3 was so incredible hot that half the group were too ill to play and we cancelled. Allowing one week for character creation, I'd only need one extra session of material.

Week 1: Character Creation

Character creation for Dragonbane isn't exactly complicated, but it does take a while. I gave people the standard kin options, plus cat people because I like them, and the standard profession options, plus paladin and demon hunter from the adventure. I suggested Mariner might not be the ideal profession here, given how little water was involved.

Rather than how it's described in the book, I had each player roll a set of stats, and then gave them the option to use any of the rolled sets of stats. This is because my husband has a tendency to roll unusually good stats. I've done this before with Pathfinder 1 games, to prevent the party from ending up as Husband and his Puny Minions. As predicted, he rolled some good stats, and while not everyone chose to use them, the party were fairly well balanced at the end.

The final party was:

• Dr Hovis Crumb, mallard scholar
• Grimduck McQuack, mallard hunter
• Lady Mazikeen (Maze), halfing paladin
• Felis Nightstabber, cat person thief
• Kaine Wolfram, wolfkin fighter
• Halvelda Greycape, human animist mage

Now I had to work out hooks. I decided the paladin could have an invitation from Minerva, and the scholar suggested a research trip. I still had to nail down some details, but I decided to go ahead with everyone meeting in a bar, with the other characters largely going along for mercenary reasons.

In keeping with the tropes of horror I decided to have a harbinger - a strange old man in the coaching inn who talked about how great Gloomshire ale was, but also how Gloomshire was a terrible place and nobody should ever go to Gloomshire. Naturally they began asking questions about exactly which coach they should not get on in order to not go to Gloomshire, and this might have continued for a while, but at this point the fire alarm went off and we had to evacuate.

Week 2: The Coach Trip

By now I'd managed to sort out a few details. Mazikeen got a handout in the shape of a letter from Minerva asking her to come to Gloomshire to help with the problem. Dr Crumb got a document from the University of Pondsburg, in which Professor Hugh Quackman was requesting research into the history of Gloomshire. With both saying not to travel alone, it made sense that they had a hunter, thief and fighter along with them, while Halvelda was there to learn about the unusual flora and fauna of the area.

We picked up at breakfast time in the smoking ruins of the coaching inn, where people were largely sitting exactly where they had been the night before. After a bit of chatter the coach arrived and they all climbed aboard.

The journey went smoothly until they had to stop due to a blockage in the road, in the form of a wrecked cart and a sobbing forest giant. Bertha the giant proved not to be hostile. She was crying because a group of harpies had stolen her pet pig, Sir Piglington.

While some of the party staged a rescue mission, others tracked down the cart driver, who was very scared and relieved to have company. He got in the coach. Meanwhile, the harpies were defeated and Sir Piglington returned to Bertha's arms. She thrust her hand in her pocket and handed over the first thing she found as a reward, which turned out to be a fabulously valuable gold bangle, and got to work clearing the road so they could continue.

They stopped off for the night at an inn, run by a halfling woman called Violeta. Maze, who despite calling herself a mightly paladin was only just old enough to be adventuring, got extremely drunk and passed out on the hearthrug. Everyone else did make it as far as the bedrooms.

They were awoken in the night by strange noises, and looked out to see a huge hairy creature standing over Mazikeen. Kaine, being something of an expert on large hairy wolf creatures, identified it straight away as a werewolf.

They elected to incapacitate the werewolf rather than killing it, realising that it was probably the landlady and that she likely had no idea that she was doing this. In the morning, once she'd changed back, Halvelda and Grimduck went out to find wolfsbane to make a cure for her, and the party continued on their way, arriving in Gloomshire that evening.

-----

None of this is in the adventure itself. These two encounters were inspired by entries in the Dragonbane bestiary. I used a battle map book from Tom Cartos that supplied the blocked road map and the inn map. This made for a simple, fairly linear session for the players to get to know their characters and the system before moving onto Gloomshire proper.

Week 3: Welcome to Gloomshire

Half the group were still unwell from heat, but we did pick up an extra person from another game that wasn't running at the club that night. They asked to observe, but I suggested they could play an NPC if they'd like to try it out properly, and brought along Victor Drakos, mallard demon hunter.

The present party members chatted with Victor, and with Maeve, a young human paladin who'd also had a letter from Minerva. She was quite relieved to meet Maze, as she'd been worried about whether she was really experienced enough for this job, but it was clearly just a mix up over their very similar names.

They headed off to visit Minerva, with Victor in tow, where they learned about the something nasty in the temple in the graveyard, but were interrupted by a dwarf running in carrying an injured elf. I'd described the travelling carnival setting up outside the gates with guards telling them not to as the party arrived, so this wasn't hugely surprising. Minerva offered to look after the two of them while the party went out to help fend off the horde of stygian wolves attacking outside.

With those dealt with, they went back to the tavern, where they learned that the missing party members had been helping out there due to the cook having turned into an undead monstrosity. The next morning they got up early and headed to the graveyard, having decided that going during the day was far more sensible than at night.

They took a cautious route around the inside edge, avoiding some of the more significant pitfalls along the way. They ran into Bones, who they took a bit of a liking to, despite his determination to sell them eyeballs. Maze bought a skeleton hand. Then on to the temple itself.

Week 4: The Temple

With Victor's player back with their regular group, and Maze's player also unavailable, I decided that the two of them were outside fighting a winged horror while the other two got inside, and then cut back to the other three party members waking up in the inn to discover that the others had gone on an adventure without them.

They had a less eventful trip through the graveyard (it was almost like four adventurers had recently passed that way and already had the encounters!) but still ran into Bones. They weren't quite as taken with him as the previous group, and also declined to buy any eyeballs.

With most of the team back together, they explored the temple. Kaine made sure to smash up all the skeletons before they could do anything annoying like come to life. They still had to fight one when it popped out of the font. A friendly chat with the one entirely non-hostile inhabitant netted them some extremely useful books which would certainly please Professor Quackman as well as providing valuable information for their search. They wanted to know why the ghostly priest's skeleton was chained to the bed, and he explained just how humiliating it was to see your own remains walking around without you. They sympathised, and agreed to his request to have his bones moved into a proper crypt - for which kindness he gave them the key they needed.

They opened up the door to the catacombs, and were immediately set upon by a skeletal snake, where they discovered that being eaten by a skeletal snake isn't exactly dangerous like being eaten by a live snake would be, but is nevertheless rather inconvenient. At some point in all this, Halvelda got a demon on a spellcasting roll, and unexpectedly aged significantly.

Week 5: Deeper Underground

With the whole party back together and not inside a skeletal snake, they descended into the catacombs. A quick stop off in the embalming room let them restock on bandages, and not long after that Halvelda spotted a concealed door. From then they explored the catacomb very much in reverse order, finding many doors that would have been locked if they'd come to them from the other side. Maze touched an obilisk and also unexpectedly aged significantly.

Some fighting later, they located Fiona, and decided to have a rest. This holy site kept the bad things out, so they could recover somewhat. Fiona also cleansed Halvelda and Maze of their unnatural aging, while apologising to Dr Crumb for not being able to reverse his entirely natural aging.

Week 6: Finale

It was time to take on the demon - after getting out of the catacombs, of course. More encountering of doors from the wrong side happened, and Dr Crumb finally found a use for the stone crow he'd been carrying around for several hours.

Suitably armed with Fiona's sword and a lot of other weaponry they'd picked up along the way, they prepared to face the demon. And face it they did! The demon was killed, the two blades were reunited, and the shadow over Gloomshire was lifted...

...For now.

Conclusions

This is an excellent adventure, with interesting new monsters, fun NPCs, a solid main quest and enough hooks that you could easily build a longer campaign around Gloomshire. The only caveat is that I had some trouble getting my head around the main plot - the big bad is encountered fairly early on in affairs, as is the demon blade, and it took me a lot of scrambling through the adventure to figure out that they couldn't just take the blade because the demon was still there. I found it in an introductory section.

I also had a bit of a struggle with the maps. This would be no issue on a VTT, but on a real table, the catacomb map is, shall we say, a little prone to colouring outside the lines? Copying the damn thing onto my Chessex Megamat was something of a challenge. And you do need a Chessex Megamat. The catacomb is huge, and filled the entire mat. The temple map is an easier draw, being largely along the grid lines. I drew that on my Ergon silicone mat, as I rapidly realised I was going to need to be swapping between maps pretty quickly.

