Concrete Cow 25

I arrived in Wolverton at more or less the time I intended, paid my entry, and headed straight for the bring and buy, followed by Leisure Games. I'd been thinking of picking up some of the supplements for Masks: A New Generation and there was one of them in paperback so of course that had to come home with me. I somehow managed to resist the impressive amount of bargains on the bring and buy.

By the time I took this photo, very little remained

Game 1: The Wildsea

I used my GM golden ticket to get into my top pick of morning game. I'd seen The Wildsea around and knew how pretty it was but not a great deal else. I was also very happy to find myself at a table with five familiar faces - while it's great meeting new people at cons, it's also great to catch up with old friends.

I was immediately smitten by the pre-gen characters the GM had provided. I resisted my natural urge to play the weird bug person, and passed the swarm of spiders in a skin suit to another player. I decided on Sagrave the Ektus - a towering cactus person with a talent for smashing things up. The rules themselves were fairly straightforward. A variation on Forged in the Dark, and one that seemed a little less hostile to the idea of players passing their rolls. Or perhaps that was partly the fact that the dice appeared to have taken a liking to us?

 What wasn't so friendly was the setting, when it came to figure out what to actually do with it. 'Bunch of weirdos on a ship' is always a solid premise for a game, but while games based on familiar franchises like Star Trek or Pirates of the Caribbean provide a familiar setting, this one is so weird it's hard to know where to take your ship.

The GM dealt with this by giving the characters some interesting motivations and relations, specifically having two characters married, and a third their child. We tried not to think too much about how exactly a human and a bag of spiders had a kid. Fortunately, Sagrave and his friend Hobel the mushroom person didn't know too much about animal biology anyway. Off we sailed, in search of the Amber Irons, where the human wife was going to find an ingredient to make a tea for treating amber blight.

The Wildsea crew

The end result was a game that really put me more in mind of Pasion de los Pasiones, as the human's ex wife showed up, causing trouble in her relationship with her spiders husband, which was a stressful situation for their son. Sagrave, who'd already failed at flirting with the harbor master, concluded that he needed some surrogate parental figures, and that in the absence of any actual suitable candidates, Sagrave and Hobel would have to do.

I suspect The Wildsea is one of those games that works better in a campaign where you've got time to actually learn to setting. All the same, we did have a good game thanks to an imaginative GM and a group of players absolutely willing to lean into the bizarre relationship drama. I fondly remember Hobel and Sagrave rather confusedly asking the spider bag husband if he wasn't already technically in a poly relationship given that there were quite a lot of him.

I picked up some lunch at Tesco, then brought out my sign-up sheet for the afternoon. There were quite a lot.

Ten games on offer!

Game 2: Monster of the Week

I took Valentine's Day for another outing, and another team of elderly monster hunters assembled: a Professional, an Expert, a Mundane and a Divine. So three regular humans and the angel Jeremiel headed for Asani's Greek restaurant to find out why her new barista was being inundated with romantic gifts.

This was great fun. The changes I made for the Revelation run continued to work well, and the group efficiently got to the bottom of things, a few passionate declarations of love notwithstanding.

Then it was time for takeaways and the raffle. This time the raffle prizes consisted almost entirely of things I already owned and things that I previously owned but had since sold. Obviously that means some people won some very cool stuff.

Game 3: Darkness of the Demimonde

 Having written a brand new DotD scenario for my campaign group a few weeks ago, I decided to give it another outing. Brides of Brixton is another investigative pulp horror scenario set in London, and I needed to make some tweaks to run it for a group of beginner characters rather than the slightly more experienced campaign group. Primarily reducing the DR of the primary antagonists.

This time the party consisted of a Detective, Gentry, Feyblood, Magician and Psychic, meaning that most things were solved by either solid investigation techniques of searching and interrogation or creative use of mystic powers. I managed to make good use of my random historical knowledge. Good times. 

Sunday

We've got a bit of a tradition now of a few of us meeting up on the Sunday for lunch and an activity. This time, with some people coming who'd never seen the notorious Concrete Cows before, there was really only one option.

The Concrete Cows

Even if you've seen photos, nothing truly prepares you for the sheer physical presence of these things.

