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.