But that aside, I had an absolute blast running this. And I realised that I'd dropped enough hints about a certain NPC's involvement in events that I could very easily run a second long block game as a sequel to this. So assuming players sign up, in a few weeks time they'll be heading off to the Van Walden mansion to find out what's really been going on in Gloomshire...

First Time Running: Pathfinder 2e Remaster Beginner Box

I've been playing Pathfinder 2e since shortly after it first released, but not felt any particular urge to run it until I got invited to play the Beginner Box adventure, Menace Under Otari, in a streamed game. After a couple of weeks of playing with some complete beginners it dawned on me that I actually know the rules of PF2 reasonably well, and between that and around 15 years of GMing experience, there was no reason I couldn't give it a go myself.

I kicked off with one of the pre-remaster Free RPG Day adventures, A Fistful Of Flowers, an adorable one-shot about a group of leshies out searching for some missing members of their community. That went OK, so I decided to dive in, pick up my own copy of the Beginner Box, and run the adventure at MK-RPG.

What's In The Box?

You get a lot for your money in the box. The two softcover rulebooks cover a lot in a small space.

The hero's handbook has all the basic rules you need for getting started, plus a guide to character creation. This is all heavily cut down from the core rules - the only classes are fighter, rogue, wizard and cleric, and only go up to level 3, while the ancestries include human, elf and dwarf. The actual character creation rules are somewhat altered. While it's possible, using the core rules, to make a character who's completely useless at their key abilities by making really stupid choices, these cut down rules ensure that you get a character with at least a +3 modifier in their class stat who's going to be generally competent at what they do.

Not that you need to use these rules, as there are also pre-made characters in the box - level 1 versions of Valeros the fighter, Merisiel the rogue, Ezren the wizard and Kyra the cleric. These custom character sheets have an additional sheet to explain what everything means, with letter codes for easy reference, have a picture of the arrow symbols PF2 uses to tell you how many actions something takes, and a colour picture of the different dice, which corresponds to the colours of the dice set that's also in the box.

Then there's the reference card. This sums up how dice rolls work, gives you a list of the most common actions like Strike and Stride with their action costs, and has a section to put action and reaction tokens for an easy way to keep track of what you've used on your turn. On the back are descriptions of some of the most common conditions. In short, a handy quick reference of the stuff you need most often without having to hand the book around.

The GM's guide has the adventure Menace Under Otari, as well as some solid advice on GMing generally and how to make your own adventures, and a selection of low level monsters and magic items suitable for level 1-3 characters. It also recommends Troubles In Otari, a set of adventures that directly follow on from Menace Under Otari and should be playable with just the beginner box rulebooks.

There's a set of punched cardboard sheets, which have the aforementioned action and reaction tokens, along with character and monster pawns (plus the little plastic stands to make them stand upright on the battle board). The four iconics are there, plus various ancestry/class combinations for people who chose to use the character creation rules instead, all the monsters you need to run Menace Under Otari and all the other monsters mentioned in the GM's guide. Where there are multiples of the same monster (such as goblins and kobolds) each one has a coloured mark so you can easily keep track of which is which in a fight.

Finally there's a flip-mat, one of Pathfinder's folding battle boards, depicting the Menace Under Otari dungeon. In short, everything I needed to run this adventure was included. I added just two things - a GM screen, and a print-out of the guide to levelling up to level 2 for each character, as we were on a time limit and wanted everyone to be able to level simultaneously and not have to pass the book around.

Running The Game

I was able to get four players for the game. One was my husband who's also experienced in PF2. The others had all played various versions of D&D before but were all new to PF2. With all the basics laid out on the character sheets and the reference cards, I didn't have much explaining to do, and we were able to dive in pretty quick.

The adventure is a fun dungeon crawl in its own right, but where it really shines is in the way it teaches the rules. The first fight is just a straight up fight - nothing special, just a chance to use those Stride, Strike and Cast A Spell actions and get the feel of how the system works. Then comes a skill challenge, where we dig a little into the actions associated with each skill and learn how using equipment can sometimes affect difficulty classes. Each new fight introduces a new concept: conditions, enemies with resistances and weaknesses, enemies who use tactics, etc. and a variety of traps, puzzles and other curios round things out nicely.

By the end of the adventure, the players had a solid grasp on how PF2 works, and I'm pretty sure 2/3 of the new players were sold on the system (the other seemed to be firmly in the 'D&D 5e is the best game ever' camp, but at least he gave it a go.) Just as importantly, the gradual introduction of new mechanics meant that I also learned as we played. The adventure spells everything out very clearly, advising on how certain monsters will use their special abilities. While it can't possibly account for everything players might do, there were only a few moments when I found myself having to think on my feet to come up with a ruling for unusually creative actions.

And by the end we were getting some really fun moments facilitated by the rules. It was great to see effective use of Demoralise to frighten a boss monster, Reposition to throw an enemy off a cliff, and much to my surprise, Deception (plus a magic item) to disguise the fighter as the dead boss monster, leading to a fight with an enemy who literally didn't see them coming.

Having completed this adventure I feel confident in my ability to run PF2, and am thoroughly looking forward to running more of it, both my own adventures and published material.

In short, job done.

Longcon 2024

Longcon is a revival of an older Garrison convention, where the premise is that rather than playing different games in five gaming slots across the weekend, you spend the full weekend playing one long game. An initial attempt to revive it in 2023 didn't work out, but with much more notice for potential players to get it onto the schedule, 2024 went ahead.

This was a very small convention, smaller than any other Garrison convention I've been to. Nevertheless I managed to meet up with a few regulars in the bar on Friday night. We talked about the games, and I explained that I knew almost nothing about the game I was about to play, except that it was based on a TV show I hadn't seen (Justified), but I was pretty sure that we were going to do crime.

Day 1

The game I'd signed up for was Copperhead County, a FITD game that the author calls "a Southern noir game about organized crime and political corruption in a fictional slice of present-day Tennessee". We kicked off with character creation. I picked the Cleaner, supposedly the brains of the operation, although once we'd done stats I was pretty much the designated face. Loretta the Cleaner was joined by Johnny Bob the Brick and Axle the Mover.

The story began with the three of us coming back into town, five years after the raid that destroyed our operation, to attend the funeral of our former boss who died in prison. Like most FITD games we'd all created a few NPCs during character creation, so Loretta's first meeting was with her old friend Milton the bartender, who'd given her a job when she first came to town, still wearing her wedding dress after ditching her fiancé at the altar. It soon became apparent that Copperhead County had become a much worse place since we'd fled the raid, and by the end of the funeral we'd decided that the three of us were going to have to do something about it.

Cut to a few weeks later. We'd managed to make ourselves unpopular with basically everyone except a local biker gang. We'd carved out a bit of space to sell weed, but what Johnny Bob really wanted was a meth lab. Which also meant we needed a meth cook, as you don't want to go messing with meth if you don't know what you're doing.

Johnny Bob had found a meth lab out in the woods run by the Mountain Mafia, and while it was pretty well guarded, we reckoned we could take it. We went in at night, but before we could start, we actually found the meth cook. He was trying to escape, but also wanted to help his sister, who was still imprisoned in the lab, and also revenge on all of them. We were happy to help in exchange for him coming to work for us instead, and in we went.

Loretta set up her sniper rifle, aiming to pick off a few guards while drawing them away from the lab while the others crept round the other side. That didn't exactly happen. Instead there was gunfire from the other side of the site, and Loretta had to go running, pursued by guards. Some of them got taken out by the explosives trap she'd set up in advance, but then it turned out whoever had shot at her had also set up a bunch of land mines.

Several explosions later, the pursuing guards were all dead but Loretta was unconscious with serious burns. Things weren't going well at the other end either, with Johnny taking serious injuries in the gunfight. Axle ended up being the one to save the day, setting two guards on fire and getting out completely unharmed.

Our next mission was a society party, where Loretta entirely failed to roll well on her social skills, Johnny ended up having a rather disturbing encounter in the bathroom, and Axle once again ended up saving the day. Quote of the weekend: "Why does she have so many sex knives?"