The short walk there and back meant passing a field with some ponies in it. It was good to see that with five of them plus a suitably horse-sized d20, they were all set up for a nice game of D&D.

This one was probably the GM

This was followed by lunch at Yo Sushi and then dropping everyone back at the station.

Reflections

This is probably the best turn-out we've had at Concrete Cow since before Covid. We had loads of games on offer, and most of them filled up. Next time we'll have the main hall set up so we can deploy the divider and split it into two rooms when the games start, and can start looking at hiring additional space.

I love running games here.

Revelation 2025

I set off at a reasonable time on Friday afternoon. It should take about two hours to drive to Sheffield, but I know from past experience to allow at least three. So I got to the Garrison at 6pm, within minutes of my room sharer, and then headed to the bar, ready for another weekend of Revelation.

Some of the Garricon regulars have started going for meals out on the Friday nights. With dietary requirements significantly cutting down the options this time, we headed out to Church - Temple of Fun, an all vegan bar and restaurant run by the front man of the band Bring Me The Horizon. This was a little surreal. We were, after all, a group of nerds going into an extremely hip venue. But on the plus side, one of our party was someone the rest of us were meeting for the first time, and I hope it made it a lot easier for him to identify the group of nerds while we were surrounded by really cool people.

The whole place was like this

I managed to obtain a drink free of alcohol, kombucha or CBD (a bigger challenge than it sounds), admired the black cutlery, ordered a seitan and facon burger and fries followed by cheeseless cheesecake, and enjoyed the absolutely bizarre decor. It was certainly the right atmosphere for preparing to run Kult.

black cutlery

Vegan chicken and bacon burger and fries

Vegan black forest cheesecake with chocolate ice cream

Game 1: Monster of the Week

I kicked things off with Valentine's Day, a scenario I originally wrote for a campaign, updated to work as a one-shot. I kept the campaign's group concept of the characters all being retirees and acting as the neighbourhood watch group in their suburb of Milton Keynes. I stuck with the standard set of playbooks, and the players picked the Spellslinger, Expert, Initiate and Monstrous. After establishing histories, they set out to find out why Lizzie the part time barista was getting so many unwanted valentine's gifts. By the end, an appropriate amount of love was in the air, nobody died and nothing was on fire that shouldn't be. So a great success!

I modified this slightly from the original scenario, adding in some extra monsters to add theming, excitement and things for me to do on a failed roll, and I'm pretty happy with the result. I expect I'll give this a few more outings over the year.

I put all my game materials for each game into separate themed bags this time. My new Matrons of Mystery bag seemed appropriate for retirees investigating mysteries, even if it wasn't quite the same game.

Matrons tote bag

Game 2: Monster of the Week

Proving just how versatile MOTW can be, my second game saw me playing an agent of a United Nations agency devoted to tracking down dangerous uses of fringe science. I picked the Professional, and along with an ex-military Wronged, an ex-police Gumshoe and an ex-alive person Monstrous, we investigated strange goings on in a gated community in Oxfordshire.

I love how this game rewards creativity. Lily the ghost proved to be an extremely valuable team member due to her ability to get inside places without having to open doors (and then telekinetically open them when necessary). It was also tonally very different to the game I ran. Rather than my cosy group of retirees, this was action and body horror.

Game 3: Kult: Divinity Lost

I'd done one practice run of Not For A Million Dollars, confirming it would fit into a four hour slot, and resulting in a few tweaks to the characters. While there's still room for improvement, the tweaks were good choices, giving every character an opportunity to use at least one of their advantages. But I think in future this one needs a longer slot. I put it in the Saturday night slot to get the maximum amount of time, but I think six hours would be a more comfortable timeframe. Definitely one to run at a longer con like Contingency.

Based on the test run, I picked up a few props and prepared some handouts. Based on this run, I could do with a few more props and handouts, which I will have ready for the next time I run this.

Of course it's the players who make a game like this, and I had an absolutely lovely group, all embracing the messed up reality show contestant PCs, bringing both pathos and humour. The grumpy scientist, determined investigator, dramatic influencer and himbo model were all a delight, and I don't think I'm going to forget the phrase 'Luigi board' for a while.