Trouble came looking for us after that, with Loretta's ex fiancé showing up trying to blackmail her into going back to him, plus the ongoing developments as we learned someone in the background was very determined to screw over the three of us and take over our operation. We ended with us teaming up with our biker friends for an assault on the Mountain Mafia, who were annoyed about us stealing their meth lab, aided by a rocket launcher Axle had bought off the dark web. Turns out, when all you have is a rocket launcher, every problem looks like a target.

Overall I think Copperhead County is a well put together game, doing a great job of  reworking the Blades in the Dark concept into a modern day real world setting. My character's special abilities felt fun and thematic, the actions were easy to understand and use, and the XP triggers were fun to discuss at the end of each of the three sessions. It's well worth checking out, even if, like me, you never watch this kind of TV show, as the playbook will guide you in how to make the genre work.

To me, its only issue is FITD itself. Particularly when you're a new character, your chances of rolling 6s are low, meaning the chances of things constantly getting worse are high. It's the kind of downward spiral more commonly associated with horror games like Call of Cthulhu, which can make it really difficult to think of yourself as a badass criminal when everything you do ends up blowing up in your face.

So overall I'm thoroughly impressed with Copperhead County, but do expect starting characters to struggle as much here as they do in any other FITD game.

Day 2

While the intentions was to play the same game across five slots, the GM normally only does one day of Garrison conventions and knew there was a chance he wouldn't be able to run on day 2. We'd agreed in advance that if he had to drop out, I'd take over, so on Sunday morning I pulled out the contingency plan: Starforged.

I picked Starforged partly because it requires no preparation beyond some printing, and partly because as a game with a GMless mode, I'd still get to play. So Johnny Bob became Cowboy the hotshot pilot, Axle became Cleric the battlefield medic, and Loretta became Pyro the psionicist. Based on my previous experiences with Starforged I also gave everyone +1 to one stat, and had us all pick a starship module in addition to the one extra asset you get at character creation. In a short game like this it's common for the ship modules to see very little use, which can be disappointing if that's the asset you picked. This way everyone had a path or companion, but we still had some fun stuff for the brief time we did spend on the ship.

Cowboy had picked Courier as his path so it made sense to do a courier mission. He told us we were transporting a case of DNA samples, and we randomly generated the Jovian planet Zephyr, with a toxic atmosphere and constant megastorm. The journey there was pretty quiet, but our descent into atmo rapidly became exciting when we encountered a space pufferfish with mental control powers, which initially took over the ship's AI causing it to do nothing but sing Taylor Swift songs. Its influence rapidly spread across the crew itself, and ultimately we ended up losing control and crashing onto the planet.

From then we had a journey through some caves, meeting a giant spider along the way, before making it to the settlement which rapidly turned out to be some kind of cult to Taylor Swift. We had to take the samples to a professor, but he was out on the research farm, so we asked to borrow a vehicle. They agreed, on the condition that we get it out of the shed ourselves, which first meant clearing out the infestation of acid blooded cave worms.

The journey out to the farm was pretty smooth, and we even got some help from the local wildlife, which by this point we assumed everything was about to go horribly wrong. And it was, as we arrived to realise what they were farming here was people, the case we were carrying was a ruse, and the real DNA samples we were delivering was ourselves.

We fled, fighting off the guards that pursued us, back to the settlement, with Taylor Swift playing from all the enemy vehicles. We took a few injuries, but managed to Shake It Off. We knew there'd be Bad Blood for not finishing the delivery so we threw the case out of the vehicle as we went, and then dived back into the cave systems. We got our ship repaired and took off, smashing straight through the injured space pufferfish which went off like a burst balloon, taking out all the enemy ships as we left atmo and swore never to visit that planet again. Cowboy decided to quit the courier business. But at least we got a nice hover skiff out of it.

Starforged is absolutely the game I would recommend for a situation like this when you don't know how long you're playing for, if at all, or how many players you're going to have. I did no prep and it all just worked. I'm lucky enough to have both the asset deck and the reference guide, which make things a bit smoother at the table. For each player I printed a character sheet, and a double sided page with adventure moves on one side and combat moves on the other, as those are the ones people are regularly referring to. Based on this game, I would also add a single copy of the exploration moves, as we used those quite a lot. For the rest, we passed the reference guide around.

Reflections

This was a great opportunity to play things like FITD games with downtime phases that you normally never get to do in a one-shot, to create a character and then get to stay with them for hours, to play without the pressure to wrap things up in a single session.

There are some minor downsides. With everyone being in one group all weekend you don't get to see much of the other players outside your group, not even at meal times since the games don't have set slots. I did miss some of the social aspect of conventions, and other than the people in my group and those I saw in the bar, I'm not really sure who else was there.

While for that reason I wouldn't want this as my only con, it's a fantastic addition to the usual convention offerings. I'd definitely like to add this to my annual convention schedule and I'm already starting to think about what I could potentially run next year.

Wicker Valley, episode 39: Finale

We had a quick look around Uncle Dwyer's cabin. We found several PS5s - he always did enjoy scalping in every sense of the word. His bookshelves held several first edition copies of Mein Kampf, all of which strangely disintegrated the moment Elizabeth got there them, an autobiography of Donald Trump, and a pretty detailed book on skin removal, which I kept for future reading. Not that I plan on taking up the hobby, but it's always useful to know what my family are up to.

There was nothing else useful though, and we needed to get back to Wicker Valley and get a few hours of sleep before everything went down. Elizabeth had a message from her coven requiring her to meet up with them at lunchtime, which didn't exactly give us much time. On the way, Eddie had a vision, and it wasn't good. A giant gargoyle, perching on the roof of the church, protecting Wicker Valley while the rest of the world was going to ruin around it. Of course, Michael still had the coin of Phylaxis, and it seemed he was talking to both Michael and Eddie now.

I met the others at the museum the next morning, with a big flask of espresso. We needed to find Alabaster, and scrying with our new map of the town seemed like the fastest way. We soon tracked him down to what Michael and Eddie recognised as his mum's house. Time to pay a visit.

First though, Elizabeth's phone was buzzing with messages from her coven asking where she was, so I teleported us to the meeting place. Which was the entrance to the fae court, of course. Which did give me the chance to have a chat with Jeeves, and find out exactly what the terrible weapon the fairies had that was so scary it caused my Uncle Dwyer, not exactly a nervous skin-flaying demon, to allow himself to be possessed by the Darkness. It was Michael.

Of course it was Michael. Michael the chosen one, with his divine protector who'd been teaching him how to fight. I tried to convince Jeeves that the war didn't need to happen now, because we'd already dealt with the demon problem, but that didn't change anything for them. That just meant that they were going to win.

He wanted me to bring Michael over straight away, and made some pretty tempting offers, but as I reminded him, when it comes to temptation, I'm a pro. And I told him how they were being manipulated by the chaos orb, and none of this plan was under their control. He didn't seem to think this changed anything, as stopping the orb would require a child of Merlin to create the magical rings needed to bind it. I had no intention of telling the fae any more than I had already, and just said that I could be extremely resourceful when required. I negotiated us 24 hours to sort things out, and managed to get Elizabeth back as well.

We all met up again outside Alabaster's mum's house, and knocked and asked to see him, but she wouldn't let us in. So I teleported to him, and threw my arms around him, with the intention of teleporting him somewhere more useful to us, but that didn't work, as somehow we ended up right outside his house again, and a moment later he'd gone back inside. Without opening the door.

I wasn't sure what that was all about, but I did know something else. When I'd teleported to him, it wasn't to the house, but one of the old warehouses. We came up with an idea for a trap. I'd do the same thing again, this time taking Michael with me so that Alabaster wouldn't realise I was doing the same thing again, and Elizabeth would be waiting to spring a magical trap when he came back to the house.

Except that didn't happen. I lost Michael somewhere in the teleport and didn't land where I intended. So that plan was a loss. But we had a much better idea of where to actually find Alabaster now, so I texted the others and we met up at the warehouses.

Adam set up outside with his rifle - I think he was still excited about it from shooting those giant centipedes in the Darkness - and me, Elizabeth and Eddie went in. We had tasers, provided by Elizabeth, along with very specific instructions about what part of his anatomy we should aim for. Which I promptly forgot about, deploying my bag of demons instead. Kevin popped out in a little ball of fur, and while I'm not entirely sure what he did to Alabaster, he was certainly enjoying himself.

Meanwhile Elizabeth, who I'd expected to completely lose it at this point, threw herself at Alabaster with her knife. I thought she'd missed for a moment, but then realised she'd actually cut off a bag he had on his belt, which became visible once she'd taken it away from him.

Fortunately Eddie was on the ball and deployed his taser. And with Alabaster temporarily paralysed, I cast the same binding spell we'd been planning on using earlier. I put everything I had into it, and didn't just stop him moving, but managed to bind his nastier magical talents at the same time.

We also found Michael, who'd landed almost on target, in a cupboard. Elizabeth let him out, and I don't know why she felt the need to destroy the door with magical entropy rather than just opening it, but it did have an interesting result when some of the flakes of ash landed on Alabaster and made him scream.

I turned on my full Voice of Temptation and started asking questions. He didn't seem to think much of Elizabeth's requests regarding tasers, but I pointed out that was just what she wanted us to do, and that she had much bigger plans. Especially since I was pretty sure she was a lich now. It didn't take long to establish that a) the chaos orb was inside the bag Elizabeth had taken from Alabaster and b) there was no way to open that bag without being Alabaster. Which was a problem, but so were the horrifying wraiths that the orb was summoning up around us.

Not one of my finer moments. I ran in terror, completely forgetting everything else in that moment, just blindly trying to get away. But then there was the sound of running feet behind me, and a moment later Michael had caught up with me. He held me and kissed me, and suddenly all the fear melted away in the flames dancing in his eyes.

He told me he loved me, and all I could think of was a quote from some old movie. "Flash, I love you, but we only have fourteen hours to save the Earth!" And we were going to save the Earth, I realised. We ran back to the others, calling to Elizabeth to give me the bag. She threw it, I caught it, and teleported to the junk yard to shove it into the oubliette.

After that it was just a lot of cleaning up. By the time I got back to the others, the wraiths were already gone and Alabaster was looking defeated. Elizabeth used her entropy power to drain the magic out of him. We didn't know if that was going to be a permanent solution, and in any case we certainly couldn't trust him. But I did happen to know of a demon prison, and I couldn't help thinking Uncle Dwyer would be interested to meet the person at least partly responsible for his recent poor choices. This was not the time for a risky teleport though, so instead we had an extremely awkward drive out to the slate mine.

Then it was back to the fae court to make sure that they were calling off the war, and introduce them to Eddie who was going to be making the binding rings. And between his magical skills and the antimagic of Adam's oubliette, the orb was bound once more.

*****

So that was all five years ago, and a few things have changed around here. Adam's given up the junkyard and has moved into classic car restoration. He's got several projects on the go, and keeps assuring us that one day he will actually finish one. Michael's doing freelance work for him, giving the cars decorative paint jobs.

Elizabeth's moved into Wicker Valley properly at last, and has opened a shop on the high street selling crystals and other new age type stuff. We knew there was a market for it from a previous timeline when Aunty Agnes had a shop here, and she's doing well. Eddie's been travelling, learning as much as he can about his magical heritage, in between keeping the museum up and running. Compared to the demonic fire of my magic and the necromantic chill of Elizabeth's, it's extraordinary to see a talent so perfectly balanced. No wonder he made everything better.

Arthur still drops by to see us, although his family's kept him pretty busy. And talking of family, Robin also came by. Riding his bike, alongside his best friend, who never got killed in this timeline, and his partner and child. Of course he didn't know who any of us were, but it was good to see him happy.

Then of course there's the big change. Last year, after a lot of planning and working out contingencies for all kinds of supernatural mishaps, Michael and me got married. We got the museum licensed for weddings, and held it there. His mum wanted it to be at the church, of course, but I already knew I was inviting Rusty and it's not a good look at a wedding for the bride's brother to spontaneously combust. Elizabeth asked to be a bridesmaid, and wanted to wear a black dress. We compromised on purple.

And I've made one more change - my job. I knew I couldn't work at the Wicker Stop forever, so I've been training as a therapist. If there's one thing this town needs, it's someone who can help with trauma, especially the supernaturally induced kind. I'm told I have a remarkably soothing voice and a real talent for getting clients to open up to me, and should have my accreditation in no time.

But Wicker Valley is still Wicker Valley. We dealt with the chaos orb, but between fairies, demons, witches, and every other kind of what Adam still calls 'weird bollocks', strange things still happen here and people still need help. And when they do, our team is ready.

Wicker Valley, episode 38: Catching up with the uncles

With everything calming down again it was time to follow the problem to its source - my uncles. Michael had tracked down Uncle Dwyer to a remote cabin where you could supposedly book events, although no events seemed to ever take place there. It was an unsettling drive. Even though I don't seem to have any physical problems with the stuff any more, sitting in a van full of anti-demon supplies was still rather uncomfortable. It was quite a relief to arrive.

We scouted out the building, approaching from different sides to see what was going on. I saw my uncle Dwyer, busy about some kind of arcane practice with a magic circle and everything, while Uncle Mac was stuck to a wall and didn't seem to be enjoying it. We regrouped, reported back, and then I teleported into the kitchen to scout inside.

My wings were the now familiar swirl of feathers as I teleported out, but when I arrived inside they were back to the old leathery bat wings. Odd. I'd been warned of something snoring near the back door, and I could hear it inside as well. Two somethings, at least, maybe more. Definitely more, in fact, when I got closer. I had just enough time to take a photo and teleport out.

Hell hounds, we all agreed outside as we looked at the pictures. We were going to have to deal with them, preferably not in a confined space. And there was another issue. The place had been warded. A pretty hefty ward, meant to keep out everything except demons.

We lured the hell hounds outside for an absolutely brutal fight. By the end we were in serious need of patching up, and I even allowed Elizabeth to do some of her spicier healing magic on me, it was that bad. Hopefully that scar will give Eddie something to talk about at parties for years to come. We were also covered in hell hound bits, and we wondered if that would allow the non-demonic team members to bypass the wards.

It didn't. So I went in and dismantled the wards, knowing that this would absolutely alert Uncle Dwyer to our presence, but it had to be done.

You know, I'd never thought about it before, but it turns out that demons can be possessed. Especially if the demon in question is dumb enough to invite the possessing entity inside. Good thing I'd been reading up on banishments in alternate timeline me's grimoire. I kicked that thing right out of him. Uncle Mac made a run for it. I'm not sure what happened to Michael. Passing out and having weird visions isn't unheard of for him recently but this seemed a bit different.

Fortunately Elizabeth managed to locate the evil book that was responsible. My claws did nothing to it, and Michael's magic knife was equally useless. Then we realised that the problem was that we were all still inside the house, which was suppressing anything non-demonic. We all went outside and shredded that book.

So my idiot uncle's been stopped, and dropped off at one of the family's 'secure facilities' to think about what he's done. Which means there's hopefully just one other player left in this game: Alabaster.

Wicker Valley, episode 37: Bugs

We were a bit injured after the centipede fight. I don't what Adam and Elizabeth were up to as they attempted to heal each other, but there seemed to be some kind of argument involved. I ignored them, and called on my magic to heal Eddie.

It wasn't long after we convinced the centipede to leave that Michael showed up. I'm not entirely sure how, but I'm pretty sure he was holding a magic flower and wearing a chainmail shirt he definitely didn't have before. Apparently someone thought it was more important for him to show up to help us in the darkness than to keep him out of it. And now we were sure that the way the darkness siphoned power was at least partly through hurting people. We were going to have to protect as many of the villagers as we could.

The darkness was bigger than it had been on the previous incident, and was covering more of the town than we were expecting. We got into Vanessa and towed the floodlight into the middle of the village to try to lure the creatures away from the people with the lights. Then we had to go into the houses.

We couldn't rescue them all. Some of them were already dead. But some we managed to get to in time, and kill the creatures threatening them before getting them out of the mass of sticky web. I had Elizabeth enchant my claws before we went in and I'm glad she did.

Then Adam and Elizabeth came up with an idea. We were fighting giant bugs, which were attracted by light. Could we make a giant bug zapper?

Eddie, Elizabeth and me took Vanessa to the allotments and got out a lot of copper wire that Adam had in there for some reason. We set up a circle, connected it to the metal fence around the allotments, and began the ritual. Elizabeth acted as the focus, channelling her lightning magic into the fence, while I added my own power and Eddie balanced the flows. Once again nobody caught fire. At least, nobody we didn't want to catch fire. Once the bugs realised what we were doing, they attempted to disrupt things, but Eddie and me fought them off so that Elizabeth could hold her focus.