Game 4: Escape from Dino Island

While PBTA is thought of as low prep, both my previous games involved quite a lot of prep. But all I had to do for Dino Island was print out playbooks. We ran through the standard questionnaire, skipping the first question about why they were on the island, because in the process of writing a blurb, I'd already done that: guests at a destination wedding on a dinosaur themed resort. They were expecting animatronics. What they got was the terrifying, electrically active, genetically branded, Tesladactyl.

In addition to the box of tiny dinosaurs, my kit now includes a set of dinosaur dice for when I need to roll on the random tables.

This is one game I'd love to see more people running. While I consider myself a generally competent PBTA GM, I know there are plenty of people who do this kind of low prep, high improv GMing better than I do. Plus, I really want to play it some time.

Dinosaurs!

Game 5: Threadbare

There were two more MOTW games I could have signed up for - but instead I went for Boogie Shoes, in which a group of toys had to overcome a series of obstacles in order to participate in a dance contest in a post-apocalyptic world populated entirely by toys. I played Millicent Mouse, a well constructed cuddly toy mouse manufactured by Steiff, meaning she was able to get served in high class hat shops, unlike her friend Rollup, a cuddly six-limbed alien who had been a carnival prize.

Millicent and Rollup were joined by Coco the gorilla and her barrel of monkeys, and Martha the Christmas sock. We arranged for dance lessons for Coco (to get her monkeys working in sync) and Rollup (to help him figure out which of his limbs were arms and which were legs). We got a sparkly hat and cane for Millicent, and some Christmas lights and music for Martha. And we put on a musical spectacular, the like of which had never been seen before.

This was a very different setting to the last toy based game I played. It's got great potential for creativity as the players come up with toy ideas. We didn't get to see much of the part of the game where bits of you get damaged and can be replaced with other items, largely thanks to the dice who had decided to be cooperative for once, so we didn't get much of the stitchpunk aspect. But it was Sunday afternoon, and this was an ideal time for a cute and cuddly game in which all conflicts were resolved via dance-offs.

Millicent Mouse's character sheet

Reflections

Well that was great. Exhausting - I probably shouldn't have offered three games (although I had a great time running them all) so next time I'll try to remember to not be quite as enthusiastic. Or at least, try to make sure I'm GMing something energising in slot 5 as that's the one where I start to flag. Oh, and try to make better choices at breakfast so I don't have a horrendous mid-morning sugar crash.

It's impressive how much variety there is in a convention where all the games are PBTA and adjacent systems. Even across just Monster of the Week there was a lot of variety. And it's great to see older games like MOTW and Apocalypse World itself still getting plenty of love alongside much newer arrivals.

Revelation was my first in-person Garricon, back in 2022, and it might just still be my favourite.

ConTingency 2025

Once again January saw me and my husband taking a trip to Hunstanton. We were the first of our group to arrive, and parked outside our assigned lodge, only to discover we'd been given an upgrade!

The new lodge was bigger, and had WiFi and a dishwasher, as well as a table that can seat the six people that the lodge claims to be for. But it seems that I'm the victim of a strange and extremely specific curse. For the previous two conventions I was in the same lodge, and both times I had trouble with the toilet door, resulting in me getting stuck in the toilet for a bit. This time I was assigned a different lodge, which I'd previously visited and knew the toilet doors worked. But now we'd been moved...

Fortunately this lodge had two doors into the bathroom so we were able to leave via the other door before visiting reception to request a visit from maintenance. But really, three years in a row?

Tuesday features a talk in the afternoon, and this year it was CJ Romer talking about parapsychology and his career in ghost investigations. Entertaining as always, and further cementing my opinion that CJ is a Call of Cthulhu character who has somehow ended up in the real world.

After a couple of days relaxing it was time for the games to begin.

Wednesday

Foretold: In Its Shadow

The Dragonbane game I initially signed up for was cancelled due to GM illness so I jumped at the chance to play a story game with James Mullen.

We had a deck of cards and a list of prompts, and with that put together a story of hunting for an alien beast through the abandoned ruins of an industrial area. My character Flora, a xenobiologist, was the first to be entirely consumed by the beast's corruption, but it had already become increasingly obvious that in true Event Horizon style, none of us should have been allowed on this mission. I think we ended by destroying the planet. Good times.