At last it was coming to an end, and instead of darkness above us we began to see stars. Michael and Adam came back from where they'd been continuing the rescue effort. I had to concentrate on helping Eddie recover from some nasty injuries, so it took me a while to notice that Michael was a bit subdued after the fight. When I did, I then spotted the hole in his chainmail where one of the centipede's stingers must have got through. Even as I was watching, a few more links disintegrated. I managed to convince him to lift up the shirt and let us have a look, and then called on my magic once again to purge the poison out of him. I'd seen some nasty things that day, but that had to be the worst.

Not the worst thing for Elizabeth though.That would be when Alabaster showed up and thanked us for dealing with some of his competition. He didn't stick around long, but it was long enough for Elizabeth to yell at him for killing her. Which Eddie didn't know about, I then realised, and I explained that that's why I keep calling her a lich.

So now we were going to end up having to deal with Alabaster as well as with Uncle Dwyer. We gave Eddie the brief run-down on Alabaster, since that had all happened in a different timeline. The funny thing is, looking back, Alabaster was actually a good influence on me. He really helped me work through some things. This timeline's version of him seems to have taken a different path though. I think we might actually have to kill him.

Wicker Valley, episode 36: Ley Lines

We had some idea what the darkness was now. Basically hoovering up power wherever it touched down. And we'd been tipped off by the fae that it would be a very bad idea if Michael were to end up in its path so he was temporarily relegated to research duty while the rest of us prepared to go in.

We had some idea where it was going to touch down next. A small village with a neighbouring caravan park. I suggested we book a holiday. But there was something else. There was a pattern to the thing's movement. It seemed to be following lines but not entirely straight lines. And it dawned on us that Rusty had been following up on ley lines running into Wicker Valley. It was time to pay my brother a visit.

Rusty was living in Manchester, so we piled into Vanessa and drove down. He'd picked a pretty rough area to live in, and the block of flats didn't smell too great. He had taken the trouble to draw an extra 6 on his front door so that it read 666, and frankly I was annoyed at how much that amused me. We knocked at the door, and got sucked into his real apartment, which was obviously a lot nicer. The others asked me why I didn't have one of those on my home. Honestly it seems a bit pretentious.

Rusty wasn't happy to see us. I think we'd interrupted something. He took us out again to a pub. I ordered what he was having. Thankfully nobody else thought that was a good idea. Demonic beverages can be pretty weird. He invited me to a party with a few of the family, coincidentally at around the time when Wicker Valley might be being engulfed by the darkness, and suggested that we shouldn't interfere if we enjoyed having skin.

That was actually pretty useful, as it narrowed things down to some of my more skin-removing focussed uncles, so I downed my drink, sneezed out a few snowflakes (like I said, demonic beverages can be weird), and we left him to whatever mayhem he was up to. Time to check in on my uncles. Fortunately it's pretty easy to find demons these days as they're all on the internet. Uncle Mac and Uncle Dwyer were both active on social media, posting all kinds of ridiculous conspiracy theories while claiming that only true friends would share them. Uncle Dwyer had gone unusually silent of late.

First though we had to deal with the imminent touchdown of the darkness in the village. Research had told us that magic weapons would be useful against the creatures within it, as would my own claws, and light would be a valuable defense. Adam got online and rented a portable spotlight, the kind used for late night sports games, while Elizabeth and me enchanted some weapons.

The caravan park was easy enough to deal with. Reporting a severe weather warning convinced the caretaker to get all the other residents off site. Nothing we could do about the village though. Adam set up the spotlight and got ready with a rifle. And down it came.

The spotlight worked well, as did the road flares Adam had brought along. But it did attract one of the creatures - some kind of enormous centipede that wrapped itself around the light. Fortunately with our enchanted weapons we were able to deal with it, although not before taking some significant injuries. That thing was poisonous.

Battle Boards

Most of the games I run don't use battle boards. If I use a map in a game it's more likely to be a Google map than a dungeon map. But with my newfound enthusiasm for Dragonbane, plus my increasing confidence with Pathfinder 2e, battle boards are suddenly a thing I need to look at. So after some exhaustive research, here's my thoughts on what's out there.

Chessex Megamat

The gold standard in battle boards. We've got one at home and I can't even tell you how old it is. The friend whose house we game at keeps his permanently on the gaming table. These things are great, and basically last forever. They're also some of the biggest battle boards around. No fear of running out of space on these things. They won't mind if you spill food on them, and so long as you stick to black and blue markers and stay away from pink and red, they're easy to clean up.

There's only two reasons you'd ever want to use anything else: appearance, and portability. They're functional but not very pretty, and I will outline some more decorative options further down. And being so big, they're not easy to transport. Ours is 34"/86cm long when rolled up, and that's not a good size if you need to take it on a bicycle, or carry it on public transport. So I'll also look at some more portable options.

Loke Book of Battle Mats

If the Chessex mat isn't pretty enough, take a look at the next biggest name in battle boards: Loke. When we want a bit of generic scenery like a forest or a castle ruin but can't be bothered with drawing it all on the megamat, the Giant Book of Battle Mats gets pulled out, we select a suitable page, and off we go. Add a set of static clings, and we have some really pretty battle boards for very little effort. It can get a bit eccentric at time (we have the cyberpunk book, but no static clings, meaning that in our cyberpunk games, it's very fashionable to have a desk in the shape of a horse) but it's really added something to our gaming sessions. While not as massive as the Megamat, when using the double spreads they're a respectable 17x24 grid, and of course if you own more than one you can put them together.

The downside is that they are generic, and if we're running a specific dungeon with a map we're still going to have to break out the markers. The giant books also aren't very portable, being A3 size. The A4 Big Books are far more portable, being a similar size to a typical game book and therefore easy to put in a bag, but then you only get an 12x16 grid.

Surely there must be options that balance portability with space?

Loke Battle Map Board

As well as the books, Loke also offer the same type of board you get in a lot of board games. Heavy cardstock, laminated, 24" by 24" and foldable into four so only 12" square for transport. It lies flat and comes in two designs - plain squares/hexes, and decorated grass/stone. It looks pretty great, and while the patterned version didn't grab me as the design looks a bit too dark for drawing on, the plain version did appeal. Until I realised it wouldn't fit in the bag. 12" square is still a fair bit bigger that a standard RPG hardback.

D&D Adventure Grid

This official D&D battle board was a bit of a surprise. Like the Loke board it's a folding board game type board, except this one folds into six. Folded, it's the same size as a hardback, meaning that unfolded it's going to be around 20x24. It also offers a grass side and a stone side, although the textures are much lighter and easier to draw on. In overall quality it doesn't look as good as Loke, and I own enough 6-fold board games to know it's not going to do as well at lying flat, but you can get it remarkably cheap from some sellers if you're prepared to wait so maybe a good option if you're on a budget.

Pathfinder Flip-mats

Where you find Wizards of the Coast, you of course find Paizo. Their offering to the battle board space is flip mats. There's a bunch of these. Basic is your regular squared board in two shades of beige. There's also a basic terrain version offering water in addition to the usual grass, stone and different stone. These are foldable, because as far as I can tell they're laminated card stock. This does make them less durable than some options, and getting them to lie flat is going to be more of a challenge. But like the D&D board, they fold down to the size of a hardback, and unfold to an impressive 24x30 - or if you can find the Enormous Basic model, 30x46, up there in Megamat territory.

The real reason to buy flip-mats though, is that they make custom ones for specific adventures, thus saving you a lot of drawing. If you're running a specific Pathfinder adventure with a matching flip-mat, it might be worth picking up. But I'm not convinced laminated card stock is a sufficiently durable option for long term use.

Random Laminate

And talking of laminated card stock, there's quite a lot of those on Amazon.

This one from Enhance looks like one of the better options, and also comes with pens, an eraser and a carrying case, but I'm not convinced it lies as flat as their video makes it look. And of course we're back into rolled territory. At 24" it's an easier carry than my 34" Megamat, but at that point you might just as well buy Chessex's smaller 26x24 mat and have all the benefits of durable vinyl.

This one from Tidyboss offers straightening clips to fit along the edge of the mat to hold it flat, which is a nice touch, not least because they acknowledge the tendency of laminate to roll. It includes three 24x36 double sided maps with different terrains, and also includes pens, an eraser, a carrying tube and a set of dice. I actually think it looks pretty cool, and it's nice they thought about the lie flat problem, but somehow I just don't trust the durability, and the video reviews I've seen of this style of map definitely look like sliding those clips on is going to fray the corners. I'd actually consider these for the terrains, given how nice they look, but they're pretty pricy and a couple of Loke giant books will give you a lot more terrain for your money.

There are a few others out there, but ultimately the idea of having to deal with maps that might suddenly curl up, flinging miniatures in all directions, wasn't appealing. Also they have extremely shiny surfaces that leads me to suspect my dry-erase markers might end up getting erased a bit quicker than intended.

Melee Mats

This company seem to be trying to do it all. They've got a PVC rollable map in two sizes that looks a lot like the Chessex Megamat. They've got a folding board that reminds me of the D&D adventure grid. They've got laminated paper like the various Amazon offerings. And most interestingly they've got this box set of reversible boards which also comes with a set of static clings, and where the box itself doubles up as terrain so you can use it as a hill or a castle.

The main reason not to buy these is that if you're outside America, the prices are completely nuts. Probably not worth it unless they sort out some kind of European distribution or you can pick it up while on holiday.

Ergon Games Battle Mat

And finally, the one I actually bought. This silicone game map seemed to check all the boxes. Foldable, but without the issue of creases and bits standing up like the card stock boards. A good size at 24x36. It looked like I'd be able to fold it up, put it in the bag, and unfold it and have it immediately lie flat at the venue. And also I'd be able to draw a map in advance and having it survive the journey, and clean it off when I wanted to. Most importantly, it would arrive in super quick time.

And all of this was true. It folds, lies flat instantly, and doesn't smudge. It feels durable - nothing here to delaminate. The rubbery surface has a bit of grip which stops the miniatures sliding around. The only advertised feature that it doesn't do well is the ability to draw two different maps on each side. While this is technically possible, since one side is a hex grid, you generally won't be able to draw maps for the same game (unless it's something that combines a hex crawl with square grid combat), and also it's kind of transparent, so you can see the map on one side from the other side.

Interestingly, they also do a frosted transparent mat with no grid, intended for putting over printed maps. If you're printing out digital maps, this might be a good purchase for keeping them in place. Maybe it would also work to flatten down those Pathfinder flip-mats and keep them pristine? Something I'll consider for future gaming.

Conclusion

While a combination of the Chessex Megamat and Loke Giant Books is almost certainly the best option for a battle board that never leaves your house, if you're looking for a portable battle mat, the Ergon Games silicone mat is genuinely as good as it claims.

Team building with RPGs

My manager asked me to run an RPG as an activity for our team building day. Here's how it went down.

Before The Game

Venues

With our team being rather geographically diverse (several of us are home workers) the first challenge was picking a location where the travel wasn't too awful for anyone, and the manager picked Oxford. He found an escape room for our first activity, but it was down to me to find somewhere suitable for the game.

While you can run an RPG in a pub, you need to really know the pub to be sure there isn't going to be loud music/sport/crowds, and that wasn't something I could figure out that far from home. Fortunately, as a board gamer I was aware of Oxford's board games cafe, Thirsty Meeples, even though I'd never been there before. I was confident they could offer a reasonably quiet space with clean tables, and on further investigation learned they also had the other thing that my team seem to consider indispensible: beer.

Choosing a game

When previously considering games for beginners I was pretty sure that Dragonbane would be a good choice, especially when I realised that the game was going to be quite popular and with the event taking place on a week day it was unlikely I'd be able to recruit a second GM. 4-5 is my normal sweet spot for player numbers but this time I was absolutely going to have to accomodate 6. That's a lot easier with something with a board and miniatures and skill rolls and hit points than something that's largely narrative based.

Another reason to go for a game like this is that with one exception, all the players were absolute beginners. And my team aren't all former theatre kids, who seem to take to the improv aspect of RPGs very easily. We're a tech team. Most of them are database administrators and similar. People who can easily get into dice rolling and movement rates and weapon ranges but might take a bit longer to get into character motivations.

And finally, this was a team building event, with a side goal of promoting DEI. Dragonbane is a game that absolutely promotes teamwork, as a successful dungeon crawl often hinges on people working together to defeat the monsters, and also promotes diversity, where you can clearly see the benefits of a diverse team all bringing different skills to the table.

Preparation

By the time it was confirmed that I'd be running an RPG for this event, I'd bought a copy of Dragonbane and run the quickstart adventure The Riddermound multiple times. This seemed like a solid choice. Nice simple motivation for the characters. Get in, find treasure, get out. And I knew it well enough that I wouldn't have to do too much thinking about the adventure itself and could focus on the players.

I decided to use the cardboard standees that come in the core set for the player characters, and regular miniatures for the monsters. This meant there was a clear visual difference between PCs and monsters on the board. Using the standees also meant I wasn't having to explain that I didn't have any duck miniatures so please pretend that this tengu is actually a duck. They could just find the mini that matched the art on their character sheet. Meanwhile our miniature collection does include reasonable minis for the monsters encountered in this adventure.

Naturally I used the pre-gens from the quickstart, although I did also need to add in a sixth character. I created a dwarf bard, Urd Gildenclef, and while the back page of his character sheet didn't exactly match the others (I didn't have the right fonts, and also couldn't quite cut out the art from the book as neatly as I'd like to paste into the sheet) it was near enough that it still looked good and had a matching standee.

What else did I need? Dice, of course. I do have enough dice to loan six people enough dice to play Dragonbane. But, I found myself asking, did I want to? Of course not. Those are my dice, and every one of them has a story. A gift, a prize, a special purchase. I didn't want to lend them out.

Fortunately dice aren't too expensive if you're buying in bulk and don't much care about colours and stuff. I ordered a pack of six dice sets with drawstring dice bags on Amazon for about £10, and then shortly afterwards ordered another six when I realised numbers were about to get complicated. I figured people could keep them if they liked them, and if not I now had a decent set of loaners should I find myself introducing more beginners to gaming.

Then something struck me. Battle boards.

Like all good gamers, I have a Chessex Megamat at home. But the trouble with the Megamat, as the name implies, is that it's big. Really big. Rolled up it's 34"/86cm long, which is not the easiest thing to take with you on the Park and Ride or to carry across Oxford city centre.

By contrast, the battle board provided with the Dragonbane core set fits very neatly into the box. But it's small. Significantly smaller than the Riddermound map. I love that it's included in the set, but it wasn't going to work here.

So began my hunt for a battle map that would easily fit in the backpack with the rest of the gear, which will probably become a blog post by itself, but which ended with me buying an Ergon Games battle map from Amazon, which allowed me to draw the map in advance and then fold it up and put it in the bag.

On The Day

While I'd set a limit of 6 players for the game, I actually ended up with 8 people sitting at the table with me. One was my manager who'd organised the day, and who I knew would be an extra person well in advance. He suggested that he could be an observer, but I had another idea to give him more engagement. He could play the monsters. Easy enough in Dragonbane. I gave him the bag of monster minis and the rule book, and he rolled the dice, read out the attack descriptions, and rolled the damage dice.

I didn't have anything for the eighth person (a much more last minute addition) but there was a suggestion that two people could share a character, and I couldn't see any reason why not. Two guys decided to share, and picked Archmaster Aodhan, which worked out well for table space as I also had his spells printed out. One person had to leave early, so when he did, one of the sharing players took over his character.

I began by putting a couple of x cards on the table, explaining them as being like the emergency exit button on the escape room we'd just been to. I doubted we'd need them, and didn't make a big deal out of it, but I figure it doesn't hurt to explicitly state that it's OK to say no to things.

When giving my introduction to the rules I forgot to explain Boon and Bane, although I should have done given that some of the special abilities involve it. It did get used however, with me telling players when they were allowed to roll the dice twice and why. I could have handled it a little better, but it did go OK in the end. I did remember to explain resting, which as usual proved entirely necessary.