After the game I nipped over to the neighbouring lodge as fellow Raspy Raven member Graham had been running a game of Matrons of Mystery and had offered to show me the props he'd made for it. There were actual printed cards for the suspects and clues! I'm really going to have to up my game.

When Worlds Collide

I had absolutely no idea what this was, and signed up because my husband did and I wanted to play a game together. Then he was ill and couldn't play. Still there were two other guys called Mark at the table so we were well covered there.

So it turned out it was a game about agents who could travel through dimensional rifts. Our team were prepped to go and recover a scientist who'd been trapped when the rift he arrived through went one way, then locate a new rift to bring us all back. Expecting to arrive on the bustling streets of New Amsterdam, we dressed as tourists, which rapidly turned out to have been a poor choice when we arrived to a bunch of biohazard signs.

The system was unfamiliar but pretty easy to get the hang of, rolling 3d6+skill against a target number with modifiers for professional skills. The character sheet was also colour coded, which was good for readability. While I can't see me running this, it's definitely something I'd play again at a convention.

Alien

I knew Alien was a popular game at previous cons so I took the Misfits and their road crew for another outing. A new record - all original PCs plus two replacements killed by the end.

I had a table right in the middle of the main room for this, and while I think I managed to be heard, I decided to relocate my other games to my lodge now that we had enough table and chairs for six people.

Thursday

Cthulhu Dark

I dived straight back in with The Temple of Artemis, my newest Jamesian ghost story using Cthulhu Dark. Once again four brave souls uncovered the secrets of Suttonham Abbey although I don't think it was any less haunted by the end given what happened to Williams.

This one is on the way to being publishable so watch this space, or rather the space on DriveThruRPG where I publish my games.

Sla Industries

My husband had recovered enough to play a game, so off we went to play SLA Industries. This time another player picked the purple cat sniper, so I went for the Frother, basically a crazed Glaswegian on combat drugs with a massive gun. We were on the trail of some stolen ammo, which we retrieved through a complicated series of events that included attempting to book a motel room, sending someone for pizza, and hiding the Stormer in a van, before we got to the required violence.

I'm starting to get the hang of SLA's system now, and while I'm still not sold on the backwards initiative system, I do at least understand how it works. Also it's nice to bring out the bag of d10s for a change. Two games in, and I'm keen to play more.

Black Code

I planned to take a break on Thursday evening, but when I saw a game of Black Code on the board, I decided to add myself to the waitlist, just in case. Just in case happened, and off I went to play.

I've got a reputation with Whitt (the author) and Mark (the GM) for playing weird bug people in their games, and I felt I was only cementing this reputation further when I was offered a choice of new pre-gens and immediately picked Itzy the tech in her spider themed bioframe. I decided she had some extra eyes, to fit with her fairly high Notice level, and hairy fingers, a phrase which seemed to cause some concern.

Off we went on a mission to recover a sacred relic stolen from the Temple, aided by mech frame Sherman's very useful ability to turn into a tank along with all the usual hacking, tracking, and cutting people up with a big sword that the rest of us were bringing to the party. Itzy proved just as much fun as Aedon the scorpion medic and I hope I'll get more chances to play her at future conventions. Black Code is one of my favourite cyberpunk games and maybe one day I'll even run it.

Friday

Matrons of Mystery

Another Matrons game not run by me! This was the same GM I played with last year, who remember my character Rosemary and her giant bunny Pierre. But I decided to do something new this time, and created Audrey Wells, widow of Steve Wells, a rock star who died of attempting to act like Ozzy Osbourne while not being Ozzy Osbourne. Audrey's hobby was now folk music, although she maintained her vintage punk style.

The game was initially pitched as us being the village sewing circle, but when the GM gave us the option to choose, we decided we were going to be a band instead, quickly named Earl Grey Rock, possibly the loudest thing in the village of Soggy Bottom On The Marsh.