The game itself went as smoothly as can be expected. I was constantly having to remind people which dice to roll, but that was nothing I didn't expect, and the novelty of the polyhedral dice definitely caught people's attention. I made some minor alterations, such as reducing the falling damage for the initial descent into the mound to 1d6, as having characters risk death on the very first dice roll seemed un-fun. (I then rolled 5 and 6 for the damage on the two characters who failed the roll, so they still got the feel of this being dangerous.)

While on previous occasions I've run this game, I've always used the optional pushing rule, this time I didn't. Mostly I've played this with people with at least some familiarity with Free League games (or Call of Cthulhu) who were on board with the idea of getting a reroll in exchange for some kind of risk or penalty, but for complete beginners I decided it would be just one more thing to explain, and ditched it entirely. It's fun to include for more experienced players but the game runs fine without it.

There was only one moment where a character risked death, when the big bad rolled his biggest attack - 4d8 damage. Makander was standing right in front of him at the time, so I suggested that he should be the target, with his armour rating 6 plate armour and 16 hit points giving him a reasonable shot at survival. Only the manager playing the monster rolled 22 damage, taking him down to 0 points. Fortunately his next con roll was a critical, and while it took pretty much the entire party having a go at healing for someone to succeed, he was stabilised. On 1 hit point. Which almost resulted in him getting knocked out again at the end when I called for Acrobatics rolls to get back out of the Riddermound, but fortunately the final player to roll (Urd Gildenclef, as it happened) got a critical, so I told him he was able to bring the duck out with him.

Urd Gildenclef proved to be a very useful party member in the end, providing backup to Aodhan on knowledge skills, keeping the party well informed with beast lore, and of course giving boons in combat with his musical talents. If you're running with the pre-gens and need a 6th character, I thoroughly recommend including him.

You grew up in your family’s underground halls, dreaming of one day becoming a mighty warrior like your father. Until the day when you were first invited to blow the hunting horn that called everyone to dinner, and a new passion awoke. Instead of just listening to the chroniclers tell stories and sing songs of your ancestors, you began learning those stories yourself, and your skill at playing the horn won you many complements. Now you’re out in the Misty Vale, seeking out new stories to some day bring back home.

We ended up wrapping up in 2.5 hours, faster than I anticipated. I soon realised why. Experienced players talk a lot in character. These beginners didn't. So things moved along a little faster than I expected. Since we only had the table for 3 hours, that was fine - realising I was going to wrap things up well in time made things less stressful for me.

After The Game

With about half an hour left before we had to leave, some of the players decided to make use of the cafe's board game library and had a game of Uno. I didn't join in. I had plenty to do packing my gear away, and was happy just to watch.

Then it was back onto the Park and Ride, and an hour's drive home, and I could finally relax. I was exhausted. I felt like I'd just come back from a LARP, and while there had been some walking across Oxford and a bit of activity in the escape room, it wasn't enough to induce that kind of tiredness. Running for beginners comes with a lot more mental load that my normal games. So does running with eight other people at the table instead of the usual four or five. So does running for people who aren't just friends or acquaintences, but co-workers and the manager who asked me to do this. Hardly surprising I was wiped out by it.

That said, I would absolutely recommend this as a team building activity. It ticks the boxes on actually promoting teamwork in a way most of the nonsense you end up doing while team building doesn't, and I think people did find it reasonably enjoyable. Dragonbane is absolutely a solid choice for this situation and the core set is useful for providing the standees to match the character sheets.

If you do try this, and end up with eight prospective players, get a second GM if you can. Big tables are a challenge by themselves, and they're a bigger challenge when everybody is completely new to the game. But if you can't, bringing in the manager as the monster wrangler actually worked pretty well.

Whether I'll get any new gamers out of this, I'm not sure, but I'll certainly be offering to talk to anyone who's interested in learning more when we're back at work.

Wicker Valley, episode 35: Darkness

Samara didn't hang about when it came to making her presence felt. Elizabeth put up a wall of ice, which slowed her down while she melted her way through it, which meant I had time to throw one of my tiny demons at her, which dug into her quite effectively. Eddie finished her off by hosing her down with one of the holy water supersoakers.

We needed another look at the house. Or rather, at the tree at the back of the house, which was bad enough. The whole area seemed to have a spooky aura, which was making everything very dark and cold. I was thinking about my next move when something happened to Michael. I couldn't see what was doing it, but something had him by the throat and was trying to choke him.

I ignored Elizabeth telling me to give him the kiss of life, and told the entity exactly what I thought of it in the infernal tongue. Not a permanent solution, but enough to make it go away for a bit. While the others looked around, I decided to try something riskier and look into the past to find out what really happened here.

I saw Ann Deltrose carrying a squirming cloth wrapped bundle, forcing it into a wooden box in a grave. Then flames erupting from the box, engulfing both of them. She'd never got the chance to use that rope. I let the vision go, but Samara had other ideas. It was a brief battle of will, and I managed to evict her pretty fast, but not fast enough to stop her using my claws to shred Michael's jacket. That could have been very nasty.

Michael had found the grave site. Adam got some shovels from the van, and we started digging. Burning the remains would have been our usual approach, but we were pretty sure it wouldn't help here. Salt and holy water was the way to go. We found Ann's bones first, and Michael spread out his ripped clothes to rest them on.

But unsurprisingly, Samara wasn't going to make this easy for us. Michael pulled out his weird knife. I threw another demon, then went in with my claws. But it was Eddie who finished her off, with some kind of magic I'd never seen before, which seemed to surprise him as much as everyone else.

We finished digging, and scattered salt and holy water over the remains, and gradually the spooky aura lifted and it was a bright sunny afternoon once more. The scouts were going to be able to have their bonfire after all.

We all needed some time off after that, which largely consisted of going to work, but that didn't mean things were peaceful. Tornadoes aren't exactly uncommon in the UK, but they're usually further south, pretty small, and don't usually do much beyond dislodging a few roof tiles, so having a whole bunch of them in the Lake District was definitely weird, especially when one destroyed a RoadChef services, and a bunch of people were injured. Between that and Eddie and Michael reporting on a lot of demonic portents, we were going to have to investigate.

Investigation wasn't easy though, as the police weren't our local police, and weren't letting anyone near the place. We had another option though. A woman called Martha had claimed to have been stabbed during the tornado and was in the hospital. I was pretty sure I could charm my way into getting us a chat with her.

I overdid it again, and now one of the nurses is my best friend and I'll be taking in a basket of scones for the staff to share. But we got in, and Martha was very happy to have someone believe her. She'd been plunged into darkness, and she hadn't been alone. It had lasted for hours - much longer than the time that had passed in the outside world.

We knew what we were dealing with now. It had happened before and it was called the Darkness. And not the fun kind.

Wicker Valley, episode 34: Firestarter

We needed to look in that house. Elizabeth cleared a path to the door through the greenery, using her lich powers, and we started the search. It wasn't a big place, but people had obviously lived here once. The skeletons of furniture remained. I headed upstairs. There was a bathroom, although it didn't have plumbing, just an old bath and a broken wash basin. And two bedrooms.

I looked in the master bedroom first. Not much there beyond the remains of the bed. If anything was hidden in there, I figured it would be under the bed. I was kind of right. There was a loose floorboard down there, and hidden under it was a diary with a name on it. Ann Deltrose. I only glanced at it for the moment, as there was the other bedroom to look at. Three beds, the remnants of old toys, and some odd black scorch marks above one of the bed.

I was almost down the stairs again, when Michael caught fire. I panicked, obviously, and tried to put the fire out with my hands and wings, which probably wasn't too pleasant for Michael. And I couldn't figure out why miss frosty lich hands was picking this moment to continue her aggressive shipping instead of using her magic to put the fire out, until the flames disappeared and I realised it had just been a vision. Something in this house really didn't want us to be here. There was a presence here with natural fire magic. Not taught like Elizabeth's magic, but something inherent. Like mine, except I'd certainly know if there was a demon in the house. As it was, it was Elizabeth who seemed the most aware of it.

Eddie had found a photograph of the family who used to live there, and between that and the diary, we decided we had enough for the moment and got out. We had a look around outside instead. There was a big tree at the back of the house, with the remains of what must have been a rope swing still tied to one branch. And one single rope.

I went up the tree to see if I could see anything interesting. I spotted the way into the cellar, which Elizabeth cleared away with a bit more necromancy. Sometimes I think she only does that when she wants a facelift. Anyway, the cellar didn't seem to like us much more than the rest of the house, and it was a long time since any of us had slept. Eddie, for one, seemed to be falling asleep on his feet. So we decided to give it up for the night, told the scout leaders to keep everyone away from that area due to sinkholes, and went home for some sleep.