Soon we were digging into the intrigues of theatre production when our breakfast with the cast was interrupted by the discovering of the death of the financier behind it all. Between secret passages, whispered conversation and wild speculation we eventually got to the bottom of it, and hopefully assisted a young man in embarking on a new career in the theatre.

I decided to actually take a break for the afternoon and went to browse the wares at All Rolled Up, coming back with some coasters, a bundle of zines, and a very lovely hand made dice bag from the tombola.

Regency Cthulhu

An atmospheric tale of five sisters (and a stable boy) left alone on Christmas Eve while strange activities were going on outside and everyone had a secret to keep. Somehow we all got through it alive, although there was a general feeling that none of us intended to still live in that house by the following Christmas.

Unusually for a game run by CJ, this one was comparatively normal, and involved actually getting on with the plot rather than engaging in extensive Regency nonsense. Well, mostly.

Saturday

Liminal

I decided to take my newest scenario, Blood, Sweat and Tears, for another outing. I originally had a table booked in the hall for this, but given that we now had a sufficiently large table in the lodge I decided to relocate.

This was an unusually efficient group, getting from place to place on a bare minimum of clues - which is encouraging as it means I've successfully designed an adventure with multiple paths to the solution.

East Texas University

I was considering another break, but when I saw ETU I had to give it a go. I wasn't quite sure what to expect, beyond Savage Worlds, but it turned out to be basically Buffy the Vampire Slayer with a dash of Scooby Doo.

I picked up Priscilla the goth witch and went off to a Christmas dinner that rapidly turned into a fight with the cutlery. And it wasn't long after that that we were breaking into an antique shop to steal taxidermy and things only got stranger from there.

I had a brilliant time with this one, tempered only by the fact that it appears to be damn near impossible to get hold of ETU in print these days. Does anyone happen to know if Pinnacle have any future plans for this line?

Plüsch, Power & Plunder

I'd seen this run at past conventions, but this was my first time getting into one of Chris Dieck's legendary plush games. I played Trevor, a cuddly tree frog with exceptional bouncing skills who also knew how to read.

We decided we were the cuddly toys in the Happy Stars daycare, which looked after the children of actors and film crew while they were on set. We spent our days avoiding being played with as much as possible, hanging out with our human friend Jeff, tormenting the security guard and avoiding detergent addiction, until we were forced into action by an invasion of plushies who were alive, but not properly alive! Fortunately movie nights with Jeff helped us make some sense of this.

The most notable incident in the whole game was probably when we needed to drive a car to get somewhere in a hurry. Trevor was assigned to steering, making sure to bounce at the proper times to turn the wheel. While navigation was a little shaky, the actual driving went remarkably well, and while we were technically not able to use the car again afterwards, it was a solid result for a team of six assorted cuddly toys. Trevor played his part in saving the day by doing some reading so that Great Cthulhu could do some magic and end the problem. Well, mostly. Call it a net improvement. Again, a solid result for a team of six assorted cuddly toys.

Sadly this game is even less available that East Texas University, being both very old and from Germany, but really the system isn't the important part here. What matters is that I got to play a cuddly frog.

Sunday

Rivers of London

I had just enough energy left for one more game, so it was off to Hunstanton for the residents of the Folly, to look into a matter of a haunted doll's house. Which turned out to be even more haunted than it appeared at first glance. Sadly what Morgan Omar had learned from watching The Wizard of Oz proved not to be correct, but we nevertheless got everyone out safely.

And then it was off to the carvery for lunch, where the Yorkshire puddings were excellent and really that's what matters, followed by the raffle, and then doing absolutely nothing for the rest of the day.

Reflections

Once again, a brilliant convention. Games and GMs both ranged from good to excellent. I got to try out four new games as well as playing some old favourites. We sold the majority of the items we put in the Bring and Buy, so once again there is space on my shelves ready for the incoming kickstarters.

I didn't pace myself as well this year as I did in 2024, and need to show a little more restraint early in the week if I want to keep going at the end. Nevertheless I managed to play 12 out of 14 slots, which is pretty good going.

With so many friends there, the hard part is actually catching up with everyone. Some people I didn't manage to speak to until Sunday or Monday morning. Must try harder next time. Really the only problem with ConTingency is that it isn't long enough. Roll on next year!