The next morning, the photo and the diary got us some answers. The family in the photo were Jack and Ann Deltrose, their twin sons William and Arthur, their adopted daughter Samara, and a dog. I guess back then alarm bells didn't start ringing at the name Samara. Jack and Ann had married in the 1890s but struggled to have children, and eventually adopted Samara, who was the survivor of an orphanage fire, and I'm really starting to appreciate all the important lessons that horror movies have taught me. Much better than Doctor Who's approach to time travel, which wasn't helpful at all. And then had their two sons, about ten years later.

We went looking through town records, and much to our surprise, Jack and the two boys didn't die in a fire, but in a boating accident. We couldn't find graves for them in the cemetary, and it seemed pretty likely that those two crosses under the tree were grave markers. No record of what happened to Ann or Samara. We got Ann's maiden name, Welch, and as it happened there are still Welches living in Wicker Valley. We had a little chat with them, using the excuse of our museum, as of course we would want to feature the history of local families there.

But we still needed to figure out what was going on at the scout camp, so we packed up anti-ghost supplies and headed out. Things clearly weren't going well there, with several kids going home after unpleasant encounters. It was certainly sounding like ghosts. We decided to try the tree first. The spirits of the boys seemed a bit friendlier than Samara. There were some questions from the scout leaders about what exactly we were up to with all the candles and stuff, but between me and Adam we managed to convince them we were doing a geological survey to check for the release of underground gases, with the candles serving as a visual warning of carbon dioxide.

The boys were pretty sweet. One was pretty nervous and hung onto the dog, but the other talked to us. Their father was there too, which didn't surprise us as Michael had managed to find the third cross on the far side of the tree, although he stayed hidden. The dog was keeping people away from them. They were scared of Samara, which didn't surprise us. We asked about the boating accident, but it didn't seem to involve anything particularly suspicious like the boat catching fire.

We knew now what had happened to Ann. Sadly it came down to that single rope hanging from the tree. That poor family. And now we were going to have to go up against Samara. Ghost, firestarter, both. Either way, this was one battle that was definitely going to have theme music.

Wicker Valley, episode 33: Dogs and Ponies

It's all been a bit chaotic recently, starting from when we all got an invitation to dinner from Arthur's family. It all started out pretty normal, with Elizabeth and me getting taken to the conservatory for some girl talk, but then the storm started. The others had been taking Michael out to the stables, which I doubt he was too keen on, and then the storm in the shape of a horse with a glowing eye happened.

Most of us got out of there pretty quick, and after a bit of teleportation taxi services, so did Arthur, along with a mysterious box. The glowing eye in the cloud horse was supposedly some kind of chaos orb, and it needed finding, so Elizabeth and me set up the scrying circle. There were a few suggestions about what to use as a focus, but given our tendency to set things on fire, I didn't want to use anything important, and got out a My Little Pony with twinkle eyes.

Good thing too, since it caught fire. We didn't locate the orb, but I did have an exciting vision of some kind of wizard putting things in a cauldron.

Then, if things weren't complicated enough already, Rusty showed up, which meant explaining my jerk of a brother to Eddie. Chaos orb bad, we new that, but he did have a lead for us. One of my uncles had got hold of it at some point, and it had done bad things to him. So talking to him meant paying a visit to the slate mine.

I could see how creeped out everyone else was as we made our way down into the darkness, which is fair enough. My family are bad enough when they're in their right minds. It wasn't hard to find my uncle. We knew the orb made people's worst fears manifest, which reminded me a lot of last Halloween, so I wasn't surprised to find him shouting about angels. I couldn't remember if he'd ever known me as Scarlet so I introduced myself as Agnes, and he did know who I was. I wouldn't say we learned a lot, but it was a start.

We had other things to deal with though. Strange monsters being seen at the local scout camp. Arthur was staying with his family for the moment, but the rest of us loaded up Vanessa and went on our way. The only description we had was of a big dog, so we grabbed a few books to read along the way. We learned of two types of black dog sightings - malevolent ones like Black Shuck, and protective ones like church grims. Not very helpful so far.

At the campsite the scout leaders were doing their best to act normal while we took a look around. Michael found a pair of crosses concealed under grass at the base of a tree. A little further off we found an old cottage, almost completely covered in plant life. Then we had a collective vision, of two little boys, probably twins, running hand in hand. But Elizabeth saw something more. An older girl, with part of her face burnt.

Wicker Valley, episode 32: Big Magic

I got to work on the book with Arthur, but it wasn't long before another black car, like the one Great Aunt Gertie showed up in, pulled up next to the van and a bunch of people got out. Arthur assured me it was fine and went away with them. I was starting to get a handle on what we needed to do to close the portal, when I got a text from Michael telling me to bring the water feature.

I teleported in to find him fighting an absolutely massive spider, put down the water feature, and went right in with my claws. It didn't like that, and made a horrible screeching noise, which I ignored, then sank a fang into my shoulder, which was harder to ignore. Michael sliced some legs off it, which separated it from me, and then I'm not sure what happened as Elizabeth put up a wall of ice around me and Michael. I suggested to him that we should start trolling Elizabeth, but I didn't have any good ideas for how to do that.

Anyway, by the time I got out of the ice wall, the spiders had disappeared. Outside, Adam was patching up Eddie who'd had a rough time with the spiders before I arrived. Elsa added a little healing magic, and he looked a lot better.

Back at the junk yard we collected everything we needed for closing the portal. It was a mobile portal, I'd learned from the book, so first we needed to move it close to some water. Specifically, Wicker Lake, which oddly enough some people seemed to have forgotten the existence of. It was going to take three of us, and I was a bit worried about that, as that morning's curse-delaying aside, Elizabeth and me didn't have a great track record of working together, and Arthur was out of the picture. Elizabeth assessed the other three. Adam was a no-go, and Michael kept insisting he wasn't magical despite a certain amount of evidence to the contrary. But Eddie, she said, had talent.

I suggested he cover his hair, to make sure we didn't accidentally set it on fire, and helped Elizabeth set up the magic circle. Then the three of us held hands and began the chant, and soon had the portal relocated. Then it was mostly a matter of holding it open while all the various yokai were pulled back into it, although the fact that they were trying to stab us on the way past made it pretty uncomfortable.

Adam and Michael were kept busy fending things off, and Adam clearly wasn't ready to use his flamethrower again after the djinn incident. Unfortunately, Michael wasn't ready to use it at all. Fortunately being right by the lake there was plenty of water handy. Now we had to try to keep going while being bitten by spiders and that was much tougher, as we had to sit there and keep the magic going while they swarmed over us. But in the end we got there. Big spider back in the hole, the hole closed up, and nothing on fire except some of the grass nearby. Apparently Eddie was exactly what we needed to balance our magic.

Adam tried to patch up my spider wounds after that, which I wasn't keen on, and it's only because of my demonic nature that he didn't make things worse. So I took myself to the hospital, where a lot of staff were suddenly freed up as the unconscious people started waking up. Kenji got his mum back. Not his dad though. He woke up again, but the spider curse had hurt him too badly, and he died later that day.

I got another visit from Toby the definitely not a gargoyle while I was at the hospital. He told me that since I had continued to not do the thing I was supposed to be doing regarding Michael, that I was getting my armour confiscated. Which I wouldn't mind so much if whoever They are would stop being so bloody enigmatic and just tell me what I was supposed to be doing!

I got the answer that night, via a dream. Combat training. Teach him to fight with weapons other than a cricket bat. Well that I can do. I normally rely on my claws, but you don't grow up demonic without learning a few weapons along the way. The challenging part is going to be getting Michael on board. We're in a different timeline, but he's still been chosen by someone for something, and I know it's important, even if he's still in denial.

Once we were all out of hospital, we met up again and discovered that Eddie has quite a collection of interesting items from the history of Wicker Valley. We decided it was about time our town had a museum, and since there's that abandoned warehouse full of teeth and scorch marks that nobody wants, we managed to get a venue for a good price. Elizabeth still doesn't have a job, so she's going to run the place. And once we've installed the scrying map and the healing water feature, it should be very useful.